This is why liberals are really mad at Scott Pruitt and demand his resignation – he’s demanding accountability and transparency in environmental science, something they didn’t have to do before
Video follows.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt signed a proposed rule on Tuesday to prevent the agency from relying on scientific studies that don’t publish the underlying data.
“The era of secret science at EPA is coming to an end,” Pruitt said in a statement. “The ability to test, authenticate, and reproduce scientific findings is vital for the integrity of rulemaking process.”
Pruitt first announced his initiative to rid EPA of “secret science” in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation in March. The Obama administration relied on so-called “secret science” to justify billions of dollars worth of regulations.
“Americans deserve to assess the legitimacy of the science underpinning EPA decisions that may impact their lives,” Pruitt said.
EPA said the proposed rule would move the agency towards open data practices used by scientific journals and professional societies. The policy mirrors the HONEST Act introduced by Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith to end EPA’s use of “secret science.”
Smith and South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, who introduced the Senate version of the HONEST Act, spoke at the signing ceremony at EPA headquarters on Tuesday.
“Today’s directive is a significant step toward making sure these decisions are not made behind closed doors with information accessible only to those writing the regulations, but rather in the full view of those who will be affected,” Rounds said. “Administrator Pruitt rightfully is changing business as usual and putting a stop to hidden agendas,” Smith said.
Democrats and environmentalists oppose Pruitt’s data transparency rule, arguing it would restrict the scientific studies EPA could rely on for rulemaking and violate privacy rights of patients participating in health studies.
However, proponents of data transparency said researchers already have ways to share patient health data without violating privacy rights.
This sort of data is already routinely made public for research use,” JunkScience.com publisher Steve Milloy wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Source: The Daily Caller
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Boy, Pruitt’s been under an unrelenting assault from the press. They seem real upset that he flies first class.
They didn’t seem to have a problem with the shake-down operation the EPA was running under the last two administrators.
Go figure.
over the target(s)
“The Times has published more than 400 articles, columns, or editorials about the EPA chief since he was nominated in December 2016.”
https://amgreatness.com/2018/04/18/the-nyts-ridiculous-obsession-with-scott-pruitt/
I wouldn’t care if Pruitt flew private jet if he can get the endangerment finding reversed and continue with the great work he has done so far. The return on the tax investment would be immense. Plus he needs massive security because Progressives with billions at their disposal would gladly fit him with a pair of concrete shoes and send him on a deep-sea scuba dive.
How about John Beale, assistant to Gina McCarthy and author of many of the EPA regulations who defrauded the government of over $ 900,000 by taking leaves and claiming he was undercover for the CIA.
Thankfully that crook was caught (with
out the fanfare of Pruitt’s 1st class travel.)
How about him? Did he receive even a tenth of the press outrage and coverage? No? point proven.
I wonder if the whiners would be ok with a criminal trial where the evidence was too secret to share with the jury?
Sadly, this already happens… FISA.
FISA was intended for the FBI counter-intelligence mission. FISA search warrants are not easily usable in a criminal trial because the defense counsel will not have the clearances necessary to work discovery. And if they were granted clearances, then the intel community would have a hissy fit because most of the good stuff is ORCON, which is also incompatible with the 4th Amendment.
The left love secret trials. Of their opponents.
Obama and his minions ran our federal government like a Banana Republic. No accountability. Hide everything, while saying the opposite in public.
I would also l like to see a rule that all Grant’s made by the EPA for research include a provision that a) all methodology and results and conclusions are published and 2) no research is permitted to be published behind a paywall. If no publisher can be found, let the EPA publish the information.
NPR is having a hissy fit ( along with the Union of Concerned Scientists).
Thank you Scott Pruitt. You’ve made my day.
I always thought that UCS stood for “Union of Concerned Socialists”?
more like the “Union of Conceited Socialists”
The saddest part of this is that we actually have to pass a ‘rule’ at a science based agency (I’m being generous) to require something that is so basic to science. If you don’t have to provide the data and methods used to derive your findings, you’re saying to the public. “Trust us, we’re big government and we know what’s best for you” Science and scientific inquiry is based in the Missouri motto, ‘show me’.
I certainly wish my Physics and Math profs had been willing to just accept my answers without having to show them how I arrived at the answer. “Trust me, Sir, it’s right”.
There was a case in Australia where major water allocation changes for the Murray Basin were being ‘decided’ by a select committee of academics and scientists, with no input from farmers or irrigators. The decision was based on several scientific studies during a major drought in the early 2000s, which these studies linked to ‘climate change’. The general drought conditions were expected to worsen over time-the ‘new normal’ etc etc as a result of climate change.
After a major backlash from farmers, the committee resigned in protest, rather than consult and review with those affected, stating that the Water Act at the time had no such requirement or provision for consulting with people like farmers. The decision was based on science, and the government was required to implement it.
Needless to say, the farmers were not impressed. A few years later, the drought broke, and the science itself linking it to ‘climate change’ was seen for what it was, and still is, dubious. Even if correct (the Murray Basin is a major water catchment in Australia), there were, and still is, different options available in the way that farmers and policymakers could respond to changes in water availability.
The main problem was the lack of consultation and discussion, especially with those affected, and also about the science itself.
Needless to say, the ‘protesting elite’ didn’t get it all ‘their way’.
And Trump just got Jim Bridenstein, another skeptic, appointed as NASA Administrator. Two Oklahoma boys making good. Bringing order to the chaos.
Defunding GISS should be a top NASA priority and redirecting those funds to Maryland’s Goddard Space Flight Institute. After all, that would comply with Congressional funding intent to fund “Goddard”.
Scott Pruitt should make sunshine the most prevalent aspect at the EPA that the employees there have to wear sunglasses at their desks.
Everyone should see what they are doing at the EPA, from the environmental NGOs to the mineral extraction companies and refiners and water treatment operators. Sunshine is the best disinfectant for swamp-dwelling, hide-in-the-darknes-of-secrecy critters.
If it’s secret, it’s not science.
Although Cavendish did keep many of his discoveries to himself, to include at first what Lavoisier later called hydrogen.
“If it’s secret, it’s not science.”
Why not? Didn’t the Nazis and Soviets conduct a LOT of science in secret? The key is reproduceability, not secrecy or publicity.
In this case, though, I agree that studies used to deal with the “greatest threat to humanity” should be as transparent and honest as possible.
If it’s secret, how are you supposed to know if you replicated it? If it matters and it’s secret, how do you know to try to replicate it?
“The key is reproduceability, not secrecy or publicity.”
And how do you reproduce something that is secret? you can’t, you have to trust the secret keepers that they were able to reproduce it. That’s not how science works.
“…would restrict the scientific studies EPA could rely on for rulemaking…”
That’s the point. Restrict them to real science. Ones where the data can be tested.
Teaching 6th grade today as a substitute teacher I encountered a magazine subscribed to by our school published by scholastic, inc that quoted from the book “Silent Spring” which was instrumental in the establishment of the EPA. This is pure propaganda being fed to our kids under the guise of “save the birds” and paid for with our tax dollars. I run across this kind of material frequently and even in the supposedly conservative bastion where we live people are so indoctrinated in being “green” and lacking in science or math background that tHis type of hogwash is accepted. Scholastic, inc is a very left leaning publisher assisting the greenpeace types in indoctrinating our kids. DDT was the target of this piece along with chemicals in general and big moneygrubbing corporations and their executives. Malaria, what malaria?
The ‘Spring’ if anything has been getting louder every year since Carson’s book. More forest cover, better management, reduced pollution etc etc.
at least until more resent years, ie since they’ve put up all those bird choppers and bird incinerators.
Many may think I’m splitting hairs, but it’s this kind of thing that has largely contributed to the fix we’re in now… Your headline says, “EPA to end “secret science” with new transparency law” and then you go on to say Scott Pruitt signed it. But the Constitution of the U.S. specifically reserves passing laws to Congress, and once they are passed they become law only after signing by the President of the United States. So Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA, signing a “law” would be unconstitutional, so obviously so that there would be no point in him doing it, he would be laughed out of D.C. I do like that his rule kick-off press conference (I can’t think of anything more accurate to call it, and no better title was provided by the text) showcased the lawmakers attempting to introduce (or has the law already been introduced, i.e., submitted in either house of Congress, and now they’re working on moving the law through its committees and hearings and etc.?) such a law, and I hope such a thing does become law eventually, though I have some questions and concerns with regard to enforcement.
@DeLoss McKnight April 24, 2018 at 5:23 pm I hope you intended the qualifier, “…government funded…” for the research. Though to be fair, I believe any tax-payer funded research should be available free of charge to anyone who can prove they paid taxes.
“Democrats and environmentalists oppose Pruitt’s data transparency rule, arguing it would restrict the scientific studies EPA could rely on for rulemaking and violate privacy rights of patients participating in health studies.
However, proponents of data transparency said researchers already have ways to share patient health data without violating privacy rights.”
Of course they do. A pathetically feeble argument clearly laying bare for all to see the sheer desperation of the mountebanks to maintain their soopa-secwet skulduggery. Pruitt is the Eliot Ness of environmentalism.
In the UK the ruling class have a big problem with education. They need well educated technical people to provide them with the high standard of living that they see as their birth-right. The problem is that these educated techies won’t just be bossed about; the techies think that they know best.
The first step of putting teeth in the Data Quality Act.
Well done Mr Scott Pruitt,
Hopefully they’ll throw out all references to and about that model by J. T. Kiehl and Kevin E. Trenberth, about energy balance. On this planet solar energy in does not equal radiant energy out!
It is grossly wrong as evidenced by the simple observation that the world population is (and has been ) expanding. If you believe the Kiehl and Trenberth model then this expanding population takes no energy, just as the growth of all the trees (or any living plant), or peats bogs, do not sequester solar energy away on this planet.
In other words Kiehl and Trenberth model assumes a system where growth in nature fails, where the oceanic sludge at the deep oceanic abysses do not build-up but are static. Sorry to tell these scientist but nature continues to transform solar energy via chemical processes into new structures, structures that lock solar energy away to chemical bonds, preventing it leaving this planet for hours, days, years, or thousands of years.
J. T. Kiehl and Kevin E. Trenberth model is a fiction, a fantasy! This planet uses more energy than is radiated away — life on this planet sequester solar energy in the very structures life builds. Life is, for all the time that it exists here, acting against entropy! Ultimately the balance will be, but ultimately is a very long time away, and nobody will be there to see it. For now nature’s life-force is winning the battle against entropy, life however has no care for entropy right now, it neither knows nor cares that ultimately entropy will win the war.
All you sciency types want entropy winning with a simple equation. Nature and life unfortunately doesn’t always work with simple equations.
Just saw this Politico headline. What a disingenuous headline.
“Pruitt scales back EPA’s use of science” AMAZING. Absolutely amazing and disingenuous.
No way to comment that I see. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/24/pruitt-unveils-controversial-new-science-policy-501612
You have to read way down in the comments to see someone that actually studied the article, mostly usual nasty attacks. “Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said Pruitt’s changes could keep the agency from revising public health regulations as problems arise or new data comes to light.”
Even if this statement is perfectly correct, which it might partially be if the baby is thrown out with the bathwater, it shows the political direction of AAAS. Sigma Xi, who joined with AAAS for the March for Science said—-
“Our dependence on fossil fuel has created an environmental crisis and once again science will be called upon to find a solution. North Carolina, I say to you that the individuals who will develop the clean energy source that will help us break our addiction to fossil fuels could be in one of our classrooms, could be here today. So do not let the messages you’ve heard here today fade away. Contact your representatives and tell them to stand up for science. And if they do not listen, come November, vote for science!” March for Science talk by Sigma Xi President. Maybe Sigma Xi president never got his hands dirty.
There is pushback, but it is hard to stop top-down management. Actually the marchers seem to be mostly confusing technology with science. How the ‘March’ develops might be important.
As John Endicott says below, I was particularly disgusted by the statement about the “best” available science. Of course THEY will make the determination, in secret usually, about what is the “best” science. As usual, they think they know what is “best” for everyone.
Another example of fake news.
from the politico link:
Pruitt’s predecessor Gina McCarthy, and her air chief Janet McCabe, in an op-ed in The New York Times in March said concerns about studies are dealt with through the existing peer-review process, which ensures scientific integrity.
“[Pruitt] and some conservative members of Congress are setting up a nonexistent problem in order to prevent the E.P.A. from using the best available science,” they said.
====================================
it can only be the “best available science” if others can independently verify and replicate it, so by definition it can’t be the “best available science” (heck it can’t even be called science) if you are afraid to release the data and methods so that others can independently verify and replicate it!
Scott Pruitt for President!!
Sometimes the wording differences in heads are most insightful. The WUWT headline is far more informative and insightful than the carefully biased MSM spin that says restrict. The public does not get the hint that they were hoodwinked on crap science while also not getting a hint that this is corrective action against an organized policy wrong. So those in the Obama years get another pass.
Its not the the underlying data that need to be published but rather is the underlying statistical population that needs to be identified. Under the scientific method, a model is tested by drawing a representative sample from the statistical population underlying the model and comparing the predicted to the observed relative frequencies of the outcomes of events in this sample. For a global warming model, the underlying statistical population is not described hence the claims that are made by the model are insusceptible to being falsified. Falsifiability is required under the motto of the Royal Society. In Latin, the motto is Nullius in Verba. Translated to English the motto is “take nobody’s word.”.
For studies done on public funds, a more rigorous review than the current “peer” (too often pals) review. The papers should be challenged by the in house experts or seconded to outside experts by the funding body to assure quality standards are met.
Imagine you commissioned a building from an architect and they delivered a completely unusable catastrophe. Would you just accept it?
The “Ends justifies the Means” crowd will be the downfall of the USA over time. They know what’s “right” for America and the world, and thus are justified in doing things that violate proper science and ethics because they are in the moral right (in their head). America used to be a nation of laws and science, but now people are circumventing them in the name of their world view and the media is complicit in letting them get away with it…….because they are running the same playbook to achieve their goals.
How is the regulation by administrative fiat based on hidden secret data in any way compatible with the 14th amendment?