The New Scientific Integrity Guidelines

• Author: Craig M. Pease
• Position: Ph.D., a research scientist, teaches at the Vermont Law School Environmental Law Center
• Pages: 18-18

Page 18 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2011, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, May/June 2011

By Craig M. Pease

The New Scientic

Integrity Guidelines

Recent months have seen allega-

tions of improper political inf‌lu-

ence in the writing of the White House

Of‌f‌ice of Science and Technology Pol-

icy’s scientif‌ic integrity guidelines, is-

sued late last year under the signature

of presidential science and technology

advisor John Holdren. What should

we make of a circumstance wherein

an attempt to eradicate a problem

may have conjured up a new instance

of the very problem being eradicated?

Political interference with science

at the Environmental Protection

Agency, Fish and Wildlife Service,

Food and Drug Administration and

other agencies has a long history, go-

ing back, literally, many decades, un-

der both Republican and Democratic

administrations. Recent examples in-

clude EPA’s analysis of bisphenol A,

the oversight abuses at the Mineral

Management Service (now renamed

Bureau of Ocean Energy Manage-

ment, Regulation and Enforcement),

EPA’s coal f‌ly ash science, and overly

optimistic initial estimates by senior

executive branch of‌f‌icials of the extent

of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

President Obama attacked this

problem in his March 2009 memo-

randum on scientif‌ic integrity. As

bef‌its a presidential memo, it is long

on hortatory language, and short on

detail. Originally, Holdren’s OSTP

had three months to issue guidelines

to the agencies for implementing this

memo, but alas, it did not issue these

guidelines until some 21 months later,

in December 2010.

In late January of this year, the De-

partment of the Interior became the

f‌irst to issue a policy implementing

the new OSTP guidelines. In some

ways, the DOI policy is an advance.

It prohibits public relations of‌f‌icials

from altering scientif‌ic results, applies

to political appointees as well as sci-

entists, sets up a formal procedure for

handling allegations of improper po-

litical inf‌luence, provides a more strin-

gent def‌inition of a conf‌lict of inter-

est, and should allow federal scientists

to participate more fully in leadership

positions in scientif‌ic societies.

e American Institute of Bio-

logical Sciences strongly supports the

new DOI policy, and its membership

includes nearly a hundred scientif‌ic

professional societies, including many

with a direct interest in DOI science,

including e Wildlife Society and

the Society for Conservation Biology.

Yet, as Public Em-

ployees for Environ-

mental Responsibility

has pointed out, the

new policy is weak in

whistleblower protec-

tions and does not

explicitly lay out the

circumstances under which scientists

can and cannot speak to the media.

Moreover, PEER is rightly suspicious

of Holdren’s long delay in promulgating

the new guidelines, suggesting that the

length of the delay was a consequence

of improper interference by the Of‌f‌ice

of Management and Budget. To in-

vestigate this possibility, PEER sought

records of the negotiations between

OSTP and OMB with a Freedom of

Information Act request, and when

OSTP failed to respond, sued in D.C.

District Court. Eventually, OSTP did

respond, but the records it released

are so heavily redacted that about all

one can infer is that OSTP and OMB

engaged in protracted negotiations,

and that the OSTP stockroom has an

abundant supply of black markers. e

FOIA litigation continues.

Another question is whether any

scientif‌ic integrity policy will have

much real impact. Critically, the ac-

tual behavior of agency scientists is

determined both by more formal

bureaucratic procedures such as the

new DOI policy, and also by infor-

mal agency culture, including for ex-

ample social norms and agency em-

ployee understanding of actual scien-

tif‌ic integrity practice (as opposed to

policy).

Ultimately, inadequacies in an

agency’s scientif‌ic integrity culture

can be traced to def‌iciencies in the

very environmental statutes that these

agencies are charged with implement-

ing. Arguably, Congress has dealt the

agencies an impossible hand. Our

environmental statutes are often ex-

tremely naive in asking agencies to

draw a line between science on the one

hand, and politics and economics on

the other. Consider the Endangered

Species Act, which requires DOI to

prevent endangered species from go-

ing extinct, but never

states whether the

agency should pre-

vent extinction over

the next 10, 100, or

1,000 years, a deci-

sion with enormous

political and eco-

nomic implications, and which must

somehow be addressed in the course

of any “purely” scientif‌ic analysis of

extinction.

Inasmuch as our environmental

statutes are themselves replete with

language where science, politics, and

economics are hopelessly intertwined,

it is not at all surprising that the bu-

reaucracies implementing these stat-

utes sometimes make decisions that

mix science and politics in ethically

unseemly ways. DOI’s new scientif‌ic

integrity policy is a bit like decking out

a hog in a prom dress. It’s a superf‌icial

solution to a structural problem.

Craig M. Pease, Ph.D., a research scien-

tist, teaches at the Verm ont Law School En-

vironmental L aw Center. He can be reached

at cpease@ve rmontlaw.edu.

S   L

e inuence of politics

on agency science can be

traced to decienc ies in

the environmental l aws