Union of Concerned Scientists
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| Established | 1969 |
| Exec. Dir. | Kathleen Rest |
| President | Kevin Knobloch |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, MA, United States |
| Membership | over 100,000 |
| Founder | Kurt Gottfried |
| Homepage | http://www.ucsusa.org |
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit advocacy organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. Kurt Gottfried, a former senior staffer at CERN, currently chairs the UCS Board of Directors.
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[edit] Issue stances
Some of the policies that the UCS endorses include controls on pollution, reduction of nuclear weapons, a ban on weapons in space, federal regulation of some biotechnologies, the protection of endangered species and action against global warming. The Union also encourages research on renewable energy, low-pollution vehicles, and sustainable agriculture. The Union does not oppose the use of nuclear energy, but is a proponent of strict safety guidelines. They oppose a cap on tax credits for the development of hybrid vehicles [1]. They are against genetic engineering of livestock and oppose the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics to treat livestock because of the danger of antibiotic resistance. [2][3]
[edit] History
The UCS was founded in 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by faculty and students. One of the co-founders was physicist and Nobel laureate Dr. Henry Kendall, who served for many years as chairman of the board of UCS. In 1977, the UCS sponsored a "Scientists' Declaration on the Nuclear Arms Race" calling for an end to nuclear weapons tests and deployments in the United States and Soviet Union [4]. In response to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the UCS sponsored a petition entitled "An Appeal to Ban Space Weapons" [5].
[edit] Press
In 1997, the UCS circulated a petition entitled "A Call to Action". The petition called for the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was signed by 110 Nobel Prize laureates, including 104 Nobel Prize-winning scientists.
In February 2004, the Union received press attention for their publication "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking". This report criticized the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for "politicizing" science. Some of the allegations include altering reports by the Environmental Protection Agency on global warming and choosing members of scientific advisory panels based on their political views rather than scientific experience. In July 2004, the Union released an addendum to the report in which they criticize the Bush administration and allege that reports on West Virginia strip mining had been improperly altered, and that "well-qualified" nominees for government posts, such as Nobel laureate Torsten Wiesel were rejected because they were openly critical of the Bush Administration and its policies.
On April 2, 2004, Dr. John Marburger, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a statement claiming that incident descriptions in the UCS report are "false," "wrong," or "a distortion."[6] Marburger expressed disappointment and dismissed the report as "biased." [7]. UCS rebutted the White House document by saying that Marburger's claims were unjustified. UCS later wrote that since that time, the Bush administration has been virtually silent on the issue. [8]
On October 15, 2005, in response to what it termed a "changing political climate," the Union of Concerned Scientists announced the creation of a new "Scientific Integrity Program" to analyze and advocate scientific integrity and against politically-motivated interference.
On October 30, 2006, the Union issued a press release claiming that high-ranking members of the U.S. Department of the Interior, including Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Julie MacDonald, systematically tampered with scientific data in an effort to undermine the protection of endangered species and the Endangered Species Act[9].
On December 11, 2006, the UCS issued a statement signed by 10,600 leading scientists including Nobel laureates. The statement calls for the restoration of scientific integrity to federal policy-making. The announcement came as the group released an "A to Z" guide that documents suspected censorship and political interference in federal science.
[edit] Criticism
Critics have called the UCS an "unlabeled left-wing activist" group[10], and noted that UCS funding often comes from organizations that support liberal policies[11]. UCS received an "Ideological Spectrum Rating" of "1" (Radical Left) from the Capital Research Center.[12] Activistcash.com states that the UCS "embraces an environmental agenda" and "politicizes science" itself.[13]
Critics of the Capital Research Center and Activistcash.com claim that these two groups have their own biases because they are run by conservatives [14]. Additionally, Capital Research Center does not explain the criteria used to determine an ideological rating, and Activistcash.com does not cite references in its article on the UCS.
