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Guest Editorial Research
Station Travesty To: Dr. Jack B. Waide, Assistant Station Director for Research: Marcia Patton-Mallory's letter of November 17 has come to my attention. What a travesty. Obviously someone way up the chain of command has gotten to you folks and forced you to backpedal furiously and about 4 months after the fact. Bruce Welch and Craig Criddle did their homework and told it like it is, much to their credit. So now that the fix is in, and political correctness reigns supreme, and a bunch of pseudo-scientists are trying to patch a situation that doesn't need patching. If the biostitutes want to ginny up a thorough search of literature that supports more burning, chaining, and wanton spraying of the few remaining pristine sagebrush communities, let them do it on their own nickel. I suggest they start with the "great results" of such efforts in the Vale Project circa 1963 to 1983. Or talk to the BLM Legacy Team which reviewed the long term outcomes of these various sagebrush search and destroy missions as recently as 2002. I've seen what has been happening on an accelerated basis to our sagebrush seas here in the West for over the last couple decades and it isn't a pretty picture. The Rocky Mountain Research Station needn't be involved. Let the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the Farm Bureau be the mouth-pieces for such efforts. ******** One of the highest accolades that can be accorded a scientist or professional is that of being unwilling to drop his or her integrity to make the matter come out right politically. Those who bend to political pressure and apply "spin" to their results, discredit their discipline and foster a siege mentality for the remaining cadre in their profession who refuse to similarly prostitute themselves. Providing carefully considered, unvarnished truth and conclusions, regardless of the political consequences is one factor that has the potential, depending on how widespread the practice, to separate our society from the tragic excesses suffered by China in the last century. Organized muzzling of dedicated professionals can lead to purges of intelligentsia, or worse, cultural and social revolutions, where rule under political dogma is all that prevails. ******** Gene E. Bray,
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