Last week we checked out the Center for Science in the Public Interest's Fourth National Integrity in Science Conference in D.C., and we can assure you it was more exciting than event's title: "Rejuvenating Public Sector Science: A conference on restoring independent regulatory science."

Why so interesting? Because even though the conference did address science as a whole -- from food safety to medicine to energy -- the vast majority of the discussion panels involved environmental issues, as well as award for NASA superstar and climate scientist James Hansen. And while the panels also discussed the private sector's influence on federal scientific research, it seemed to us that the White House (by way of OMB ) was the more pernicious factor in keeping important scientific findings from reaching the public.

Speaking first was North Carolina Rep. Brad Miller, who Chairs the House Science and Technology subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. The tone was set for the day as the Congressman explained that the Bush Administration cares about scientific integrity as much as it does habius corpus, and his committee, along with Senator Boxer's and Rep. Waxman's, will be continuing to investigate the administrations actions far into the next presidency.

In subsequent conference posts, we'll share some of the surprising, scary, and even humorous things we learned, but we know what you really care about: was there any good swag? In a word, no. While a free issue of Mother Jones magazine does promise some interesting articles, the Union of Concerned Scientists calendar is 50 percent obsolete.