NIH institute purges climate change references, but not very well

Last week, one of NIH's institutes, the National Institute for Environmental and Health Sciences (NIEHS), did something rather mysterious. The institute purged references to climate change on its website by replacing the phrase "climate change" with "climate."

For example, a page formerly titled "Health Impacts of Climate Change" is now titled "Health Impacts of Climate," a title that obscures the main point of the page's content, which is all about climate change. Another page formerly called "Climate Change and Human Health" is now called "Climate and Human Health." Ironically, the web addresses of both these pages still contains the term 'climatechange':

•   https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/climatechange/health_impacts/
•   https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/climatechange/

which is something of a smoking gun showing the after-the-fact alterations. The attempted purge was first revealed by the nonprofit group EDGI, a group dedicated to addressing "potential threats to federal environmental and energy policy." The Washington Post revealed that these changes were made by Christine Flowers, the NIEHS Director of Communications. As quoted in the Post, Flowers explained that:

"It’s a minor change to a title page, but the information we provide remains the same. In fact, it’s been expanded."

True, the contents of these pages seem to be unchanged. But in that case, why change the titles and headings? Clearly something more is afoot. Is NIEHS trying to pretend that climate change isn't real, or that it has no effect on human health? If so, this would undermine the very mission of the institute. Are the NIEHS staff fearful that one of Trump's minions will attack them for describing objective scientific facts? If so, perhaps they should get another job.

NIEHS's attempt to re-write its own history has been woefully ineffective. It's easy to find other NIEHS webpages devoted to climate change, such as:
https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/climate-change
which has the title "Climate Change" right at the top, and which links to a major report called "The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment." There's also the NIEHS Climate Change and Environmental Exposures Challenge, a competition sponsored by NIEHS to create graphical visualizations showing the effect of climate change on health.

The WashPost story did not mention whether the NIEHS director, Dr. Linda Birnbaum or her boss, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, had plans to restore the original language to the website. I've written to them both to ask, and I'll post an update here if they do.

Reject this incompetent Trump appointee

Sam Clovis standing next to Trump during the campaign.

Trump has nominated a non-scientist to be chief scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This is an outrageous slap in the face to science. It's also a slap in the face to Congress.

As I predicted back in May, Trump has nominated Sam Clovis, a former right-wing radio talk show host and failed Senate candidate from Iowa, to be the chief scientist of the USDA. ProPublica was the first to break this story, and they also pointed out that Clovis was a vocal climate change denialist. Clovis has an undergraduate degree in politics and graduate training in business, but he has no formal training in science at all.

Clovis does have one qualification, though. As ProPublica pointed out, he has been a "fiery pro-Trump advocate on television." Sounds like a good candidate for a chief scientist job to me.

Fortunately (perhaps), the Senate has to approve this appointment. The Senate itself stipulated, in a bill that Congress passed in 2008, that the USDA's chief scientist (the Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics) must be appointed from

"distinguished scientists with specialized or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics."

The law also says, just to make it crystal clear, that the Under Secretary "shall hold the title of Chief Scientist of the Department."

Why is this appointment so wrong? I'll repeat what I wrote back in May:

Overseeing the USDA's research programs requires strong expertise in biological science. A non-scientist has no basis for deciding which research is going well, or what questions need further study, or which questions present the most promising avenues for research. A non-scientist is simply incompetent to choose among them–and I mean this in the literal sense of the word; i.e., not having the knowledge or training to do the job. This does not mean that I think Sam Clovis is incompetent at other things; I don't know him and he might be very capable in other areas. Among other problems, a non-scientist leader of a scientific agency will be incapable of using scientific expertise to set priorities, and instead can make up his own priorities.

If the Senate has any backbone at all–if Republicans are willing to show that they are capable of doing something other than rubber-stamping every action, no matter how damaging, of our self-absorbed, ignorant President–then they will turn down this nomination. Sam Clovis is so obviously unqualified that this should be easy to do.

Actually, if Mr. Clovis cared about the USDA's mission, he would recognize that he's the wrong man for the job and refuse the nomination. Even Dan Glickman, the former Secretary of Agriculture, said "I wouldn't be qualified for that job" (about himself–he's a lawyer) in a recent interview about Clovis' appointment. The current and previous Chief Scientists at the USDA have Ph.D.s and extensive scientific publication records. Mr. Clovis does not. (Note that when I wrote to Mr. Clovis in May to ask about his pending appointment, he declined to respond on the record.)

The Senate's Republicans have confirmed all of Trump's nominees so far, and I fear they will rubber-stamp this one as well. Let's hope that a few of them (and only 3 have to object, assuming all 48 Democrats vote no) realize that appointing a non-scientist to be Chief Scientist of the USDA is a slap in the face not only to science, but to Congress itself, because the appointment scoffs at Congress's own law, passed during the George W. Bush administration.

Trump can find another political appointment for Sam Clovis, as he has for other Trump loyalists. But appointing a former talk radio host, a non-scientist who has never published a single scientific paper, as the Chief Scientist of the USDA is a gross insult to the thousands of hard-working real scientists at the USDA, and to millions more who depend on, and benefit from, the USDA's research programs. Senators: do the right thing and tell Trump to appoint a real scientist to this job.

Will this be the end of college football? The risk of brain damage is startlingly high.

Parents send their kids off to college with high hopes and great expectations. Universities, in turn, have a responsibility to provide an education in an environment that supports and also challenges the students.

Universities are not supposed to encourage activities that may result in permanent brain damage.

And yet, they do. As revealed in a new report by Jesse Mez and colleagues from Boston University, just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a shockingly high number of former football players, from both college and professional teams, suffered chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) later in life, likely as a result of their years playing football.

The study authors looked at 202 deceased former football players whose brains had been donated for research, and found that 87% of them had some degree of CTE. The highest rates of CTE were among former NFL players, which affected 110 out of 111 players. CTE was nearly as bad in college football players, though, with 91% of them (48 out of 53) suffering from CTE.

Over half of the high school players (27) had "severe pathology." The authors noted that in deceased players with severe CTE, the most common cause of death was neurodegenerative disease. As they also explain:

"There is substantial evidence that CTE is a progressive, neurodegenerative disease."

In other words, CTE is a death sentence.

The authors of the study stated their conclusions carefully, noting that the study was not randomized, and that players and their families may have been motivated to participate because they were concerned about a possible link between football and CTE. Nonetheless, even if the risk of CTE is much lower than found in this study, universities should be taking a very hard look at the risks that they are exposing their students to.

Or to put it another way, is it okay to ask young men to play football if the risk of permanent brain damage is only 50%? What if it's just 10 or 20%? Is that okay? Is football that important?

Readers of this column know my answer: no. College is not about football, and if it disappears completely, universities will be just fine. The University of Chicago eliminated its football program in 1939, and brought it back in decades later as much-reduced program, now in NCAA Division III. The university itself has remained a powerhouse, routinely ranked in the top universities in the country academically.

As I've written before, football is corrupting our universities, blinding them to their true mission (education and research) in the pursuit of a profitable entertainment business. University presidents seem helpless to stop or even slow down the enormous machine that is big-time college football. For example, in 2015 the University of Maryland (where I used to be a professor) paid millions of dollars to buy out the football coach, so that he could quit a year early and the university could pay millions more to a new coach. Ironically, Maryland had done exactly the same thing in 2011 to buy out the previous coach, at a time when the entire state had hiring and salary freezes in place. None of these actions benefitted the university or its students.

All the while, universities pretend that they are educating the players. Here's a quote from Bleacher Report's interview with star UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen:

"Look, football and school don't go together. They just don't.... No one in their right mind should have a football player's schedule, and go to school."

This from one of the top college football players in the country. (On this topic, Taylor Branch's 2011 exposé in The Atlantic is particularly worth reading. Or this article by a disillusioned former Michigan fan.)

Universities now face an ethical dilemma far more serious than merely taking advantage of athletes' skills to entertain football fans and pay inflated salaries to coaches. The JAMA study reveals that by running a football program, universities are not just robbing young men of four years that might be better spent getting an education and preparing for life: they might be robbing their students of life itself.