The House science committee hates science and should be disbanded

The House science committee has become a national embarrassment, and does more harm than good. Let's get rid of it

J.D. Trout

As if named by a Congressional Office of Dark Irony, The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology really seems to hate science.

Its current chair, Lamar Smith, R – Tex., is a climate change denier, seeing a conspiracy in the overwhelming scientific consensus on human-caused global warming, where the vast majority of experts in the world see only good science. In the last four or five Congressional sessions, the attacks on science made by the majority membership of HCSST have become increasingly unhinged and prolonged. Rather than acting on House Resolutions that advanced the aims of science, Lamar Smith assumed the role of small-government gadfly, irritating and exhausting scientific administrators like NSF Director France Córdova, over whose agencies HCSST had some purview.