Politics Kills Science on Forest Fire
March 2006
At Oregon State University, a controversy over forest science is brewing. Scientific data has been suppressed and scientific conclusions politicized. Here is the irony – it was not the Bush Administration who suppressed and politicized the data, as some environmental activists and editorial pages have claimed, but the authors themselves.
In January, Science Magazine published a one-page piece written by OSU graduate student Dan Donato. The piece argued that salvage logging may actually hinder forest recovery after catastrophic fire. Activists leapt on the short piece, arguing it was all the evidence they needed to kill a bipartisan logging bill co-sponsored by Washington Congressman Brian Baird.
The problem is that the article suffers from a number of flaws and is being used in ways that simply cannot be supported.
The first major problem is that the study is incomplete. The one-page summary of the findings is all that has been released. There is no “study” behind what was printed in Science and it will be another year before a study is complete.
Additionally, the study was not reviewed even by some of the study’s own sponsors, like the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Testifying before Congress, former BLM Manager John Drehobl notes that the piece was submitted to Science only after “avoiding all of the required” protocols and without telling “the co-Principle investigator and Project Inspector” of the project. This would not be the last time the authors refused to release their data.
Despite saying their purpose was to influence the discussion of his bill, the authors refused to release their data to Congressman Baird. The authors did not say there was not enough time to collect the data, only that they were not required to. This not only violates a key tenet of scientific inquiry, but is an ironic suppression of their own data.
It was not the Bush Administration which was trying to suppress the data, but the authors themselves who did not want the world to see what they found. There were some good reasons why.
For instance, while the summary printed in Science Magazine focuses on the number of seedlings remaining after salvage logging, the authors also had data on many other variables that they chose not to include. They did not discuss the number of shrubs found on the sites with and without salvage logging. These shrubs and other plants can seriously hinder recovery of trees after catastrophic fire by squeezing out young seedlings with shade and competition for nutrients. A study of forest recovery after catastrophic fire by Dr. Peter Kolb of Montana State University found that “without human intervention a significant portion of the study area will convert from forest to grass and shrubland.” This is obviously counterproductive if the goal is to return to a healthy forest ecosystem.
Additionally, the Donato study examined salvage logging occurring three years after the fire. Foresters already know that it is best to do salvage logging within weeks or months after the fire. This not only returns the best value from the trees, which creates jobs, but also has the lowest environmental impact. That is why Congressman Baird’s bill calls for salvage logging to occur within 90 days. The fact that the Donato piece argues for less salvage logging due to seedling damage, instead of expedited logging, is one indication that a pre-determined, and political, conclusion may have guided the science.
Scientists must be careful to present data that can be used by policymakers, in order to achieve the values of society without attempting to claim that science sets those values. Science does not say whether jobs are more important than the environment. Science provides the tools so policymakers can best achieve whatever goal is set.
The Donato piece crosses this line between science and politics.
The original draft of the piece specifically expressed the author’s desire to influence the debate occurring in Congress. Recognizing that this comment might betray a political agenda, it was removed before publication. The article became politicized anyway. Environmental activists have seized on the summary to promote their lobbying agenda. One Oregon State philosophy professor called the study “courageous.” That, of course, confirms my point. Courage and timidity are the language of politics, not science.
Critics are right to decry the suppression and politicization of scientific data. In the case of the controversial Donato piece, however, critics need to turn their fire on the authors themselves rather than reflexively attacking the Bush Administration. If they do not, good science will be the primary casualty.