No president has ever lacked for free advice. Everyone has some policy wisdom to share. But the Bush administration has been plagued with advice-related complaints. It began with receiving secret advice on energy policy from the energy industry, continued with not asking the scientific community for its advice on global warming, and went on to ignoring the advice that it eventually asked for. The administration's Office of Management and Budget proposed that it would seek more rigorous scientific guidance in the review of regulations, but it ran into trouble with its position on whose advice could be trusted. Now the Union of Concerned Scientists has issued a report about what it finds wrong with the way the administration is selecting members for its advisory committees, and a group of distinguished scientists released a statement making essentially the same point.
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