If there is anywhere we need honest scientists who aren't on a mission to exclude whistleblowers, skeptics, and people with minority opinions, it is the American university. But that principle has failed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After 35 years at UCLA, Dr. James E. Enstrom has had to resort to suing UCLA in order to keep his job.
The case has broad resonance because Dr. Enstrom and his colleagues have strongly disagreed over research on a particular kind of air pollution and its implications for environmental regulations. Are huge numbers of people dying from air pollution in California, or not quite so many? This is a critical question, and smart regulation depends on good science. I have no expertise on what kind of regulations, if any, should be enacted. But if the science is incorrect, then policy will be steered wrongly, and California might be spending millions or billions of dollars -- and forcing private companies to spend millions or billions more -- that, all other things being equal, could used for more significant improvements to public health.
Dr. Enstrom is the kind of scientist who is willing to ask these hard questions. But UCLA finally had enough of him. The last straw appears to be his successful whistleblowing against a member of his own department (Environmental Health Sciences, or EHS). His efforts led to fellow EHS faculty member and activist John Froines being replaced on a panel for the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Several members of the panel, including Froines, had been serving beyond the three-year legal limit on their terms of office.
Enstrom also blew the whistle on a fake Ph.D. degree claimed by a CARB researcher. It's not hard to agree that when one of CARB's senior researchers makes up one of his own credentials, we should at least ask whether that person's scientific findings hold up.
All of this was too much for UCLA. First, the school depleted Enstrom's research funds without telling him, and then suddenly told him he was out of money and out of a job. He survived that attempt on his livelihood. Then, his department decided to review his work and decided that he no longer fit the "mission" of the department where he had been doing exactly what the department claims to be about: studying environmental health. No job for you! (Here's the documentation.)
Enstrom had strong arguments against every one of UCLA's claims. With the help of my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), since 2010, he worked within the system to keep his job, and we helped him hang onto his job for two more years. (FIRE also has no opinion on the underlying science or its implications for regulation.)
Meanwhile, Enstrom's situation has received national attention as well as statements of concern from state legislators. (You can even see me in a Reason.tv video about the case.) The American Institute for Law and Justice took up his cause and made great efforts to help Enstrom keep his job without resorting to litigation. Finally, with time running out, Enstrom has sued UCLA. We hope that justice will finally be served and that UCLA can restore its reputation as an honest broker of good science.
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Lindzen's iris hypothesis does not hold up in the real world, yet it doesn't seem to go away in the blogosphere. It along with Lindzen's op-eds, testimony and public appearances, allow the "skeptical" community to promote a level of doubt. For an industry whose profitability is at risk creating doubt is more important than being right.
Based on the review of Enstrom's work, it seems as if he has the same gig going.
In other words, in the federal racketeering case brought against American tobacco companies, the judge specifically mentioned Enstrom's work as evidence of Big Tobacco's attempts to corrupt science and undermine science in the minds of the general public. The tobacco companies were found guilty of said racketeering charges. The Supreme Court let this decision stand in 2010.
Enstrom is a mercenary scientist for Big Tobacco. "An honest scientist"? I don't think so, Mr. Kissel.
Sorry - call me naive but I believe the standard of firing any whistle blower should be very high!
Enstrom charged in 2008 that his colleagues exaggerated the adverse effects of particulate matter in order to justify expensive diesel fuel regulations to the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Enstrom testified in the same year to the state Senate that the lead contributor to the CARB report, Hien T. Tran, paid $1,000 for his Ph.D. from a fake university, and members of a CARB panel had exceeded their mandated three-year term limits by decades.
Shortly after Enstrom revealed the misconduct, UCLA began sending him notices of termination and has refused to compensate him for more than a year’s worth of work.
“The facts of this case are astounding,” said senior counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. “UCLA terminated a professor after 35 years of service simply because he exposed the truth about an activist scientific agenda that was not only based in fraud, but violated California law.”
Tran was eventually suspended for 60 days, and one professor who had served on the CARB panel for 26 consecutive years was removed and later put back on the panel. John Froines, who has publicly supported diesel fuel regulations, was on a committee that voted to dismiss Enstrom.
Enstrom was not a professor at UCLA. He was a researcher but never achieved the higher academic position of professor.
Enstrom (2005) found no link between fine particulate matter and mortality, a finding which also hasn't held up to further research and scrutiny (e.g. http://goo.gl/xexG5), despite his statements to the contrary.
You can tell the cuts in educational spending are having a grave consequence when:
There's science and political science.
It appears UCLA has combined the two.
Who's bright cost cutting idea was this?
And we wonder why our children do so poorly compared to other nations is science?
Granted, there should be academic freedom and I need to know more about the particulars, but Kissel's bobbing and weaving made be feel a desire to be less objective.
However, I have a couple points in response to your statement above. "Questions the danger" is appropriate considering Enstrom's public statements on secondhand smoke and his publication record, in particular Enstrom and Kabat (2003), a study which found no causal link between secondhand smoke and mortality–a conclusion which has been questioned repeatedly in the years since, as a review of articles citing Enstrom and Kabat (2003) shows (e.g. http://goo.gl/cZ52Q). Similarly, Enstrom (2005) found no link between fine particulate matter and mortality, a finding which also hasn't held up to further research and scrutiny (e.g. http://goo.gl/xexG5), despite his statements to the contrary.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/all-stories.aspx?pagelist=22960;39559&so=-pr-bi-ev
Are whistle blowers often persecuted at UCLA or just politically incorrect conservative whistle blowers?
Please tell me you are equal opportunity abusers.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-statement-regarding-environmental-235208.aspx