By Andy May
The EPA secretary, Scott Pruitt, testified before the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday April 26, 2018. He had been charged with spending too much money on travel, security and a secure phone booth for his office. Certainly, a reason to reprimand him, but I’m not sure a full day of Congressional hearings were warranted. Besides Scott Pruitt has spent far less on travel than either of his immediate predecessors at the EPA. Scott Pruitt said the following at the hearing:
“I promise you that I more than anyone want to establish the hard facts and provide answers to questions surrounding these reports. Let me be very clear, I have nothing to hide as it relates to how I have run the agency for the past 16 months. I’m not afraid to admit that there has been a learning process. When Congress or independent bodies find fault in our decision-making, I want to correct that and ensure that it does not happen again. Ultimately, as administrator of the EPA, the responsibility for making necessary changes rests with me and no one else.
With that being said, facts are facts and fiction is fiction. And a lie doesn’t become truth just because it appears on the front page of a newspaper. Much of what has been targeted toward me and my team has been half-truths or at best stories so twisted they do not represent reality.”
The hearings were more likely due to Pruitt’s efforts to rein in the EPA’s recent efforts to limit private property rights for the “greater good.” When a government official begins talking about the “greater good” grab your wallet and hide your children because they are about to steal something from someone or do something far worse. Representative David B. McKinley, Republican of West Virginia, told Mr. Pruitt during the hearing that the attacks on him “have an echo of McCarthyism.” That is using his, possibly misguided but trivial infractions, as a club to extort a change in his policies. Rules, regulations and laws can be used for nefarious ends.
We see in the March 16, 2018 Scientific American that Scott “Pruitt Expected to Limit Science Used to Make EPA Pollution Rules.” OMG, those darned knuckle-dragging, anti-science Republicans are at it again! Denying science and polluting the environment. What horrors are they contemplating now?
A little farther in we read this:
“[Pruitt’s] initiative is expected to require EPA—when issuing rules—to rely only on scientific studies where the underlying data are made public. It’s an idea that House Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has been championing for years. He and others argue that EPA has been crafting regulations based on “secret science” to advance its regulatory agenda.” (Waldman and Bravender 2018)
Lamar Smith’s “HONEST” act “requires that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations be based upon science that is publicly available” according to the House committee of Science, Space and Technology here. The acronym HONEST stands for “Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment.” Under the act (which has passed the House, but not the Senate), if the EPA is going to restrict someone’s private property rights for the “greater good” they must release all the data and analysis used to justify the regulations. Just as, in court before a person is sent to jail or fined, they can examine all the evidence against them. Lamar Smith and Scott Pruitt simply want people to see the data and evidence used to create the regulations that restrict their private property rights. They are not “limiting the science used,” they are just insisting on full public disclosure of the data and analysis. How is this unreasonable? This is discussed more fully in a recent post by Paul Driessen here.
The U.S. Constitution contains many protections for private property. Article I, section 8 secures intellectual property. Sections 9 and 10 prohibit states and the federal government from passing ex post facto laws that change existing contracts. The fifth amendment prohibits the taking of property by the government without just compensation. The second amendment prohibits confiscation of arms, the third prohibits forced quartering of troops in private homes, and the fourth and fourteenth forbid unreasonable searches and seizures of private property. These protections of private property rights were all in response to common actions by the British prior to U.S. independence.
The EPA has skirted the edge of these Constitutional prohibitions many times, have they gone over the edge? The EPA writes regulations on its own, under the President’s authority, without other oversight. The regulations have to be rooted in a Congressional statute, but the statutes are only interpreted by the EPA. This has allowed regulatory excesses like the CO2 “endangerment” finding. This gives the agency great power. There are many modern ways to restrict private property rights. These include building codes, rent controls, zoning, usury laws, price controls, blue laws, gun controls, etc. Environmental regulations can be the most egregious. The restrictions and regulations can be so burdensome that the land is rendered useless and effectively taken away. This was at the root of complaints against the Waters of the U.S. Act and other environmental and land-use regulations. The following is from a House of Representatives transportation and infrastructure committee report on the EPA attempt to expand the Waters of the U.S. act under the Obama administration (see here for the full report):
“… granting sweeping new federal jurisdiction to waters never intended for regulation under the Clean Water Act, including ditches, man-made ponds, floodplains, riparian areas, and seasonally-wet areas.
This expansion of federal regulatory power also could have serious consequences for the Nation’s economy, threaten jobs, invite costly litigation, and significantly restrict the ability of landowners to make decisions about their property and the rights of state and local governments to plan for their own development.
These actions are yet another example of a disturbing pattern of an imperial presidency that seeks to use brute force and executive action while ignoring Congress.
Regulation must be balanced in a manner that responsibly protects the environment and recognizes the rights of states and individuals, without an unnecessary and costly expansion of the federal government and unreasonable and burdensome regulations on our small businesses, farmers, and families.”
The EPA is charged with protecting the environment in the United States. Their mandate is to use regulations and restrictions on the use of private property so that one property owner does not endanger the water, land or air for all the people around them. This is reasonable, if the actions of the property owner are truly causing dangerous pollution. But, there is a danger of abuse of this power. Private property rights are as fundamental to our freedom as free speech and a free press. Thus, if the EPA takes away a person’s rights, they have a duty to explain why and present all the evidence to the public. Further, every regulation has a cost and these costs diminish our standard of living and can take away jobs. Every regulation needs a justification.
There are many measures of freedom, but one is certainly the strength of a countries’ private property rights. Or, put another way, how easy is it for the state to take away private property or render it unusable by the owner? This can be thought of as the inverse of how socialistic a country is, since the lack of private property defines socialism according to Merriam-Webster (this is part of their definition, for the full definition see here):
“Socialism: Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. A system of society or group living in which there is no private property.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Property rights are tabulated for countries around the world by the Heritage Foundation and the rankings are listed here. Another source is the International Property Rights Index here. Out of 183 countries, Venezuela is listed last, which isn’t surprising. Singapore has the strongest property rights, followed by New Zealand, Hong Kong, the UK, Finland and Japan in the Heritage Foundation list. New Zealand is listed first by the International Property Rights Index. The United States is ranked 24th by the Heritage Foundation and 14th by the International Property Rights Index. It is interesting that the “Democratic Socialist” countries of Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway all have stronger private property rights than the United States. That is, they are less socialistic.
The Scientific American complaints
The critics of Lamar Smith and Scott Pruitt see the ban on using secret data to issue regulations as an effort to hinder the EPA from issuing rules. According to Yogin Kothari of the Union of Concerned Scientists in the Scientific American article cited above:
“A lot of the data that EPA uses to protect public health and ensure that we have clean air and clean water relies on data that cannot be publicly released,” said Yogin Kothari with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Many scientific studies rely on data that can’t be made public for reasons like patient privacy concerns or industry confidentiality.
“If EPA doesn’t have data to move forward with a public protection for a safeguard, it doesn’t have to do that at all,” said Kothari. “It really hamstrings the ability of the EPA to do anything, to fulfill its mission.”
Publishing raw data also opens scientists up to attacks from industry, which can twist or distort data to shape a deregulatory agenda, said Betsy Southerland, a former senior EPA official in the Office of Water who worked on a staff analysis of the “HONEST Act.” (Waldman and Bravender 2018)
These arguments all sound very weak and boil down to “trust the EPA, they would never do anything wrong.” We can all understand that patient names cannot be released, but anonymous patient data is released all the time by the CDC and this is all Scott Pruitt is suggesting. The industries affected by EPA regulations should be allowed to examine the data and draw and report their own conclusions. If the EPA can slant or spin (“twist and distort”) the data to make their case, the industries affected should certainly be given the same rights, argument is a founding principle of the United States. No one should assume the EPA is always right and the businesses they regulate always wrong, honest and open debate is needed here. Businesses (or “industry” if you prefer) make all the money we have, all the money the EPA has, and all the money the government has. Every regulation has a cost. That cost reduces everyone’s income. Rules and regulations matter and should not be made willy-nilly or at an unelected bureaucrat’s whim. They should only be implemented when fully justified to the businesses being regulated and the public at large.
The article continues with this complaint:
[Betsy Southerland, an ex-EPA employee] “said there are numerous examples of groundbreaking studies that are not replicable, such as human health studies after the dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima or the ecological effects of the BP PLC Gulf of Mexico oil spill. In many of the older studies, there are a plethora of people, including some who are dead, who could no longer be tracked down.
“This is just done to paralyze rulemaking,” she said. “It’s another obstacle that would make it so hard and so difficult to go forward with rulemaking that in the end, the only thing that would happen—in the best case you would greatly delay rulemaking; in the worst case you would just prevent it. It would be such an obstacle you couldn’t overcome it.” (Waldman and Bravender 2018)
Pruitt’s new regulations do not have to require recovery of the data from past studies. Although I suspect that a diligent search for the data from the Hiroshima studies would uncover most of it. As for the BP oil spill, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute reports that natural oil seeps on the ocean floor supply as much as half of the crude oil found in the ocean (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 2018). Studying the area around these seeps can provide data on the long-term effects of crude oil and natural gas on the environment. As for the short-term effects of the BP spill, I doubt any of that data has been lost, given the court cases. In any case, rulemaking that restricts private property rights, should be difficult. After all, private property rights are one of our most cherished Constitutional rights and the cost of the rules is very large.
One of the most amusing and shocking complaints was this one:
“Requiring data transparency would cost hundreds of millions of dollars because it would require EPA staff to track down data from study authors and create an online management system to store and present those data, the analysis found. In addition, EPA staff would have to spend time redacting personally identifiable information in the studies, and study authors would likely require payments for preparing and sending their data.” (Waldman and Bravender 2018)
Are they really saying that they do not have a repository for the data from scientific studies used to make the regulations? Are they saying they have not reviewed the data from studies that they used to restrict citizen’s rights and possibly endanger their businesses? Did they just read the studies, accept the results without any further research and write the regulations? Are they really that cavalier about it? It would seem so. One of the best things about Trump becoming President is that we now have a much fuller picture of government incompetence and malfeasance.
Conclusions
Probably most people agree that there should be some restrictions on private property rights to protect the environment we live in. I suspect that most people also agree that private property rights should not be taken away from anyone unless the EPA makes a sound scientific case for doing so. It appears the law is silent on the subject, which is an oversight that should be corrected. The HONEST act appears to be a good start. A nameless, faceless bureaucrat should not be allowed to arbitrarily say that a land owner must stop what he is doing on his land without providing justification. If that justification is based upon a research project, the data and analysis used to justify the regulation must be made public before taking away the land owner’s rights.
It is the land owner’s right, as well as the right of any business, corporation or group to review the data and analysis and try to replicate the result. We live in an age when many scientific studies cannot be replicated and when scientific research contains considerable political bias. The only way to be sure that a studies results are valid is to independently duplicate the project. No less an authority than the journal Nature, probably the premier scientific journal in the world, has made this point:
“An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors’ published claims. A condition of publication in a Nature Research journal is that authors are required to make materials, data, code, and associated protocols promptly available to readers without undue qualifications. Any restrictions on the availability of materials or information must be disclosed to the editors at the time of submission. Any restrictions must also be disclosed in the submitted manuscript.
After publication, readers who encounter refusal by the authors to comply with these policies should contact the chief editor of the journal. In cases where editors are unable to resolve a complaint, the journal may refer the matter to the authors’ funding institution and/or publish a formal statement of correction, attached online to the publication, stating that readers have been unable to obtain necessary materials to replicate the findings.” (Nature.com 2018)
Link.
The bold emphasis is in the original. Some readers will remember the difficulty McIntyre and McKitrick had in getting the data used for Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” (Mann, Bradley and Hughes 1998). Once they received the data from Michael Mann and published their analysis of it in Energy & Environment (McIntyre and McKitrick 2003), the Nature editors ordered Mann, et al. to publish a correction and restatement of their paper (McKitrick 2018). The EPA should adopt a similar policy in the opinion of this author. The Royal Society’s motto is nullius in verba which means take nobody’s word for it. This is certainly applicable to any scientific study used to take someone’s private property rights.
In a famous peer-reviewed study published in Science (Open Science Collaboration 2015) it was found that only a third to a half of the papers published in 2008 in the top three psychology journals could be replicated. If this is true of the scientific work done at the EPA then half or more of their regulations, that have a real economic impact on land owners and businesses in the United States, may not be based on sound science. But, we cannot know if this is true, since the data and the studies are kept secret. It is interesting that the Science paper’s opening words are:
“Reproducibility is a defining feature of science, but the extent to which it characterizes current research is unknown. Scientific claims should not gain credence because of the status or authority of their originator but by the replicability of their supporting evidence.” Link.
This is a good way of putting it. Reproducibility is not part of the definition of science, but it certainly is a “defining feature” of science. No matter how brilliant the scientific work might be, if it can’t be replicated by someone else, it’s useless and of little value. Thus, for the scientific work to matter and have value, the “materials, data, code, and associated protocols [must] promptly [be made] available to [the public] without undue qualifications.”
If Scientific American, EPA bureaucrats and the Washington DC swamp want to take issue with Science and Nature on the necessity of reproducibility in science, have at it, but they will lose. The very idea of “secret science” is an oxymoron in our opinion as well as being very unfair to land owners, farmers, ranchers and business owners.
Andy May has just published his first book: “Climate Catastrophe! Science or Science Fiction?” It is available from Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
Works Cited
Mann, Michael E., Raymond S. Bradley, and Malcolm K. Hughes. 1998. “Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries.” Nature 392: 779-787. https://www.nature.com/articles/33859.
McIntyre, Stephen, and Ross McKitrick. 2003. “Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series.” Energy & Environment 14 (6). http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/095830503322793632.
McIntyre, Stephen, and Ross McKitrick. 2005. “Hockey sticks, principal components, and spurious significance.” GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS 32. http://www.climateaudit.info/pdf/mcintyre.mckitrick.2005.grl.pdf.
McKitrick, Ross. 2018. “Statement of Ross McKitrick.” https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/nyc_lawsuit0.pdf.
Nature.com. 2018. “Availability of data, material and methods.” Nature. https://www.nature.com/authors/policies/availability.html.
Open Science Collaboration. 2015. “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science.” Science 349 (6251). http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716.
Waldman, Scott, and Robin Bravender. 2018. “Pruitt Expected to Limit Science Used to Make EPA Pollution Rules.” Scientific American, March 16. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pruitt-expected-to-limit-science-used-to-make-epa-pollution-rules/.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 2018. Oil in the Ocean. http://www.whoi.edu/oil/natural-oil-seeps.
HIPAA and the NIH requirements for Institutional Review Boards (IRB) for all studies have required patient identifying information to be removed before the data leaves clinical hands for collection, assembly and analysis of results and findings. The IRB process stems from the National Research Act of 1974, and this establishes ethical requirements related to individual autonomy and respect for their rights. There are four mandatory conditions that stem from this principle of respect.
These conditions are requirements for IRB approval of research:
1, Voluntary consent to participate in research.
2. Informed consent. That is the patient or research subject is told what will be done with their data.
3, Protection of privacy and confidentiality (further strengthened by the HIPA Act of 1996).
4. The right to withdraw from research without penalty.
So the argument is specious that patient confidentiality would prevent the EPA from using this data. Existing law and HIPAA already demands patient confidentiality and IRBs must ensure this. Others besides the EPA already have the legal responsibility to protect patient identifying patient data.
If patient/study subject identifying data for epidemiological or research or clinical research data is in the hands of EPA bureaucrats, then HIPAA and the IRB protocols have already been violated.
Those arguing against the HONEST Act are simply lying.
HIPPA
HIPAA
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/index.html
From the article: “With that being said, facts are facts and fiction is fiction. And a lie doesn’t become truth just because it appears on the front page of a newspaper.”
A lie does become the truth sometimes, Scott. It depends on how much the lie is repeated without refutation. One good example is the “Mission Accomplished” lie that was told about G.W. Bush in 2003. That lie is still going strong here in 2018.
Remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it. -George Costanza-
“Jerry, just remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it” is one of my favorite quotes from that show.
And there are so many true believers in the CAGW religion. There’s also a large number of knowing charlatans that it hard to tell, sometimes, which are telling falsehoods that they know are lies and which are telling falsehoods because they actually believe the garbage they are spewing.
Scott Pruitt has been getting a lot of death threats since he took over EPA. Something like four times as many threats as anyone else in the Trump administration. That’s the main reason for the spending he has been doing. He doubled his security detail among other things.
Pruitt appears to be really good at his job and Trump likes him, and that’s probably why. So unless the Democrats have something else on Pruitt, he is probably going to be around for a while.
Gotta love the quote from the guy at the Union of Concerned Socialists.
Translation, we cannot expose our data because somebody might see it!
It is the Phil Jones lack of ethics mentality. Someone might find what is wrong in the results and conclusions if they have “my data.” Thus I’ll delete it before (Phil Jone’s words) before I turn it over to them.
It does not sound that bad, or even rational.
Is not like something about a collusion charge, with Ruskis, or China, or Aliens……
And when it comes to the top EPA man expenses, these expenses do not seem even to come with any meaning of close to the Shukra expenses, on the tax payers burden.
And Shukra is just a “jerk”, in comparison of position and stature…..and like so so many others like that fouling the taxes.
Any time soon that the Congress may have to look at the extraordinary waste of the taxes by the likes of the multitude of the “Shukras”, the real tax thieves!!!!???
cheers
Are they moaning about something akin to the new US embassy in London – that Mr Trump (less than kindly) remarked upon?
How a fantastically desirable bit of London real-estate where the original embassy was, was effectively given away for $250 million, supposedly releasing cash while enabling a lovely new embassy to be built.
Except the new one cost $1,000 million and is somewhere out on the South Bank = A Different Country effectively and might as well be in Timbuktu.
So, who organised *that* financial fiasco?
Needn’t ask who paid for it.
ha ha.
U did.
As gently as I can, may I suggest not so much bragging please about how rich you are.
Simple minded people, crooks and lawyers alike will take you at your word and relieve you of that awesome burden.
Peta
my understanding is that, amongst many other reasons, the original American embassy was so riddled with listening devices, they had no option but to start afresh.
Mind you, I think it’s bollox otherwise, why wouldn’t they just knock the old building down and start afresh in Grosvenor Square.
I’m not certain, however, that we ought to be laughing at the fiasco of others when the fiasco’s in our own government are even more monumental.
I believe the UK is destined to spunk £300 bn by the year 2030 on renewable energy.
Now that’s laughable.
I’ve heard that to reduce violence in the UK, knives are being banned, except for at abortion clinics, maternity and neo-natal wards.
You would think the people who voted for or supported “the most transparent administration in history” would be in favor of transparency in the EPA. You would be wrong.
The Obama administration and its supporters were not in favor of transparency and democracy. They were (and are) in favor of being in power and doing things their way. Their actions—regularly impeding Freedom of Information Act requests and declining to publish data—tell us what the platitudes they uttered about “transparency” don’t.
The Democratic Party gives a new meaning to the word “democratic”: You lose elections, resist, Resist, RESIST!!
When Clinton was running against Bush the elder, I debated with a number of Democrats.
They readily admitted that Clinton was a liar and lacked any kind of moral center.
But they were going to vote for him anyway because he promised to increase various programs that they benefited from.
For a liberal, that really is all that matters. How much other people’s stuff can government give to them.
“Publishing raw data also opens scientists up to attacks”
A closed in defensible science or scientist is the worst possible thing that could happen to the scientific environment or the whether for all that matters.
Making reproducible science mandatory ? Isn’t that what real science is meant to be ?
No … natural tricks and phoney hockey stick schlock .
Scott Pruitt is on the right track as evidence by the mouse attacks .
I’m liking the $$ Billion saved and if it costs a bit more to protect him from
the loony left so be it .
All those’ Clean Out Taxpayer rent seeking lobbyist’s and con men need to just slitter away .
The polar bears are thriving (poor seals ) and that ice free Arctic turned out to be another
bit of eco – doom porn .
Pruitt still hasn’t reversed the endangerment finding on CO2. Doing so would set a billion people free – the populations of the US, Europe, Japan and beyond. Reversing the endangerment finding would be a permanent setback for the warmers. Everything else in the meantime is reversible. Pruitt needs to be replaced by someone with fire in their belly.
I’m all for getting rid of the endangerment finding. But I’m even more in favor of the US withdrawing from the UNFCCC, which would also remove us from the IPCC. This needs to happen, and I hope Trump and Pruitt will push to make it happen. We need all the Congressional Republicans to sack up and force this change. Reach down and talk to your inner Trump, and get US money out of the hands of these UN global bureaucrats.
“if the EPA is going to restrict someone’s private property rights for the “greater good” they must release all the data and analysis used to justify the regulations.“. That’s not limiting science and it’s not denying science. Putting the science where people can see it is promoting science.
“New Zealand is listed first by the International Property Rights Index.”
That sounds like fairy land to me. Especially right now when I am in a fight with my local government for a extension for my building permit.
To put it in its category, it is simply insane.
Of course the building regulations here are designed to “Protect” the home owner because of their “love” of humanity.
Only trouble is the Council fees and drawings, engineers fees and architects fees and other expenses needed to prove that the proposed house complies with the building code and environmental laws, make this “love” so expensive that one wonders if there will be enough cash to actually build the house.
Yes we do have homeless people in Christchurch. Something I never saw in previous years.
Read more about the NZ Government at http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Cheers
Roger
“The EPA is not subject to Congressional oversight, nor does it have any independent ruling body, it reports only to the President, this gives it great power.”
Is the EPA yet another (unlisted) branch of the government?
Another unlisted “branch” would be the special prosecutors/special councils; the FBI/FBM, an autonomous agency (that has agency, apparently), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau… and the DoJ. And the intelligence community (that does consensus pretty much like the IPCC and inspires almost as much trust as the IPCC).
So, how many independent branches of fed gov are there now?
And do theses bodies all have First Amendment rights? They do seem to feel free to publish whatever PR for whatever unholy reason, like the NYT and the WaCo. (Remember, the Numes memo totally endangers the sources of intel of the intel community. Also, the Numes memo is totally devoid of substance; it’s as real as another Michael Crichton novel. It contains nothing of interest, it’s a fiction, and it’s totally devastating for our future work. Trust us.)
I wonder if these agencies with agency should be incorporated once and for all. They could act on equal footing with any other corporations or associations. And they would have the escape route of “Chapter 11” like Trump’s casino.
[?? .mod]
Incorporate agencies. Turn the federal agencies into corporations. Then they can be sued like any “Big Capitalist Stuff, Inc”; no special protection.
(Hold this for Anthony, don’t think this should be approved in this form for privacy reasons) MOD
In my Email Inbox this evening was this from AAAS:
I bolded the last part (above) to bring your attention to a misdirection employed by these editors. Everything they write above that point is true and factual in their journals demands for “maintaining the rigor of research published in our journals and increasing transparency regarding the evidence on which conclusions are based.”
They self-servingly blather on about their own journal standards and mention “workflows” and not every case can data be shared. Okay. This is disingenuous since any of the data they may be hinting at is likely clinical and or patient data, and laws and standards are already in place to anonymize the data that flows to journals for editorial review.
But then they followed it with a jump in the final paragraph to public policy. Public policy is quite different from scientific inquiry and the policing that should go on to ensure integrity. Indeed, the lapses of integrity in biomedical science fields have been such that the journals themselves have had to “up their game” on data oversight and analyzing of images for manipulation markedly in the past decade due to investigator-author ethical misbehavior. So ethical lapses (manipulated data, faulty statistical methods, altered images, cherry-picked results) have indeed happened (and certainly still happens) in science and not been caught by the editors or reviewers before publication. In many case years lapse before the fraud is finally revealed. The editors seem to be implicitly asserting fraud can’t/won’t happen, especially if the investigator(s) know the data will be kept secret, with multi-billion dollar regulatory costs to public and private interests, is naive at best by these editors, at worst it is their gross bias for politicized science on open display.
Public policy by government agencies potentially involves billions of dollars of economic impact to taxpayers and the public. The public as such then does have a right to know where from policy makers are “informed.” This final paragraph in their joint statement from Science, Nature, PLOS, PNAS, and Cell magazine editors
flies in the face of accountability to the public that our constitutional representative democracy is founded upon.
Furthermore, it is no secret that the EPA’s past reliance on “secret science” was abused to push a desired policy agenda, and the “science” behind it was created with a conclusion already framed. The new administration’s reaction to these past abuses is one reason why the voters rejected the candidate from the party of the previous 8 years. Those voters were fed-up with secret science, lack of accountability, and an air of “trust us, we know what’s best for you” administration where public accountability at the EPA was severely abused to push an agenda with trillions of dollars of economic impacts through restrictions on private property rights and costs of energy.
The surest way to ensure such abuse of using secret science in public policy making is to forbid it by Legislation from the People’s representativ3s in our Federal government, that is Congress. This joint statement from the editors is further evidence for the public that the corruption of science has infiltrated all the major scientific journals, at least where the EPA and environmental regulations for public policy are concerned.
Joel O’Bryan, PhD
“(Hold this for Anthony, don’t think this should be approved in this form for privacy reasons) MOD”
huh? What privacy issues/reasons? There are no email addresses or specific addresses for the editors. This statement these 45 editors make is to the Public for widest dissemination, with their names and institutional associations included. And my comments are my own opinions.
Joel, Thanks for this excellent comment. I had not seen the email until I saw your comment. The internal contradictions in the email are truly shocking and your discussion is spot on. I have no idea why someone wanted to hold the comment, but I’m glad it got released.
Quite a lot of people are
seeminglyobviously afraid of the bottle of truth being opened and, once the Ghouls called transparency and freedom of information are out to haunt the scientific world, no one can ever lure them back in.Nice idea. Serves them right. No more hiding, folks!
Moderators, I made a comment on this yesterday and it may have been sucked up by the spam filter. Thanks!
I can’t find your comment anywhere. Can you repost it?
This particular issue has been a burr under my saddle for quite some time. It’s wrong to use taxpayer money to fund scientific inquiry that is later withheld from the public’s scrutiny. It’s also wrong to make policy and regulation without accountability. Both of these issues leads to a distrust of government and it also leads to a tendency by the government to feel like they can dictate down to the ‘proles’ when it really should be a collaborative process.
I’m a co-host of a podcast where we discuss science and history and our next episode discusses this very topic. For anyone that’s interested the name of the show is Seven Ages Audio Journal and our website https://www.sevenages.org (Thanks for allowing me the shameless plug, moderators!)