Fewer U.S. scientists go to top world conference

The Washington Post

NEW ORLEANS» Hundreds of U.S. Geological Survey scientists were missing from the biggest conference in their field this month.

Typically, some 450 researchers from the nation’s top natural resources and natural hazards agency attend the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the largest gathering of Earth, space and climate scientists in the world.

But in the weeks before this year’s conference, the Interior Department — which oversees the USGS — issued a new cap on attendance: No more than 199 employees across the department could travel to the meeting, and expenditures could not exceed $399,000.

As a result, just 178 USGS researchers were present at the AGU conference in New Orleans last week — a 60 percent drop from last year. In addition, 30 abstracts for posters or oral presentations, which take weeks to prepare, were withdrawn by USGS scientists who were unable to attend.

According to spokeswoman A.B. Wade, the USGS was not given a rationale for the policy shift.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Department said the decision to limit the number of employees saved hundreds of thousands of tax dollars. She said the larger number of employees who attended the meeting in past years were an example of the Obama administration’s “addiction to spending.”

But one USGS scientist who was denied approval to attend AGU just 10 days before the meeting said the crackdown on conference attendance amounted to the Interior Department “telling us we can’t do our jobs.”

“It’s in my position description that I am to conduct research and disseminate that research,” said the scientist, who asked not to be named out of concern for his job. “When I had legitimate science and I had a budget to attend the meeting and I’m told I can’t go, that’s harassment.”

The scientist, who works in USGS’s Climate and Land Use Change mission area, has attended AGU most years since the late 1990s. He helped organize events at the conference, was slated to participate in multiple sessions and had already booked a plane ticket and reserved a hotel room when he was denied approval for his travel.

The annual AGU meeting is the biggest geoscience conference of the year.