Union of Concerned Scientists
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| Image:UCSlogo.jpg | |
| Established | 1969 |
| Exec. Dir. | Katherine Rest |
| President | Kevin Knobloch |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, MA, USA |
| Membership | over 100,000 |
| Founder | Kurt Gottfried |
| Homepage | http://www.ucsusa.org |
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a non-profit advocacy organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists.
Contents |
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-theraputic use of antibiotics to treat livestock because of the danger of antibiotic resistance. [2][3]
Viewpoints on the UCS
UCS received a Ideological Spectrum Rating of "1" (Radical Left) from the Capital Research Center. [4]
History
The UCS was founded in 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by faculty and students. 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 [5]. In response to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the UCS sponsored a petition entitled "An Appeal to Ban Space Weapons" [6].
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 a good deal of attention from the mass media by publishing a report titled "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 nominees for government posts, such as Nobel laureate Torsten Wiesel, that the Union considered well-qualified, were rejected because they were openly critical of the Bush Administration and its policies.
On April 2, 2004, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a statement by Dr. John Marburger, the director of OSTP and a Democrat, that claims the descriptions of the incidents in the UCS report are all "false," "wrong," or "a distortion." He said he was disappointed with the report and dismissed it as "biased."[7]. A UCS analysis of the particulars in the White House document stated them to be unjustified. Since that time, the administration has been virtually silent on the issue. [8]
On 15 October 2005, the UCS announced the creation of a new "Scientific Integrity Program," in response to what it termed a "changing political climate," to analyse and advocate on behalf of scientific integrity and against politically motivated interference in the scientific process.