EPA Move To Increase Scientific Advisory Board Transparency Applauded
BY MICHAEL SANDOVAL Western Wire
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Tuesday he planned to curtail the practice of distributing research grants to scientists appointed to the agency’s scientific advisory boards to improve their “independence and transparency and objectivity.”
“If we have individuals who are on those boards receiving money from the agency, sometimes, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, that calls into question the independence of the recommendations that come our way,” Pruitt said, speaking at a Heritage Foundation event. “Next week, I will issue a directive that addresses that, to ensure the independence and transparency and objectivity with respect to the scientific advice that we are getting at the agency.”
“Reforming EPA’s advisory boards will strengthen public trust in the EPA and the science the agency uses to justify its policies,” Thea McDonald, communications director for the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, told Western Wire.
“Chairman Lamar Smith has long advocated for a more balanced and transparent membership on the advisory boards, especially after conflicts of interest and a lack of transparency became prevalent during the Obama administration,” McDonald said. “In fact, the committee and the full House this year passed a bill by committee Vice Chairman Frank Lucas, the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, to accomplish these goals.”
“It’s terrific that EPA chief Scott Pruitt is taking this long overdue step to eliminate the Obama EPA practice of stacking scientific advisory boards in order for them to rubberstamp EPA overregulation as science-based,” Steve Milloy, lawyer and author of “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA,” told Western Wire.
“For too long EPA paid outside scientists to publish agency friendly ‘science’ and then had the very same scientists review and approve their own research under the guise of independent peer review,” Milloy said.
Milloy, who served on the Trump EPA transition team, praised the work of the Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, for calling attention to this EPA practice, which Milloy called “corrupt” in a March 2012 op-ed.
“Senator Inhofe and the House Science Committee have been big champions of fixing this broken, if not illegal system. But their efforts have been thwarted by Senate Democrats trying to protect the unlawful EPA. This has left the task up to EPA chief Pruitt who is now taking action,” Milloy said.
“Chairman Smith looks forward to the official announcement from Administrator Pruitt next week and is supportive of his efforts to restore independence and objectivity to the advisory boards,” McDonald said.
In February 2016, Inhofe wrote to Obama’s EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy, criticizing the lack of transparency and what he characterized as a revolving door, with EPA grant recipients receiving the prestigious appointments.
“I have observed EPA, under the Obama Administration, cherry-picking the same allies to serve on this advisory committee and its subcommittees at the expense of having an open and robust process for selecting external advisors,” said Inhofe. He pointed specifically to those chosen by EPA for its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC).
“The majority of CASAC members have also received considerable financial support from EPA, which calls into question their independence and therefore the integrity of the overall panel,” Inhofe wrote.
Milloy’s 2012 research demonstrated that six of the seven CASAC members at the time had received or were still receiving research grant funding totaling nearly $80 million.
Milloy’s investigation was prompted by an exchange at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing that same year, when Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) pressed then-EPA administrator Lisa Jackson on whether such a practice yielded scientific objectivity, or was, as he outlined, inappropriate for the scientific advisory board.
“You fund research with grants to people who also serve on your review committees. Is this a conflict of interest? Almost every single member of your Clean Air Science Advisory Committee has been directly or indirectly funded for research,” Barton said. “This hand-and-glove policymaking by those appointed to also do your research and being funded by you at the same time is not appropriate. They are often asked to review other research they themselves were a party to on the original research team. How could one possibly expect them to be objective in any way?”
The practice of giving research grants to members of advisory boards is commonly referred to as incestuous, but my imagery of sexually related analogies for the practice are a bit more lurid, starting with prostitution as the most mild perversion.
Yup, “incestuous” doesn’t cover the process very well for me, it’s more like pimps and prostitutes and some have been playing the game so long they are just skanky old whores…
Pimps, prostitutes and all costs for the customer covered by the taxpayers.
Prostitution is decent and honest compared with what the EPA was doing.
Best comment ever! Lol!
97% of all prostitution is man-made.
The EPA hiring sycophants for advisory boards is more like someone who hires a prostitute, and then believes the reassurances of what a great lover he is.
The howls of the stuck pigs will comence in 1, 2, 3, …. Let ’em rip.
Does anyone else smell bacon cooking??? Mmmmmmmmm
Did you mean 3…2…1..howel?
Hopefully this is another part of the swamp that is being drained.
Now for Australia.
Here’s a copy of my email of this afternoon to the Prime Minister.
Dear Sir,
1. Most of the warming of the global climate over the last 100 years is an artifact of the retrospective adjustment of historical measurements. The adjustments have not been subject to peer review. Their scale has always been arbitrary, and their putative rationale has often been dubious.
2. ENSO fluctuations and other natural phenomena give a complete account of all climate variations during this period.
3. The sensitivity to carbon dioxide of the climate system is essentially nil. There has been no statistically significant warming for 20 years, despite the continued rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. (While there is a small measured enhanced greenhouse effect, it is entirely offset by negative water vapour feedbacks.)
4. While the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has no net impact on global temperatures, it has a substantial beneficial impact on agricultural yields.
5. ANY informed and scientifically literate person who gainsays the above points is acting dishonestly.
6. Attempts to limit the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide are futile (for scientific, technical and geopolitical reasons).
7. Attempts to limit the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide are exacerbating global energy poverty, which is causing tens of thousands of excess winter deaths each year (many in Europe), and reducing the life expectancy of many poor people. Doing so intentionally is unconscionable.
It appears that you continue to believe that it is imperative to reduce Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions.
It is not.
You are intelligent enough to assess the scientific claims of both sides of the debate and and astute enough to assess the integrity of their actions.
Please do so.
Please be a real leader, not a follower.
Please stop the campaign against carbon dioxide – for Australia, for the world, and for your own political future.
I’m not sanguine about the prospect. I was in Oz recently and happened to see Turnbull on the TV when he was in Queensland. He had some sense, effectively poo-pooing Musks battery solution for SA, but then he started talking about hydro pumped storage systems in the mountains. One or two is probably a good idea – we have a very useful one for peak-lopping in Wales. However I understood him to be thinking of a lot of capacity to backstop variable renewables.
Well said!
Brilliant letter but unfortunately you are addressing the “dog that caught the car”
“starting with prostitution”
Prostitutes provide a service for those willing to pay.
And the EPA was willing to pay.
The oldest profession (perversion is extra).
Looks like EP not only quashed the cumbersome trias politica, but harnessed it to fill their own pockets.
Meant EPA, but perhaps EP has done it too.
The divine Elaine Paige?
Surely not?
Auto
I think it might be on her website had she done so.
Her website seems ‘hacked’ at present.
How is your cyber-security?
After Scott Pruitt cleans house at the EPA, then the next issue should be examining Academia that receives federal funding for its part in the academic malfeasance that has occurred at many institutions. While it may be difficult to root out tenured positions or private financial sponsors, at least controlling the public oxygen supply may control the burn rate we have had the last 10-15 years with all the deliberate miseducation. It was this phoney narrative that made possible the Endangerment Finding.
Close on the heels of academia should be major reform of the UN, where third world Socialists and their western sympathizers chew at the legs of the world’s productivity. They are ground central for the movement to cripple the West and industry in general through AGW nonsense.
+infinity. The UN has strayed far outside of its’ mission and become a political entity espousing Socialism/Marxism/OneWorldGovernment. I feel they are responsible for perpetuating the ME conflicts to further their own goals. Witness how much UN effort is put into relocating refugees rather than stopping the conflicts. AGW is a construct of the UN to artificially re balance world wealth by targeting which countries will be the new industrial centers. They have even stated as much.
… fixing this broken, if not illegal system.
This sort of CONFLICT of INTEREST would NEVER be tolerated in ANY other scientific, political, business, or government arena. It is a SHAMEFUL transfer of (taxpayer) wealth into the pockets of the chosen few “green” sycophants. Keep draining the swamp Mr. Pruitt and President Trump. MAGA baby … MAGA!
In a related story, the Dow Jones Index was UP another 160 points today … closing comfortably over 23,000!!!! That’s 5,000 points HIGHER than when Trump was elected. It’s almost as if the business community has taken a giant, collective, exhale … a HUGE cleansing breath … and a deeeeeep inhale of the clean fresh air!
This would be called corruption almost anywhere in the world, practiced by dictators and petty tyrants. How did the USA allow this to happen in the first place. Mind you, this Australian sees it happening in my country as well where the recipients of the grants become the gatekeepers over grants.
“This would be called corruption almost anywhere in the world, practiced by dictators and petty tyrants. How did the USA allow this to happen in the first place.”
Because the Obama administration was corrupt to the core.
We will probably be hearing just how corrupt in the near future. It looks like the Obama administration has been caught receiving bribes from the Russians to sell U.S. uranium to the Russians. Just about every high-level official in the Obama administration seems to be in on this including the Justice Department and the FBI and Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton. Quid pro quo, is what it is called.
And since the media agreed with Obama’s policies, they were more than willing to hide this corruption.
My only caveat is that a Correction will occur at some point- and you can bet the MSM will leap shrieking in horror upon that!
Hard to say how big the correction will be. The increase is due to an increase in real economic activity, as opposed to a bunch of infused government money. Will have to see.
Disagree, it’s all too common today in all of those arenas. Anywhere there’s government money there are pigs feeding at the trough. Washington was build on a marsh and it’s turned into a swamp. EPA is just a more egregious example.
The swamp seems to host Stymphalian birds.
Word of the day, thanks!
Bird is the word.
“The swamp seems to host Stymphalian birds”
Let’s hope Trump is another Heracles. 😉
The momentous task facing Trump is staggering, truly a Herculean task.
Anyone that his come into a small division of a fortune 500 company and tried to change the culture, has a bit of the concept of trying to change the culture of “Morador on the Potomac”, a 4 trillion dollar company!
Not a bad analogy. Heracles in all his strengths and flaws. (With the former far outweighing the latter.)
I can’t wait to see who argues against this call for greater transparency and a removal of conflicts of interest
By any chance would that be Mann?
Is there anyone in the Trump administration doing more to drain the swamp than Mr . Pruitt ?
The days of bought science are about to end at the EPA . It’s about time .
I am in the UK and not aware of the political workings of the USA however the more that is revealed about the inner workings of organizations like the EPA the more I am amazed. I would have thought that in the “land of the free” there would be at least one group of citizens whose sole raison d’etre was to probe the workings of government to ensure illegal/ dishonest practices were rooted out. Don’t you have anything like that over there ? You seem to have organizations for every possible interest there is under the sun, yet none to look specifically into the spending of taxpayers money, transparency, honesty, etc?
There are “inspectors general” at many agencies, but some of them have been hampered, and others have been co-opted.
Can we publish a list of the so called scientists who make up the EPAs Scientific Advisory Board so that we know who we are talking about and what scientific work they have done from grants received.
Another version of regulatory capture and “fetcher bills”, as contrasting actions by the government.
The bureaucrats in DC are paid to well to want the swamp drained.
Topping the list is Washington, DC with an average federal worker salary of $112,601, not including benefits. In 2014, the latest data available, the average American made $46,482.
When benefits are considered, the average DC federal worker makes over 3 times the salary of the average American.
Sen. Obama sponsored the bill to be able to fire the IGs.
The National Audit Office in the UK does a pretty good job, but since it scrutinizes public expenditure it seldom gets a mention in the MSM, which has been largely taken over by socialists and fascists such as “greens” and Lib Dems, all of whom worship public expenditure. The NAO itself is probably also highly tainted.
The problem with any initiative that uses taxpayer money to achieve a ‘worthy’ goal, is that not only do you have to have a bunch of bureaucrats in that agency deciding who gets the money and how much, you also need a watchdog to ensure that the RIGHT people get the money.
In my experience less than a third of the money spent actually ends back at the coal face doing ‘good’ and whether or not it is spent on the right things is subject to political whim and corruption.
In one case a friend who is an inventress, had her co-opted and used as part of a presentation to a QUANGO to secure funding for a project that she knew would never work. She had one informal chat with the company and that was it.
They got the funding and she never saw a penny, or them, again. She blew the whistle on them to the QUANGO and received a stony silence. Brown envelopes? Who knows.
In another case EU funding was made available as a ‘community competition’ to achieve some vague virtue signalling targets of ‘raising awareness’ etc. I got involved peripherally. Of the money received from the EU, 2/3rds went to pay the ‘outside consultants’ hired to design and vet the competition. Coincidentally all of these consultants also worked for a large corporation to whom the answers to the competition were a perfect piece of market research .
In short all the money was in essence subverted to consultants and a large company, and
the government bureaucrats, and only a small amount actually made it to its intended target, where its effect was frankly zero.
Once again, beyond a certain level we see that big givernment wastes resources and diverts them into the wrong pockets.
The purpose of government is to take money from those who work, and give it to those who support the government.
There are numerous “citizen” groups pursuing an honest government agenda:
e.g. https://www.judicialwatch.org/
What has become particularly corrupted during the Obama Administration is the Federal Justice Department along with quite a few state Justice Departments.
When corrupted prosecutors refuse to investigate, indict or prosecute obvious exposures of corruption, the whole legal process deepens the swamp.
e.g. Gleick, EPA, Justice, Hillary Clinton, Shukla, NOAA data mangling, etc.
Now, tell us all about United Kingdom’s handling of wayward MPs who line their pockets at the expense of England’s citizens?
ATheoK
Let’s be clear here. There are more honest, hard working politicians in the UK and US than there are corrupt ones. They should all be under scrutiny, but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
And lets all be clear about something else. The MP expenses scandal that hit the UK a few years ago was largely trial by media. A select few genuinely corrupt MPs were dealt with by our legal system and there were notably few relative to the clamouring from the media for heads to roll.
Thankfully, the UK judicial system is independent of our political system, indeed, politicians are occasionally told what to do by the law e.g. the government was challenged in court over a major post Brexit referendum decision, and lost.
Nor is the UK just England.
Specious claim.
Zero proof, all bluff and nonsense.
American style of governance attempts to maximize citizen access to Congress; especially in the House of Representatives.
But even Senators are accessible to citizens.
Oh!?
One specific scandal immediately absolves all of the greenie posturing and related votes?
Absolves the demise of England’s MetO’s science?
Absolves the demise and corruption of England’s MetO’s Royal Society?
Absolves the corrupt whitewash investigation of MetO?
Absolves England’s elitists treating English citizens as idiots for supporting Brexit?
The list goes on and on. Whether or not one nitpicks England or United Kingdom or Great Britain or whatever.
How about that!?
In the USA, the judicial system is insulated from the political system. As much as is easily possible since our Justice system is still governance and therefore subject to political influence. Whether justices are appointed or elected, they are affected by political winds. There is no escaping this influence.
Which is not a surprise since the USA’s judicial system is modeled after England’s; with a few modifications.
Politicians in America regularly face or must follow court decisions.
Obama’s corrupted Justice Department aside.
By the way, USA’s Justice Department is about law enforcement, investigations, indictments and prosecutions; not judges, justices or courts.
Politicians’ that ignore judicial decisions should be brought up on contempt charges. A major failing of Obama’s Justice Department was ignoring most Democrat violations.
Which is one of the reasons so many people look forward to swamp cleaning.
Reverend
“Donald Trump just does not care.”
And if you want the positive context of that statement, read Matt Ridleys Times article, conveniently reproduced on his blog for all to interrogate.
The article becomes relevant to AGW about half way down, so persevere, however the rest of the article illustrates the state of global politics generally.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/virtue-signalling/
A pity that unlike the clarity of most of Mr Ridley’s writings, his “Donald Trump just does not care.” will be taken out of context, even if read in context by the ‘never Trump’ factions. What Mr RIdley meant was that Trump is interested in outcomes and is aware the road leads to hell despite all the good intentions so does not go there. So he does not believe in “it is the ‘thought that counts” Magical Thinking we see from so many politicians replete with other people’s money.
(Magical Thinking: a belief that merely thinking about an event in the external world can cause it to occur. It is regarded as a form of regression to an early phase of development. It may be part of ideas of reference, considered normal in those instances, or may reach delusional proportions when the individual maintains a firm conviction about the belief, despite evidence to the contrary. It may be seen in schizophrenia.)
medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/magical+thinking )
Gee Badge, I trust you are not suggesting UK and EU are the models of integrity in this sphere. Whitewash nonvestigations of climategate perps by lords heading renewable energy associations, chartreuse energy fiefs in the (former ) Prime Minister’s family…
Ultimately, it is up to our Congress to do that. The EPA is a special case though. Born in 1970, under Richard Nixon, its sole purpose was to clean up the environment, and they did that, but they began usurping power they were never meant to have, jumping the shark under Obama to become what could be called a quasi-fascist organization, beholden to no one. For that reason, it has to be abolished. The states are certainly able to carry on the tasks of ensuring that our rivers and air remain clean, at least to the standards that were set before the Obama overreach.
we have tons of citizen groups who do just that … but because the Media is a paid for member of the Democrat party they simply fail to report the uncovered malfeasance … think of the Weinstein silence but on steroids …
Most people believe the media when they proclaim that they serve this role.
If that was ever true, it hasn’t been true since at least the 60’s. The media has taken on the role of advocate for left wing policies and only attacks those politicians that oppose the media’s preferred solutions.
“I would have thought that in the “land of the free” there would be at least one group of citizens whose sole raison d’etre was to probe the workings of government to ensure illegal/ dishonest practices were rooted out.”
Normally, a free press would do this work, but we haven’t had a free press in the United States since the Vietnam war. Instead, we have a press that Leftist and is totally partisan in their reporting and the truth is not in them.
The press is specifically mentioned in, and protected by, the First Amendment because the American people need the truth in order to govern themselves properly, and the Founding Fathers expected that the free press would supply that truth.
Today’s press is only interested is advancing the radical Left’s agenda, and attacking anyone who is a threat to that agenda. They hide behind the First Amendment to tell their lies.
I saw a poll the other day that said half of Americans think the MSM just makes stories up out of thin air (which is true).
The press as currently constituted is a danger to all of our personal freedoms because they lie to us and create false realities which confuse millions of Americans and distracts them from what is really happening and what is really important.
The MSM has substituted politics for truth. They should be codemned for their lies at every opportunity.
On Drudge this morning there is a report of a proposal to allow people to use libel laws to sue blogs and individuals who spread reports that the government deems to be inaccurate.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/drudge-facebook-nyt-readers-could-face-libel-suits-for-sharing-fake-news/article/2637886
I saw that, MarkW.
My question is who is going to be the judge of what is Fake News? I don’t think this kind of censorship is going to fly here in the USA. It certainly won’t fly with me. We do have the First Amendment protecting us, afterall.
The Left always wants to control the conversation by trying to trash the First Amendment. That’s what they are doing here. It’s not going to happen.
The courts have been whittling away at the first amendment for a generation. They aren’t going to stop.
A few years back, the courts decided that the governments interest in elections that have appearance of fairness was enough to allow the government to regulate who could put forth paid political advertisements in the days prior to an election.
The courts have been quietly adding these “governmental interests” exemptions to the Bill of Rights for years, and it isn’t going to stop until they have all been gutted.
The 10th is already a dead letter.
The courts have been whittling away at the Bill of Rights for a generation.
I see no evidence that they are going to stop.
Most of the campaign finance laws clearly violate the 1st amendment, but the courts have ruled that there exists a “governmental interest” in the appearance of fair elections, that allows the government to control political speech.
The 10th amendment is already a dead letter, the rest will follow in another generation.
Where the heck are my posts going?
It doesn’t matter what flies with you. It’s what flies with the supreme court that matters, and in the past generation or two the court has decided that the interests of the government is more important that the interests of the people.
Would be nice to see a list of Names.
“Would be nice to see a list of Names.” I’m in the process of reading ‘The Chickenshit Club” by Jesse Eisinger … which explains why such lists are hard to come by.
bobburban October 19, 2017 at 8:45 am
“Would be nice to see a list of Names.” I’m in the process of reading ‘The Chickenshit Club” by Jesse Eisinger … which explains why such lists are hard to come by.
On the contrary it’s very easy to find the list, it took one minute to get the following link:
https://yosemite.epa.gov/sab/sabpeople.nsf/WebExternalCommitteeRosters?OpenView&committee=CASAC&secondname=Clean%20Air%20Scientific%20Advisory%20Committee%20(CASAC)
I really do not see that there is anything out of the ordinary here. Pretty much every science funding body has a comittee of active reseachers who are experts in that field and who would have been funded by that body at some point. This is perhaps not ideal but in small research areas there will always be a large overlap between the top scientists who get the grants and the top experts you want to evaulate them. The alternatives would appear to be giving grants to second rate scientists or to get second rate scientists to judge them.
What is unethical would be for serving member of a funding panel to submit proposals. Which does not
seem to be the case here – although I could be wrong since there is little information to go on.
Err, no. EPA isn’t a scientific research funding body, but an enforcement agency.
The EPA has primary responsibility for enforcing many of the environmental statutes and regulations of the United States. As such, the Agency is granted explicit enforcement authority in environmental statutes. EPA is called a regulatory agency because Congress authorizes it to write regulations that explain the technical, operational, and legal details necessary to implement laws.
Source: EPA website
Why is EPA financing research? By those with direct interest in EPA? Doesn’t look good. Especially when EPA has proven capable of regulating a life-sustaining trace gas and, thus, fighting against the very people who have elected Congress to supervise EPA. Counts as institutional corruption in my opinion.
Here is the key legislation – the US EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding. The inclusion of CO2, which is vital to all carbon-based life on Earth, is utterly foolish and corrupt.
Atmospheric CO2 at 400 ppm is clearly too low in Earth’s atmosphere for optimum plant growth, and CO2 regrettably will not reach to optimal concentration for plant growth of 1000-2000ppm due to any foreseeable human activities. Higher atm. CO2 concentrations are vital to the continuation of carbon-based life on Earth, and any means of increasing atm. CO2 is beneficial to humanity AND the environment.
The allegation that climate sensitivity to increasing atm. CO2 is much greater than about 1C/(2*CO2) is false, based on all the evidence. There is ample evidence to the contrary, and accordingly there is no real global warming crisis – it is a fiction that has caused foolish politicians to squander many trillions of dollars of scarce global resources, primarily on dysfunctional “green energy” schemes that have driven up energy costs, reduced electric grid reliability and increased misery and death, especially among the elder and the poor.
It has been far too easy for corrupt academics to support this global warming fiction, and so to benefit from all manner of research grants based on false assumptions of global warming alarmism. Global warming alarmism is the greatest fr@ud, in dollar terms, in the history of our planet.
EPA – Greenhouse Gas Emissions
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/endangerment-and-cause-or-contribute-findings-greenhouse-gases-under-section-202a-clean
Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act
Action
On December 7, 2009, the Administrator signed two distinct findings regarding greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act:
• Endangerment Finding: The Administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.
• Cause or Contribute Finding: The Administrator finds that the combined emissions of these well-mixed greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution which threatens public health and welfare.
These findings do not themselves impose any requirements on industry or other entities. However, this action was a prerequisite for implementing greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles. In collaboration with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, EPA finalized emission standards for light-duty vehicles (2012-2016 model years) in May of 2010 and heavy-duty vehicles (2014-2018 model years) in August of 2011.
So you see NO issue with scientists being given grants to produce papers- and then reviewing and approving their own papers for use in policy-making?
Merely being given grants by the agency that you are supposed to be monitoring is corruption in and of itself.
Heck with the reviewing your own papers stuff.
How many of these people are going to risk future grants by actually disagreeing with anything the EPA wants?
But it is not a small research area , there is no reason for picking the same faces again and again other than they are ‘reliable’ in that they can offer the results the EPA wants .
Pal-review and back starching are hardly unknown in any academic area , but for some its seems to be the norm and seldom leads to good science even if it often leads to ‘good results ‘
When you income depends on the agency you are supposed to be monitoring, it takes a strong person to disagree with management.
When I worked in the avionics industry, we had monitors who sat in on our meetings and reviewed all of our work.
These monitors were employees of the FAA, not the company that I worked for. The reason for that should be obvious.
This “arrangement” has been deliberately constructed to advance the agenda of the activist leadership of the department. It is, fundamentally corrupt because it was designed to produce corrupted product. If you can’t see that then you are corrupted yourself.
“I really do not see that there is anything out of the ordinary here. Pretty much every science funding body has a comittee of active reseachers who are experts in that field and who would have been funded by that body at some point.”
Seven people get $80 million from the EPA! That’s what I call FUNDING.
What do seven CASAC members spend $80 million on anyway?
“Pretty much every science funding body has a comittee of active reseachers who are experts in that field and who would have been funded by that body at some point.”
———‘
Not so. There are hundreds, if not thousands of PHD qualified scientists that could review the EPA reports. Many contrary published papers and scientists are ignored entirely.
This is great news. I was getting tired of the never ending MSM hard hitting exposés and revelations of corruption and conflicts of interest at the agency.
A bit hard to see how this will work in practice. You still need people on board who are versed in the science and most of them are potentially tainted. Perhaps they need to appoint people who have recently retired and no longer have the vested interest ties but even then …
This would only affect people that receive or have received funding from the EPA. The majority of scientific research funding from the government comes from other agencies. In most fields there are plenty of very qualified scientists to choose from that have not received funding from the EPA.
Yep.
Would you want a magistrate to sit in judgment on you who was the brother or sister of an alleged victim? Of course not. Fair systems are constructed to ensure that not only is the system not biased it can be plainly seen to be unbiased. If people involved wanted to be squeaky clean then they could organise themselves that way. After all, they are allegedly bright people.
If an organisation persistently fails at being Fair, then one can only assume that the controlling members wish it so.
They’ve been self-auditing, just like Weinstein’s Hollywood.
Until we do something about the biased and out of control MSM, who works to elect the Obamas of the nation, this will be just a temporary fix. In 4-8 years, if an Obama gets elected, they will change it all back with the MSM parroting that they are going to restore clean air.
This oligarchy is a sad state of affairs
Do all these grantees have to produce accounts? Where published?
Eisenhower warned about Green Globalists control of science: Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.[1]
It is my understanding that Pruitt is also clamping down on “Sue and Settle”.
This article also mentions a “revolving door”, which is even more insidious in the EPA’s staff hiring practices.
There is free and easy movement between the environmentalist organizations and the EPA. Some how that practice needs to be more balanced.
The use of fake “personal” e-mail accounts (Richard Windsor) to avoid FOIA is another major problem.
Those practices (grant review, Sue and Settle, Activist staffing and personal e-mail) work synergistically to move the “consensus” agenda forward.
Appears to be slow but steady progress by Pruitt on corrections that are hard to oppose.
Does this mean the climate psychologists and other psych teams are out? How about the climate theater arts teams? Oh and the climate finance teams? They also need a new mining engineering science team that does not open up flooded tunnels to watch it run out–wacky Governors might drink the water.
Scott Pruitt better hire some bodyguards……
Which science Board did John C. Beale work with at EPA? That should not be a hard question.
Big step in right direction. We can breathe a bit. Hopefully we can get through 2018.
Mr. Pruitt,
It’s the corruption of science at EPA. Time to clean the house. Fire all the Obama appointees in the advisory boards
To jail past EPA “scientists” for fraud would be an appropriate first step.