President Bush has nominated Stephen L. Johnson to become Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Mr. Johnson has been Acting Administrator, and he is a 24-year veteran of the agency. Most significantly, he is the first career scientist ever to be nominated to head the agency.

Last week, Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) said he would block Johnson’s confirmation unless the EPA cancelled a research study to be conducted in Duval County (Jacksonville), Florida. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of household pesticide use on children from three months to three years old.

Under Senate rules, a single senator may block any presidential nomination requiring confirmation by putting a "hold" on it. While putting a "hold" on someone may not equal putting a spell on him or her, it requires no Ph.D. in gris gris. Any idiot can master it. Many do, garnering immediate media attention, a temporary position of leverage and the sheer joy of tarnishing a reputation, even if the target is only one of grandstanding opportunism.

Senator Nelson was joined at his press conference denouncing the study by the she’s-everywhere-a-nasty-liberal-comic-book-creature-is-needed Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California), who added, "it’s a sick, sick thing." (We thought "a sick, sick thing" was how Boxer smeared her opponent to win her first election to the Senate.)

Following the political assault, Stephen Johnson cancelled the study, probably the only rational choice (pragmatic capitulation, if you will) given the inflammatory rhetoric about the study, which would have undoubtedly escalated to a point rendering the study impossible to continue.

So what was wrong with the study? As these things go, not much. It might cause parents to use pesticides and families would, omigod, be paid for their participation, some critics charged, even though the study methodology had been reviewed by appropriate bodies and the protocol addressed those concerns.

The real objection was simple. Of the overall $9 million study cost, $2 million was to be contributed by the American Chemistry Council, a trade group for chemical manufacturers, even though EPA would have maintained full and complete control of the study.

The study now dead, Mr. Johnson is likely to be confirmed, although Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has started to make noises about extending filibusters so successfully applied to the President’s judicial nominees to the nominations of both John Bolton (to be Ambassador to the U.N.) and Johnson.

We have several observations about the trumped-up EPA study contretemps.

We are not fans of the EPA, far from it. Regarding a host of EPA activities and pronouncements, the phrase "JUNK SCIENCE" springs like a screeching alien from our oral cavity.

We are able to make those criticisms because of an amazing quality of science, junk or serious. If the data haven’t been diddled and a study is adequately reported, it’s transparent for all who care to see, although somewhat more difficult to interpret than the over-the-top rhetoric of Barbara Boxer or the political motivations of Bill Nelson, the former astronaut who no one remembers going anywhere in space (or time, for that matter).

Because of the transparency of science to those who understand it, following the money that pays for it is mostly useful only as a tool for demagoguery. That unfortunately and unfairly can be powerful in a country befuddled by competing claims with few objective referees willing to step forward and become embroiled in white coat mudslinging. Be that as it may, a study is what it is, and it just doesn’t make much difference who pays for it, unless it has been manipulated, which is generally obvious, again because of that pesky old transparency thing.

Regarding the now-cancelled pesticide study, real people who live in Florida and other similar environs understand the realities of human habitation of same. You either use pesticides or eat roach eggs in your cereal and treat the spider bites of your children. If the pesticides don’t seem to work as well as they once did, go ask the EPA why. That they know.

In fact, now that the study has been cancelled, $9 million is presumably free for some other use. What do you say, Mr. Johnson, how about a good spray of DDT?

Good luck to you, sir. We don’t know if the EPA will ever get its priorities right or its science straight, but we’ll feel just a little bit better with a career scientist rather than a politician running it.

As for you, Senator Nelson, be careful with what you wished for and got. Trying to find out the effects (if any) of pesticides (however necessary) on small children was a useful pursuit. You stopped it, and we’re betting there are more concerned parents in Florida than there are politically motivated, anti-corporate obstructionists. You are up for re-election in 2006, aren’t you?