Did President Obama Restore Science to Its Rightful Place?

On a whole host of issues, Obama has placed politics before science.

In his 2009 inaugural address, President Barack Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place,” in addition to making the government more transparent and accountable. Millions rallied to his cause. Four years later, how has he done?
Unfortunately, not well. On a whole host of issues, Obama has placed politics before science. We will examine just three of them: vaccines, the BP oil spill, and “Cash for Clunkers.”
Obama vs. Vaccines
In 2008, Obama ventured into the realm of vaccines and autism. While on the campaign trail, he said:

We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it.

Wrong. The science was decidedly not inconclusive as of 2008. Discredited researcher Andrew Wakefield’s original 12-person “study” linking vaccines to autism was published in 1998, but by 2002 the medical community had thoroughly debunked Wakefield’s claim. That year, the New England Journal of Medicine published an enormous epidemiological study, including more than 537,000 people, that demonstrated no link between vaccines and autism. In reality, the notion of there ever having been a “controversy” in regard to vaccination is fallacious; the medical and scientific communities have always endorsed vaccines as one of the basic foundations of public health.
By the time Obama was running for president, the vaccine-autism link had been comprehensively dismissed (and its underlying research was eventually found to be fraudulent as well). So why did Obama claim the science was unclear? Perhaps he wasn’t up-to-date on the latest findings on the subject.
But even if we give Obama the benefit of the doubt on his autism gaffe as a candidate, he had a troubling relationship with vaccines even after assuming the presidency. In 2009, when the world was bracing for the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, the United States experienced a vaccine shortage. Former deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Dr. Scott Gottlieb pinned the blame on a sluggish and overly cautious FDA for holding up production. The Obama administration ultimately bears responsibility because the FDA is under the purview of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/november/did-president-obama-restore-science-to-its-rightful-place