Guest ridicule of the American Association for the Advancement of Science of America by David Middleton
See update at end of post.
This little gem was in my morning email from the AAASofA:
As is often the case, this really dumb article in Science (as in She Blinded Me With) was originally published by Energy & Environment Greenwire (a publication that has almost nothing to do with energy), kind of like The Grauniad citing SkepSci…
Pentagon fires a warning shot against EPA’s ‘secret science’ rule
By Sean Reilly, E&E NewsAug. 28, 2018 , 2:00 PM
Originally published by E&E News
Add the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to the ranks of those expressing concern about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) plans to restrict the use of scientific research in writing new regulations.
“While we agree that public access to information is very important, we do not believe that failure of the agency to obtain a publication’s underlying data from an author external to the agency should negate its use,” Patricia Underwood, a senior Pentagon official in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment, wrote in recent comments on the EPA proposal.
Because it’s “improbable” EPA would always be able to obtain such underlying data, Underwood added, “this should not impede the use of otherwise high-quality studies.”
[…]
We’ll pause here for a moment… Does anyone need explanations for the following?
- American Association for the Advancement of Science of America
- Science (as in She Blinded Me With)
No? OK, we’ll move on.
“While we agree that public access to information is very important, we do not believe that failure of the agency to obtain a publication’s underlying data from an author external to the agency should negate its use,” Patricia Underwood, a senior Pentagon official in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment, wrote in recent comments on the EPA proposal.
Because it’s “improbable” EPA would always be able to obtain such underlying data, Underwood added, “this should not impede the use of otherwise high-quality studies.”
If “it’s ‘improbable’ EPA would always be able to obtain such underlying data,” it should be a criminal offense for the EPA to destroy our economy solely on the basis of what some EPA bureaucrat read in a magazine.
However, believe it or not, that’s not the most moronic thing about this article.
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment
Who the Hell is “Patricia Underwood, a senior Pentagon official in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment” and when was she authorized to speak on behalf of the Pentagon? The fact that a low-level bureaucrat in the Department of Defense has Trump Derangement Syndrome, does not constitute the Pentagon firing “a warning shot against EPA’s ‘secret science’ rule.” It is nothing more than an example of one bureaucrat being upset at the stifling of other bureaucrats.
The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment isn’t on the Pentagon’s 2013 org chart.
It either didn’t exist as recently as 2013, or it isn’t very significant. It’s fourth from the bottom of this list:
MAJOR ELEMENTS OF OSD
- Secretary of Defense
- Deputy Secretary of Defense
- Executive Secretary of the Department of Defense
- Chief Management Officer
- Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L)
- Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering
- Under Secretary of Defense Comptroller/Chief Financial Officer (USD(C)/CFO)
- Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
- Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (P&R)
- Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition (ASD(A))
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian & Pacific Security Affairs (APSA)
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs (GSA)
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs (HA)
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (ISA)
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs (LA)
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness (L&MR)
- Chief Information Officer (DoD CIO)
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear & Chemical & Biological Defense Programs (NCB)
- Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs (ATSD(PA))
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs (M&RA)
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness (ASD(R))
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering ASD(R&E)
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC)
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Capabilities
- General Counsel of the Department of Defense
- Inspector General of the Department of Defense
- Director of OSD Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE)
- Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E)
- Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight (IO)
- Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Civilian Personnel Policy
- Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy
- Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment (EI&E)
- Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family Policy
- Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Personnel Policy
- Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Wounded Warrior Care and Transition Policy
Ms. Underwood doesn’t even appear among the leadership of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment…
Yet, she speaks for the Pentagon…
Fires a warning shot against…
Why hasn’t the AAASofA been accused of fomenting violence. If a conservative publication said that (fill in the blank) fired a warning shot at anyone in the Obama maladministration, there would be protests in the streets. Sara Palin was all but accused of being an accomplice in the assassination attempt of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) because of this campaign ad…
Palin at Fault
What Palin Did Wrong
- The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan clarifies, “No one is saying Sarah Palin should be viewed as an accomplice to murder. Many are merely saying that her recklessly violent and inflammatory rhetoric has poisoned the discourse and has long run the risk of empowering the deranged. We are saying it’s about time someone took responsibility for this kind of rhetorical extremism, because it can and has led to violence and murder.” He points out that Giffords herself had expressed concern about Palin’s map.
- ‘Imagery of Armed Revolution’ The New York Times’ Matt Bai writes, “it’s hard not to think [Loughner] was at least partly influenced by a debate that often seems to conflate philosophical disagreement with some kind of political Armageddon.” Bai explains, “The problem would seem to rest with the political leaders who pander to the margins of the margins, employing whatever words seem likely to win them contributions or TV time, with little regard for the consequences.” He says Palin and other used “imagery of armed revolution. Popular spokespeople like Ms. Palin routinely drop words like ‘tyranny’ and ‘socialism’ when describing the president and his allies, as if blind to the idea that Americans legitimately faced with either enemy would almost certainly take up arms. “
- The Psychology of Incited Violence At Psychology Today, neurologist David Weisman writes, “The question is not ‘did Sarah Palin’s violent rhetoric cause this shooting?’ The question is ‘does inciting violence factor in a multi-factorial process?'” Weisman explores the decision-making process and role of unconscious biases, concluding, “Although there is little clear evidence in this case, the data highlights the importance of butterfly events on human actions. Jared Loughner is clearly deranged. He drank deeply from internal insanity and external stimuli. His actions did not take place in a vacuum.”
In the witheringly idiotic world of journalism, it’s not just OK for a low level bureaucrat to fire a warning shot at another Federal agency… But that bureaucrat is characterized as if she was speaking on behalf the Secretary of Defense. While, a high level Republican politician was calling for the assassination of Democrat congress-critters by targeting their districts in an election.
Update 0710 August 30, 2018
Ms. Underwood’s actual comment…
It is appropriate to limit application of the rule to only “major” regulatory actions as defined in the Congressional Review Act. For regulations with lower cost thresholds EPA may wish to consider issuing similar policy.
While we agree that public access to information is very important, we do not believe that failure of the Agency to obtain a publication’s underlying data from an author external
to the Agency should negate its use. As we note below, it is improbable that EPA will be able to obtain underlying data from all authors, this should not impede the use of otherwise high-quality studies.
Click to access document_daily_01.pdf
Her comment was one of many submitted by OASD (EI&E), ESOH Directorate, CMRM Program (Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Energy, Installations & Environment, Environment, Safety & Occupational Health Directorate, Chemical and Material Risk Management Program) AKA Sustainability & Green Schist.
https://www.denix.osd.mil/spc/outreach/presentations/unassigned/dod-strategic-sustainability-performance-plan/
As far as I can tell, her comment was the only one that could be construed as a “warning shot.” Although, it was only a “warning shot” directed at regulations that fell below the level of “major” regulatory actions. This really dumb article in Science (as in She Blinded Me With), originally published by Energy & Environment Greenwire, is 100% Fake News.
Please, stop publishing this kind of stuff, it just causes me to start drinking earlier and earlier in the day
My advice to Mark is to start drinking heavily. Only if your are retired of course.
As we say down in my neck of the woods, “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere”
Parrot-heads unite!
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
Trick or Trout!
Sun is over the yardarm.
michael
Or as WE say, “It’s 10am somewhere.”
You say that as if its a bad thing. /joke
That’s a motivation for me… LOL!
What’s the problem? Just because Underwood has the name of a defunct typerwriter company, it does not mean that she has nothing to say…. or print out…. or use correction ribbon to fix… or – oh, never mind! I’m sure her carriage is quite impressive.
She probably saw something in some obscure ragazine online and asked if she could write a response to it, kind of like a busybody looking for a place to poke her nose. After all, when you’re positing possible political Armageddon, what better source for an opinion statement could you find than some low-level nub in an office that used to be a broom closet?
I was more thinking of deviled ham when I saw the name…
This girl wasn’t on American Idol, was she? 😉
I don’t even drink and this kind of nonsense has had given me pleasant dreams of a cuban in one hand and a bourbon in the other.
Finally! Someone identifies a real CAGW effect!
Now, it can be, ‘Thank God for CAGW!’
“Because it’s “improbable” EPA would always be able to obtain such underlying data, Underwood added, “this should not impede the use of otherwise high-quality studies.””
If the underlying data can not be obtained then the study can not be of very high quality.
Exactly what I was going to say…It is a fundamental misunderstanding of what science is. It is not a noun it is a verb. It is a thing you do. It is an action word.
If the underlying data is not made readily available to their scientists to check and confirm, then they can’t do science on it. Ergo the proposed secret study is no longer “science” as we know it, and can be ignored.
Again science is an activity. And an essential part of that activity is having another scientist check your work.
Even us lowly airplane repairmen had to have someone else check our work everytime. As it should be apparent to everyone, that second set of eyes plan doesn’t work everytime either.
The ‘second set of eyes’ is the peer review system set up to rubber stamp high quality studies that are made with manufactured data. AGW … Made in the UN.
I work the Federal Waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The BOEM/
BSEE has access to every bit of data we have, including proprietary data.
“this should not impede the use of otherwise high-quality studies” – you miss the key word “otherwise”. An otherwise scientific study does not any underlying data at all. Welcome to NEW SCIENCE.
Ah, but as the Progressives will tell you, we live in a post-democratic world, & what they tell you “must”, (a demand), never challenge any dictats they make!
Taphonomic- “If the underlying data can not be obtained then the study can not be of very high quality.”
It’s not even a low quality study. It is not even science. To be a scientific study, it must be able to be subjected to attempts to reproduce the results. That requires the ability to follow the original procedures and compare new results to the original ‘underlying data’. If such is not made available there is no way to distinguish between valid results, errors and fraud. Ethical and competent scientists, engineers, land surveyors, etc. have no reason not to make their data and methods available for legitimate review – and that includes particularly the entity that paid for the study.
The argument about revealing sensitive patient data in medical studies is nonsense. I’ve never seen such a study that did not mask the identities of subjects.
What’s the next step, trying someone for murder with no witnesses & no evidence & finding them guilty as charged? The words slope & slippery spring to mind!!!
That was done years ago in Connecticut where a man was convicted of murdering his wife with no witnesses and no dead body. They did find a finger in a lake and a recently cleaned wood chipper, however the wife was from Sweden and no one ever checked to see if she was there sans a finger.
Well, if you otherwise have a “high-quality” investigation, why would you need to see the evidence?
(Sarcasm, of course)
So a minor staffer defends “secret science”? All it reveals is that Trump is negligent in cleaning out holdovers, or bad at vetting staff.
another deep state mole cannot stay underground and sticks their head up. Who’s got the Chucky Cheese token?
Far below anything Trump or his staff will ever consider.
Millions work for Federal Government.
It’s the responsibility of DOD officers and staff.
Whether Underwood’s commenting is a firing offense is highly questionable.
Though, I doubt Ms. Underwood has authority to use her DOD credentials for personal opinions. That may be cause for minor disciplinary actions, substantial retraining conferences and a solid called to the red carpet performance of her superiors.
Banning Ms. Underwood from talking to the press or misrepresenting the DOD, should be another clear message from her superiors.
On second thoughts, I do not even know if hers is an appointive position. If anything, it might be an example of a solution for a problem (creating a supposedly professional civil service) for politicians taking kickbacks from their appointees, being even worse than the original problem.
I think her position is civil service.
When I write something as “a geologist,” I’m expressing my professional opinion. When I write something as “a geologist with (fill in the blank) Energy,” I am acting as a representative of my employer.
And then you say/write something as a representative of your employer that your employer did not authorize you to say/write, your employer can discipline you up to and including terminating your employment.
That’s the problem with the “deep state”. There are hundreds of thousands is not millions of minor bureaucrats already in place through-out the government from previous administrations going back decades, it’s an impossible task to vet them all after the fact. Unless/until they stick their head up and let themselves be known there’s not much Trump (or any president) can do to get rid of them all.
Which is why I do not believe term limits on elected offices would fix anything unless or until there are also “term limits” on every damn bureaucrat too!
OK, I’m confused. I thought the Obama administration was bringing in regulations based on secret science. I thought the Trump administration was getting rid of regulations that were based on secret science.
Is someone in the Pentagon accusing Trump’s EPA of bringing in more regulations?
They’re accusing the Trump administration of hobbling the EPA by outlawing the use of secret science in regulatory matters.
No – they convolute the discussion to intentionally mislead. The Trump administration is saying we should not make public policy for the environment based on studies where all the data has not been made available to other researchers for confirmation. The pentagon person is arguing that researchers should be able to keep secret some of their sources, data, and methods for generating answers. Just take the word of the researcher that everything is on the up and up.
I can say with some experience in this areas that a LOT of environmental studies are pretty shoddy. Paid for by environmental groups, then passed around by several researchers in a tight group who are also paid by the environmentalists. Much like Big Tobacco science once was.
There is a slight argument in favor of secrecy – some epidemiological studies incorporate personal information (names, addresses, medical history) of participants. Progressives like to pretend that because of this secret information, the data can’t just be tossed around willy nilly. Naturally this is a lie – the information collected can certainly be shared while the names and personal information of the participants is not.
And besides, most environmental studies are in fact animal studies, and there is zero need for secrecy there.
Oh, another dirty secret – cleanup levels for most toxic compounds are based on …nothing. No studies at all. let that sink in a minute. We have no idea what the safe dose is for a variety of compounds. Oh and our radiological exposure regulations are based on flawed models conducted in the 1950s – studies we know very well are deeply flawed because they presume a linear response to radiation that does not appear to exist in the real world.
You’d be shocked at how much of our environmental regulations are based on gut feelings, and wild guesses. I’m not saying that is a bad thing necessarily – we need to regulate things somehow, and good studies are hard to do, so the first regulations were often best guesses. Unfortunately those wild guesses have ossified in to “accepted” science.
As a scientist I naturally favor the most transparent system possible.
I prefer scientific wild ass guesses as to just plain old wild ass guesses. A SWAG is always better than a WAG.
Geo
Well-argued. Something the EPA didn’t even bother to use secret science for is the arbitrary declaration that all PM2.5 is equally toxic, known as the equitoxicity ruling. Not only is there nothing to demonstrate that it is true, it is patently clear it is untrue: farm soil dust, tobacco smoke, plutonium dust, diesel exhaust, wood smoke are all equally toxic?
There is an entire industry built upon this equitoxicity assumption including the power plant emissions regulations and the endless stream of declarations that x-million people ‘are killed’ by air pollution in this or that country based on your motions of ‘Relative Risk.
If this assumption were challenged on even the most frivolous grounds, they would find that no ‘science’ at all underlies this very influential ‘decision’. The equitoxicity rule has as its foundation a statement by the EPA that equitoxicity is assumed because they do not have evidence that it is not.
This logic could be used to create a CO2 endangerment finding that CO2 is assumed to cause dangerous climate change because they have no evidence that it does not. With logic and a steel-trap-like mind on that level of intelligence we might also assume that the EPA does nothing helpful for the country because there is no evidence that is does. The sharp sword of stupidity cuts both ways, you see.
That decision might even make the Precautionary Principle look scientific!
LNT is fairly easy to compute, though. That is the only (supply your favorite obscenity) good thing about it.
They are trying to fit alcool consumption into LNT right now. It doesn’t fit at all, the data they have is clear, so they are just pretending.
“our radiological exposure regulations are based on flawed models conducted in the 1950s”
Nope. Not flawed. Just fraud. Pure and simple.
But you have to have regulations how to deregulate, havent’t you? Unregulated deregulation? That’s anarchy! /sarc
Agreeable little reference to Thomas Dolby there. I can just about construe those lyrics as ironic. But what to make of his Windpower from ’82’s The Golden Age of Wireless?
“Switch off the mind and let the heart decide
Who you were meant to be
:
Windpower
There is no enemy”
according to linkedin her official title is Deputy Director for Risk Assessment
I didn’t see Secretary of Defense on her Linkedin page either.
Trusting data, unseen, sounds risky to me. That should be the first risk assessed in an agency that assesses risk.
It is not even ‘trusting data’ it is trusting unseen analysis of that data. I just had a grad student show me a bunch of charts with bars and numbers that were incongruent with the raw data on the same page! Huh? I said, “Show me all the steps from the measurements through to the chart, in a single spreadsheet with linked formulae.”
Then I will believe the chart. Until then, it is just pixels. Decisions without data are make by people who are pixellated.
So D.D. for Risk Assessment. There must be an app for that if she doesnt need any data! I guess if the Sierra Club judges the risk of WWIII because of climate change to be high, she can pass this on to the Joint Chiefs and they can order a pre-emptive strike of the place that’s heating up.
Risk assessment may mean the Precautionary Principle which means guilty until proven innocent or in this case I am right until proven wrong. Storing and sharing data nowadays should not be a problem, used to be long, long ago.
HDH
I have to disagree there. Relative Risk is based on the apportionment of actual deaths before the age of 86 considering the attribution of all life-shortenings of a population cohort to 51 contributory causes. In other words, everyone is assumed to die prematurely because of a combination of factors. The RR was dreamed up as a way of informing health policy. In no way does removing an ‘attributed cause’ completely reduce the RR because attribution is not causation in the first place. RR is mostly mumbo jumbo with vague use, based on a stack of six models with no underlying epidemiological data for cohorts by gender, income, vaccination history, diet, and so on and on.
The main point is you cannot ‘cure’ someone of a disease they have been attributed to run a risk of contracting.
Titles in most government agencies are inflated more than Venezuelan currency.
I had to provide a report the NRC showing that the NPP met the NRC requirements for the the Decommissioning Fund. Forget the exact title of who the report was addressed to but it began with Director. While “Digitizing” all of our historic documentation, we could not find a copy of one of these historic documents. This was long before the NRC and the Federal Government started digitizing documents. As I had a scheduled meeting at NRC head quarters I stopped by his office to get a copy. After meeting him, explaining what I needed and why, it took me about 1 minute to determine that this ‘Director’ was literally responsible for opening the envelope containing the report, reviewing the document to assure that it conformed with NRC requirements and then filing the document in the rows of filing cabinets in his office. Made me wonder why I turned down the job offer the NRC gave me, and at the same time what a boring job this was.
Titles in most government agencies are inflated more than Venezuelan currency.
Usurbrain, I’ve told you a hundred thousand times not to exaggerate.
Indeed, no need to go around exaggerating how inflated Venezuelan currency is by comparing it to government agency titles 😉
The EPA has both a right and an obligation to ess the basis of any scientific report they are using as the bases for any Law, Regulation or Rule.
With almost 50 years experience in the Nuclear Industry and dealing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) a large portion of that time I am utterly amazed at the AGW and Environmentalists attitude on this new, Common Sense, requirement. When any nuclear facility certifies that a plant, process system, component, meets NRC it is done with Proof that it meets these requirements. That means in depth analysis as to exactly how all of the requirements are met is PROVIDED to the NRC, Often the Plant or Utility does not have the expertise, computer system or programs to perform these required analysis, thus the performance of portions or even the entire analysis is contracted out, quite often to the manufacturer. Similar to the “Scientists” wanting to keep their “Science” Secret. they are reluctant to give All of their information to the NRC as the majority of their information, technics, calculations, etc, is proprietary and valuable, Very Valuable. Nether the Less they know the documentation is going to the NRC and two copies are prepared. One with sufficient information for the layperson to understand that the requirements are met, and another that the NRC can pick through with a fine tooth comb and dissect to their hearts content to prove that the device meets specifications. I do not know for a fact, but believe the Aircraft industry dos the same for the FAA in proving aircraft meets FAA requirements.
So just what is wrong with the EPA having the same requirements as other regulatory agencies that are dealing with peoples lives. There’s absolutely NO reason that the EPA must accept some “Scientific Report” and not be able to see the basis of the analysis contained in that report. PERIOD. Anyone that disagrees with this is basically proposing that government agencies have the right to base Laws, Rules and Regulations on Propaganda, Misinformation, Lies, and worse.
I’ve worked on flight software for civilian planes, and we had to prove to the FAA, with full documentation that every single line of code had been tested.
When printed, the documentation ran into the hundreds of pounds.
I don’t believe the issue is about agency bureaucrats being able or unable to access the details. It is about independent analysis and verification.
We seem to have a very large number of bureaucrats that are locked into the activists view of just about every everything. Just because they say ‘we have seen the data and it is totally valid’ is NOT a reason to trust them. When regulations are to be issued that will effect a large number of non-government individuals, maybe forcing them to make significant changes in their lives, and possibly costing a great deal of money, the details of why — the data, the methods, the logic, etc. — need to be fully available for public scrutiny and full consideration. This should be an absolute requirement to allow any and all public law and regulation, not just for EPA actions.
If you can’t obtain the data or the methods, how the heck do you know that it is quality science?
That’s easy, if it reaches the politically correct result, it is quality science.
If the Pentagon really is behind the announcement, it explains a lot fo very disturbing things that have come to light concerning the quality of intelligence data.
What about the US evacuation order during the Fukushima Daiichi event?
The responsible US agency couldn’t even determine what was happening in the plant with people in the plant continuously telling them what was happening in the plant.
Yeah, it may not be high quality but it is the right quality.
The statement is not immediately easy to understand.
Here’s how the statement ought to read:
We agree that public access to information is important. But we do NOT believe that underlying data is information, and so public access to this is NOT important, even though it is the very foundation of information that we DO believe is important for the public to access.
So, the pentagon’s official position is that public access to information IS both very important and is NOT very important at the same time.
Is this an example of military intelligence? Or is this an example of irresponsible reporting? Or both?
It’s so stupid, I’m not done:
…”failure of the agency to obtain a publication’s underlying data from an author”…
TRANSLATION: “when the author of the information flat-out refuses to allow public access to the data supporting the truthfulness of the information”
Military Intelligence—-a Contradiction in Terms, or an Oxymoron.
Not to worry, this is far from any ‘official position’. Merely a low level hack pretending to speak for the top brass.
Official or not, if this is what is typically believed among civil servants, that may be an issue.
Dear Patricia Underwood,
I just happen to hold the deed to the Brooklyn Bridge in my name and I am offering you the opportunity of a lifetime to purchase The Bridge at a steep discount.
Trust me. The deed is solely in my name so there is no need to go to the trouble of verifying that little detail.
I’m pleased to offer you this chance to own the Brooklyn Bridge and to make sure you will have no difficulty acquiring the highly desirable asset, I have arranged it so you can purchase this beautiful bridge with 5 easy payments made automatically from your credit card.
Hurry! This offer will not last long.
… and if you act now, we will also include the Statue of Liberty for free. But that’s not all — call within the next sixty seconds, and we will provide all your transportation required to seal this deal of a lifetime FREE. We would double the offer for a small separate fee, but there’s only one each of these rare artifacts in existence on the face of the Earth. We are crazy for offering such an opportunity, and you would be crazy to miss this once-in-a lifetime opportunity. Act now. Do not delay. Time is of the utmost essence.
Psst. Psst. I tells ya, Robert. We’ll eat like kings if she doesn’t check out the deed… and what are the odds of that, given her public record?
Mum’s the word.
😜
“Because it’s “improbable” EPA would always be able to obtain such underlying data, Underwood added, this should not impede the use of otherwise high-quality studies.”
How does one know that a scientific report is “high-quality” if they had not seen the data or had it reviewed by a neutral person qualified in the field? And no, pal review no longer counts these days. It must be some new form of mind meld which I am not familiar with.
Also, what is the difference between improbable and “improbable”?
So many questions, so little time.
Her actual comment…
https://www.eenews.net/assets/2018/08/28/document_daily_01.pdf
“Improbable” was a direct quote. Although this raises the question…
What’s the difference between major and “major.”
Her comment was one of many submitted by OASD (EI&E), ESOH Directorate, CMRM Program (Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Energy, Installations & Environment, Environment, Safety & Occupational Health Directorate, Chemical and Material Risk Management Program) AKA Sustainability & Green Schist.
https://www.denix.osd.mil/spc/outreach/presentations/unassigned/dod-strategic-sustainability-performance-plan/
As far as I can tell, her comment was the only one that could be construed as a “warning shot.” Although, it was only a “warning shot” at regulations that fell below the level of “major” regulatory actions.
Yet she doesn’t explain why the data is unavailable and why this shouldn’t be treated as a sign the study, or even the whole field, is corrupt.
When the Dems insist with zero evidence that voter ID is racist, the obvious conclusion is that they want to cheat in elections.
When a group of scientist insists that data being unavailable should be expected, the whole field should be treated as potentially corrupt.
Our Armed Forces are 100% on board with the agw meme, at least at the highest levels. Oh no we’re all going to die if we don’t tax every bit of CO2 emission. As previously pointed out, the oil companies are also on board with AGW. Do you remember president Eisenhower’s speech on the military industrial complex? I can’t think of a better example.
I believe that the army as well as intel (and FBI obviously) is fully brainwashed full SJW fully useless above a certain level/rank, and nobody knows what that level is.
Hopefully a few more TOP SECRET clearance removal is going to trigger a few more army vet/SJW. They are popping all over the place.
One wonders why these once respectable institutions [AAAoS in this case] persist in the efforts at tarring and feathering themselves.
When was that?
Anthony. We need to get some philosophers on board imho. Getting into the territory of ‘what is true’
@ David Middleton
“American Association for the Advancement of Science of America”
???
Where does this “of America” bit come in. The organization is the AAAS.
Also:
@ Anthony
In the WUWT Glossary page AAAS is listed as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Yes there is such an organization, and they a fine group, but not the right one.
{Side Note: The New York Times had a weekly feature called “Science Times” where they would run items from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and would constantly misattribute it to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.}
Where does this “of America” bit come in? The movie Dodgeball.
If you can dodge a wrench…
This issue came up because EPA has sponsored very large epidemiology studies on air pollution. Such studies were published in scientific journals making various claims.
EPA relied on such for air pollution standards.
Questions were raised about the statistical analysis made and several requests made to obtain the data collected from these published studies as well as how the statistical analysis were performed.
These requests were denied. The investigators from different universities refused to submit anything. Sounds familiar to you?
They claimed that the name of individuals evaluated in such studies could no be given. OK. So just code the name! No.
These studies were paid by the taxpayers. So the issue comes down that we have the right to verify.
You can get a taste of the doubts about these published studies here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230017300673?via%3Dihub
A copy of the document submitted by DoD to EPA is available here:
https://www.eenews.net/assets/2018/08/28/document_daily_01.pdf
The idea that this document was written by Patricia is absurd. She is a very nice person.
It was written by a committee of bureaucrats. Have fun reading it. She simply followed their request to submit it.
You know, it’s called the five-sided insane asylum for a good reason.
I love it that this has so wadded the panties of the snowflakes (leftists)!
Whatever happened to transparency? Remember Obama claiming his admin would be the most transparent in history? Why didn’t that apply to the EPA? Probably because a lot of the ‘science’ that they were using to justify pro left-wing (and anti right-wing) policies was junk science.
I hope that people are downloading all of the older EPA ‘science’ articles that were kept private under the most transparent administration in history and are scrutinizing them for good science. And this reminds me, where are Overpuke’s emails??? Are they erasing all of the damning text in them?
“Just take our word for it” Without data or methods it can’t be reproduced by unrelated parties, and is therefore not science. The only way you can say the data or methods can’t be produced is if it didn’t exist in the first place. The secret science people lose either way. Which is good.
Ya gotta love the media for using undefined words as appellations for someone they desire to elevate in employment level.
“Senior”;
Does that refer to old?
Does that refer to a person’s report rank?
Does that refer to Civil Service’s pay schedule where an employee at the pinnacle of their pay grade is “senior”.
Definition unknown.
Similar questions come to mind regarding “Official”.
A high level ranking DOD official, e.g. CEO, COO, HR Vice President, etc. are termed “officers”. No, not the military rank one assume DOD employees might have.
Now about “Patricia Underwood”:
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From a presentation Patricia participated in last October 2017:
Offhand, I suspect Ms. Underwood has conflicts of interest regarding her commenting on EPA policy.
Then again, people with morals recuse themselves from interfering where their conflictions are apparent.
Also:
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“REACH Strategy” is an European Union ruleset.
“Acquisition and sustainment”, implies association with procurement and perhaps one of Obama’s embedded environmentalists.
Swamp draining should visit with Ms. Underwood to discuss what role(s) DOD and EPA are collaborating upon and whether they serve America’s defense or EPA activism?
The office of “Energy, Installations and Environment” must be right next to the office of $600 toilet seats.
The only way that the electorate of a democratically elected representative government can function effectively is if the government is transparent and if all the electorate are as informed as they want to be and are capable of. If some academics doing research with tax money don’t want to release information they are corrupting the democratic process. There are all sorts of studies recently exposing research that cannot be replicated. If a study cannot withstand the scrutiny of the electorate, it doesn’t deserve to be seriously considered for making rules or legislation because it isn’t really science if it isn’t subject to post-publication peer review.
This brings into question every decision by the DoD. If this person is representative of them all …
“Because it’s “improbable” EPA would always be able to obtain such underlying data, Underwood added, this should not impede the use of otherwise high-quality studies.”
And how exactly is one to access the quality of the study when you can’t examine the underlying data? The quality of a study is only as good as the quality of the data. If you can’t see the later, you can’t know the former.
Should have read:
And how exactly is one to assess the quality ….
This DOD office had its roots due to a court ruling in the last days of President Reagan’s Administration when it was decided that for most activities, especially science and experimental activities DOD had to create Environmental Impact Statements AND put them out for various levels of review. That included state environmental agency review. I know since once upon a time I did marine resources EIS reviews. That court ruling also allowed state environmental regulatory agencies on to military installations to assess any environmental damage from past testing, etc.
What this latest version of the office did was allow younger, radical liberal environmentalists into DOD. For me that is a scary thought.
Journalism degrees are for those who flunked out of basket weaving.
“…but that person cannot be racist as he is an Arab” said some guy on French TV channel France 5 in “C dans l’air”.
That guy wasn’t just some guy, I checked, he teaches journalism.
Because it’s “improbable” EPA would always be able to obtain such underlying data, Underwood added, “this should not impede the use of otherwise high-quality studies.”
Here the EPA could argument –
1. The Null Hypothesis says the EPA is unable / is never able to present underlying data.
2. Sometimes the EPA is able to present underlying data.
3. Live with it.