Donald Kennedy writes persuasively on a recent trend in the United States where members of formerly merit-based independant scientific and academic review panels are being screened for political views rather than scientific merit.

Folks are now being hired for academic and scientific advisory councils based upon their political views and loyalties to the Bush agenda rather than for their merit as scholars or scientists.

This creates a classic isolated loop of yes-man thinking rather than independant critical thought.

This is a very bad thing . . . whether it is done by this or that party. Folks who are on advisory councils should be doing the job at hand without political motivations and they should be selected based upon their ability to independantly and critically do that job.

The end results of this trend are going to be . . . very bad.