New bill passed: Did this just happen in the Land of the Free? Yes, it did.

Science is about truth. It’s about fact.
It’s about forming hypothesis and either proving or disproving that hypothesis through what we can observe, test, and measure.
For thousands of years it’s been through this method that humanity has progressed. And history shows that every time ‘authorities’ get involved, it invariably arrests this process.
Human civilization lost centuries of progress in the ‘Dark Ages’ (a bit of a misnomer, given that societies were flourishing in Asia at the same time).
European governments would burn anyone at the stake who dared to write that the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe.
We’d like to think we’ve come a long way since then. But have we really?
It was just a few years ago that the EPA was slammed in a scandal for putting political pressure on scientists to influence their work.
And just last week, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill that effectively kicks the scientists out of the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, and makes room for industry insiders.
What’s curious is that this bill specifically allows for industry representatives to serve on the advisory board even when they have a direct conflict of interest with the board’s advisory activities.

This post was published at Sovereign Man on November 24, 2014.