According to Nature "in February 1998, the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB (ISG) was set up under the chairmanship of John Bourne, a prominent animal-health specialist, to advise the government department that was responsible for the issue at the time... [it] issued its final report on 18 June this year. Its conclusions were robust: "Badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain."

Professor King considered the report (which included several peer reviewed papers) "along with 'other scientific evidence', with the help of five specialists of his choosing. On 30 July he gave his report to the secretary of state with a startlingly different conclusion. 'Removal of badgers,' it states, 'should take place alongside the continued application of controls on cattle.'"

Professor King has now been "criticized by scientists and members of parliament for seeming to go back on the ISG's advice, which the government had itself sought.

"On 24 October, Bourne and King were called to account for what had happened at a meeting of the House of Commons select committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Bourne was visibly annoyed, and described King's report as "hastily written" and "superficial". Rosie Woodroffe, an expert on conservation biology at the University of California, Davis, and an ISG member, said that the King report was riddled with "small mistakes". In those circumstances, King's insistence that "the conclusions in my report are not very different from those that the ISG reached" ring hollow."

In short Nature is saying that Professor King had been got at.

Virtually concurrently the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Julie Gerberding, was testifying before the US Senate Environment and Public Works committee on the health impacts of climate change. She had brought with her to Washington a 12-page summary of the scientific issues, prepared CDC researchers, to be distributed at the hearing.

According to Eli Kintisch's report in  Science: "[S]hortly before the hearing began, Gerberding learned that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had slashed the handout in half. Gone were details on how climate change could worsen allergic diseases, exacerbate deadly heat waves, and broaden the geographic range of infectious diseases."

However, Dr Gerberding stuck to her presentation as she had intended to give it, and it was afterwards the fallout occurred. The media had obtained the uncut summery. "It asserted, among other things, that the United States 'is expected to see an increase in the severity, duration, and frequency of extreme heat waves' and that studies showed higher urban temperatures could increase ground-level ozone, worsening asthma and 'chronic lung diseases.'"

Then this:  "A White House spokesperson said the edits were done because details "didn't align with" the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ...The president's science adviser, John Marburger, went into more detail 2 days later... Marburger said staff found 'appropriate connections between climate change and human health' in the draft but criticized 'several nuanced but important differences between the IPCC report's findings and the draft testimony.'"

According to Mr Kinrisch CDC scientists were outraged: "They gutted it," said one. "For them to say that other agencies had a problem with it is just a weak cover … for suppressing the science."  Gerberding says she got across her message, namely, that "from a public health perspective that climate change is an important … issue." But she told Science that she regrets that the incident has "raised questions about the credibility of the CDC science."

In their account of the matter Nature reports: "[John] Marburger insists that his office did not seek to cut the report, but instead made "substantive and constructive comments and suggestions". Those comments were passed to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which coordinates such agency reviews. Owing to time constraints, the budget office elected to strike the sections rather than revise the testimony, according to [Office of Science and Technology Policy] OSTP officials."

Tim Donaghy of the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out to Nature the administration had a responsibility to correct the errors rather than cutting the meat out of the testimony. "The topic of the hearing was climate change and public health," he says. "It's not too much to ask to have them submit testimony on that particular topic."

Senator Barbara Boxer (Democrat, California), who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works that called Dr Gerberding to testify, has asked the White House for copies of all records related to the testimony. She calls Marburger's explanation a "lame defence".

The Science write-up by Mr Kinrisch concludes:

Those familiar with the process say the testimony, submitted to the White House 5 days before the hearing, was vetted by agencies including NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Marburger's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). But Gerberding said none of the comments she saw were "showstoppers." OSTP, for example, took issue with specific wording on hurricanes, food scarcity, and mental health. An OSTP official says that the office "had no problem" with sections on infectious diseases and heat waves but that "I don't know what happened to our edits," which were submitted on Monday. Marburger's statement said that OSTP "did not seek to redact sections."

Gerberding says she's skeptical of the OSTP assertion that OMB's heavy editing was necessary because of insufficient time to reconcile the various comments, calling that "just a hypothesis." She's asked her staff to review the 12-page draft and the vetting process "to make sure this doesn't happen again."

If the goal was to suppress the issue, extensive media coverage suggests that the attempt failed. Gerberding says she'd be pleased if the flap about her testimony leads to more talk about CDC's role in studying climate change, calling it "a silver lining." She says she has tried to "get this issue on the map for public health, and I will continue to do so."