Common sense not so common

It is almost a given in Washington life that administrations will be accused of suppressing or spinning the work of career government scientists to support a political agenda.
The Bush administration especially has been susceptible to these charges, and it might have remained an inside-the-Beltway story except for a curious chain of events at NASA.
A 24-year-old political appointee at NASA, a former low-level worker in the Bush campaign, instructed NASA Web site designers to insert the word "theory" after a reference to the big bang on the grounds that this widely accepted explanation of the origins of the universe was a religious issue.
Meanwhile, it was leaked to the press that NASA's public-affairs office had been instructed to restrict James Hansen's access to the press, sit in on any interviews he did have and monitor his lectures and writings. Hansen is a leading climate scientist and head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science. Clearly, the political flacks at NASA were worried that his views might not square with those of the White House on such issues as global warming.
Fake credentials
Then it turned out that the young political operative, aside from having no background in cosmology or climatology, never even graduated from college, contrary to what he claimed on his resume. He quickly left the agency.
Now, according to The Washington Post, NASA has drafted an eight-page policy specifying the right of its scientists to speak freely with the press, offer their personal interpretations of their findings and to have an agency public-affairs specialist present during their interviews only if they chose. Moreover, agency documents will be edited solely for clarity and not to change data or conclusions.
This is an excellent policy, assuming it's adhered to, and a model for other government scientific agencies. It's also a model of common sense, but, according to the Post, it took a "team of scientists, lawyers, public-affairs specialists and managers" to get there. Ah, government.
Scripps Howard News Service