Hurricane Dorian "Sharpiegate" Violated Integrity Rules

Last year's Sharpiegate scandal was a warning that "alternative facts"
over real science could have dangerous consequences. We certainly
learned that this year.

Yes, I'm back to Sharpiegate, that moment last year that seems so long ago when President Trump falsely said Hurricane Dorian would affect Alabama, and later showed a map altered with a Sharpie that falsely suggested the hurricane had been forecast to hit that area.

New reporting this week shows that NOAA officials violated science integrity rules when scrambling to incorrectly back up Donald Trump's wrong statement last year that Hurricane Dorian would blast Alabama, among other things.

In the grand scheme of things, Sharpiegate seems so insignificant now with the nation's botched Covid-19 response killing people and the Black Lives Matter movement highlighting the stain of racism and police brutality in the United States.

However, Sharpiegate is important in a way because it shows how Trump's sycophants prioritize the "need" to massage Trump's super needy ego at the expense of truth, sound policy, and in this case, science.  As we've learned since, ignoring science can be deadly.

This whole thing with what happened last year should have been a small forgettable gaffe that all presidents make.  In the run up to dangerous Hurricane Dorian, Trump included Alabama in a list of states that could be affected.

Very early forecasts had suggested just that, but in the days leading up to Trump's' words, Alabama was off the table. That state would escape Dorian scot-free.

Due to panicked messages they were receiving after Trump spoke, the Birmingham office of the National Weather Service issued a statement saying that Dorian would not affect the state.

A normal president would have then said, "Oopsie, I had bad information. Turns out Alabama's fine," then dropped the whole thing. From there, everybody would have moved on.

But no, not Trump. He always seems ready to waste lots of precious time, resources and reputation to claim he is always right, evidence be damned.

So we had Sharpiegate

The latest report, via Gizmodo and many other media outlets, is this:

"Internal documents supposedly showed that Tim Gallaudet, NOAA's deputy administrator, nor Neil Jacobs, the acting NOAA administrator, had authorized the press release backing Trump - instead, the order apparently came from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who issued threats to fire Jacobs and other top NOAA officials. Per the Washington Post, an inquiry conducted on NOAA's behalf by the nonprofit National Academy of Public Administration now finds Jacobs and NOAA deputy chief of staff/director of communications Julie Roberts committed at least two violations of scientific integrity rules in issuing the statement claiming NWS Birmingham was wrong. 

The report also concluded that neither official commited a violation when they issued media guidance that limited NOAA scientists from speaking openly to the media about the matter. But Jacobs and Roberts 'intentionally, knowingly or in reckless disregard,' violated conduct and ethics sections of the NOAA Scientific Integrity Policy twice: First by refusing to let scientists in Birmingham review the statement pre-publication, and then sending it out and "compromising NOAA's integrity and reputation as an independent scientific agency."

Of course, this won't matter very much for the people involved, since apparently nobody is facing consequences for these violations. Typical in this administration.  Everybody seems to do whatever they want, regardless of legality and ethics. No wonder there are howls of protest against this administration echoing across the United States.

When Sharpiegate first erupted last year, I said this would erode trust in science, facts and policy when more serious issues came along.  And sure enough, Covid came on the scene, and once again, people who should know better are creating "alternate facts" to appease Trump's little mind.

This time, though, unlike Sharpiegate, millions of lives are at stake and there have already probably been thousands of needless deaths.

Sharpiegate was a warning to the nation about how dangerous this administration is.  We should have listened.