Science and Politics

[Chewbacca]

This news-piece just smells like more easy goings for polluting industry to me.

I thought conservatism was all about less regulation and less goverment meddling. Once again the current "conservative" adminstration proves me wrong with more meddling and more regulation.

I don't know what I hate worst, science tainted by politics or science tainted by religion. It's a tough contest between the two in recent times.


Link

Note this is page one of a two page article
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Peer Review Plan Draws Criticism
Under Bush Proposal, OMB Would Evaluate Science Before New Rules Take Effect
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 15, 2004; Page A19


A number of leading researchers are mobilizing against a Bush administration plan that would require new health and environmental regulations to rely more solidly on science that has been peer-reviewed -- an awkward situation in which scientists find themselves arguing against one of the universally accepted gold standards of good science.



The administration proposal, which is open for comment from federal agencies through Friday and could take effect in the next few months, would block the adoption of new federal regulations unless the science being used to justify them passes muster with a centralized peer review process that would be overseen by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Administration officials say the approach reflects President Bush's commitment to "sound science."

But a number of scientific organizations, citizen advocacy groups and even a cadre of former government regulators see a more sinister motivation: an effort to inject White House politics into the world of science and to use the uncertainty that inevitably surrounds science as an excuse to delay new rules that could cost regulated industries millions of dollars.

"The way it's structured it allows for the political process to second-guess the experts," said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the 50,000-member American Public Health Association, one of many groups that have spoken against the proposal.

The escalating debate over the OMB effort is the latest in a series of recent battles involving claims of politicization of science under Bush. In areas including embryo cell research, contraception and global warming, scientists in the past year have increasingly accused the White House of undercutting the federal scientific enterprise to please religious conservatives and corporate constituents.

At issue this time is a proposed rule -- technically a "bulletin," an OMB term for legally binding language meant to guide federal agency actions -- that would require a new layer of OMB-approved peer review of "any scientific or technical study that is relevant to regulatory policy."

John Graham, OMB chief of regulatory affairs and a prime architect of the administration proposal, said: "Peer review in its many forms can be used to increase the technical quality and credibility of regulatory science . . . [and] protects science-based rulemakings from political criticism and litigation."

Scientists across the board say they agree with that. But because peer review can also be subject to peer pressure, the question is who will do it, and under whose control.

Under the current system, individual agencies typically invite outside experts to review the accuracy of their science and the scientific information they offer -- whether it is the health effects of diesel exhaust, industry injury rates, or details about the dangers of eating beef that has been mechanically scraped from the spinal cords of mad cows.

The proposed change would usurp much of that independence. It lays out specific rules regarding who can sit on peer review panels -- rules that, to critics' dismay, explicitly discourage the participation of academic experts who have received agency grants but offer no equivalent warnings against experts with connections to industry. And it grants the executive branch final say as to whether the peer review process was acceptable.

The proposal demands an even higher level of OMB-approved scrutiny for "especially significant regulatory information," a term defined in part as any information relevant to an "administration policy priority" -- a concept that William Schlesinger finds "alarming."

The agencies implementing the plan -- the OMB and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) -- "are fundamentally political entities," Schlesinger, president of the Ecological Society of America, which represents 8,000 scientists in academia, government and industry, wrote in a recent letter to the OMB. "It is critical that barriers between federal science and politics remain in place. These guidelines appear to weaken that vital divide."

A separate concern is that the proposed process would create long delays. After all, experts said, for all its elegant capacity to discern fact from fiction, science rarely provides definitive answers. And regulations in search of certainty may wait forever.
*Snip*

[Azred]

Unless and until we have a majority of our lawmakers and governmental executives also be trained scientists, we should have some sort of Separation of Science and State, just like we have Separation of Church and State. Clearly, if the government sees research that doesn't fit its own goals, then either a) the research will be discounted or b) another "friendly" study will be conducted which will--big surprise--corroborate the governmental view, with legislation being subsequently passed. Continuting to conduct experiments or studies until you get the results you desire is completely contrary to the established process of the Scientific Principle of simply stating facts as they exist. [img]graemlins/nono.gif[/img]
If this kind of mentality persists, we will actually progress backwards. This must not happen. [img]graemlins/idontagreeatall.gif[/img]

[ 01-15-2004, 03:15 AM: Message edited by: Azred ]

[WillowIX]

Azred, I completely agree with you.

I would also like to point out that several research projects receive federal funding. Strangely enough such researchers tend to find just what they are supposed to. A great example of that happened a few years back when three individual studies revealed that smoking wasn't all that bad for you. Wow, everyone thought until they found out that these three groups had been funded by the tobacco industry.

All research should be reviewed, and of course it already is...

[Timber Loftis]

Of course research is always compromised by the money -- government or private -- funding it. However, this is another layer of governmental red tape meant to stymie progress in our understanding.

For me, "conservative" means trying to research all we can so we can write regs that keep the environment the way it is -- "conserve" it. Rather, somehow, "conservative" go flipped on its head somewhere, and now it means "conserving" the old big businesses and their smoke-chugging slouching toward Bethlehem.

Of course, I've got to wonder how much this will apply, because I would think most research used by the EPA or health agencies would like be peer-reviewed research anyway.

Oh, and this does not separate science and state very much -- rather it's a power grab away from one part of the executive branch (the regulatory agencies) to another part of the same branch, OMB (the pocketbook agency). Presidents have been using OMB for a while to reign in agencies, and OMB funding can be used to adjust the "faucet" of money to agencies in a subtle/secret/unnoticed way -- which can completely stymie and agency's programs without actually shrinking or otherwise publicly limiting the agency's powers.

[John D Harris]

Those kinds of studies work both ways not just for the gov't or tabacco, every group no matter who they are trys to have studies that support their point of view.