SCIENCE: Judge questions honesty of Interior Department scientists.

U.S. District Court judges aren’t known for using inflammatory language in deciding the weighty issues that come before them on the federal bench. So it was remarkable to read the scorching indictment of a federal environmental agency and two of its scientists last week by Judge Oliver W. Wanger. . . . The case concerns how the government should manage California water supplies and at the same time seek to preserve the delta smelt, an allegedly endangered species of minnow-like fish. . . .

Wanger was angered by testimony from the two scientists, Frederick V. Feyrer and Jennifer M. Norris, that he said was “false,” “contradictory” and “misleading.” He accused the Interior Department of “bad faith” in providing the two scientists as experts, and claimed their testimony was “an attempt to mislead and to deceive the court into accepting not only what is not the best science, it’s not science.” An Interior Department spokesman defended Norris and Feyrer, telling the New York Times that “we stand behind the consistent and thorough findings by our scientists on these matters and their dedicated use of the best available science.”

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