I. Introduction
“As long as men are free to ask what they will,
free to say what they think, free to think what they must,
science will never regress and freedom itself will never wholly be lost.”
-J. Robert Oppenheimer
The wisdom contained in this quote must guide any government policies related to science.
Allowing agency staff to express their views on scientific matters in the workplace without fear of reprisal is fundamental to the scientific process. An unfettered exchange of views, questions, and challenge forces scientists to defend their methodology and question underlying assumptions. This ensures, as much as possible, that scientific work product reflects the objective truth on the matter at hand.
Similarly, arming politically accountable policymakers with high-quality information and tools and abiding by their policy decisions is essential to ensuring government of the People. If a scientist wants to make policy, they must win elected office or secure a presidential appointment to a senior policymaking role at an agency.
Unfortunately, EPA’s Draft Scientific Integrity Policy undermines both the conduct of science and policy due to the practical reality that a scientific integrity allegation against an EPA employee can have devastating, irreparable impacts on that person’s professional prospects—even where the allegation is later determined to be unfounded. The implied threat of an allegation and the senseless damage caused by frivolous ones, silences critical voices among career staff and political appointees alike. For a vivid illustration of how this dynamic can chill the open exchange of ideas and lead society’s major institutions to abandon core aspects of their mission, one must only recall the rise of censorship and cancellations on university campuses.
The Draft Scientific Integrity Policy (Draft Policy) suggests that EPA, too, may have lost it way. The Center for Environmental Accountability (CEA) is deeply concerned that the Draft Policy is not designed to advance scientific integrity or evidence-based decisions, and instead to ensure that agency leadership arrives at particular policy decisions, is obstructed from making alternative ones, and discourages internal feedback during the deliberative process from those who would question the efficacy of the Biden administration’s environmental regulations or would question the rigor or validity of their scientific and technical foundations.
Instead of advancing scientific integrity, this Draft Policy:
1) Creates a climate of fear that enables individual EPA staffers to police scientific debates within the agency without pushback from other career staff and free from direction from superiors in career management or agency leadership.
2) Attempts to prevent EPA under future administrations from implementing policies contrary to those of the Biden Administration.
3) Undermines the rigor of evidence-based decision making by ingraining progressive social engineering goals (e.g., diversity, equity, and inclusion or DEI) and other non-scientific considerations (e.g., Indigenous Knowledge) into government led and funded science.
Many of the Draft Policy’s problems stem from its definitions section. When dealing with written policies produced by large bureaucracies, the devil is often in the definitions. Here, the Draft Policy’s definitions are vague, over-inclusive and subjective. Ill-defined terms are strewn throughout the operative “Policy Provisions” section, making it impossible to determine what would (and would not) constitute a violation or expose an employee to a potential scientific integrity investigation.
For example, while the text makes clear that exercising “inappropriate influence” violates the Draft Policy, what this means in practical terms is as clear as mud.6 The Draft Policy defines the operative phrase as “an attempt to shape or interfere in scientific activities, or the communication about or use of scientific activities or findings, against well-accepted scientific methods and theories without justification.” (emphasis added)
What does it mean “to shape” activities or communication? The policy never says. What constitutes “use” of scientific activities or findings? On this, too, the policy is silent. What are the universe or hallmarks of “well-accepted . . . theories”? And what constitutes “scientific justification” to go “against” them? Again, the definitions section leaves us guessing because none of the terms material to defining “inappropriate influence” are themselves defined in the Draft Policy.
And where material terms are defined, the primary effect is to create additional ambiguity. Often, this results from a Russian-nesting doll of poorly-defined terms, or because defined terms are so sweeping they could be stretched to ensnare any manager simply by virtue of managing. As noted, “inappropriate influence” involves an “attempt to shape or interfere.” In turn, the definition of “Interference” begins by launching into a volley of undefined terms, “inappropriate, scientifically unjustified intervention…”8 We are told that “interference” includes “censorship” (nowhere defined), “distortion” (also not defined), and “suppression” of certain types of information.9 “Suppression” is then defined as “preventing something from being expressed or known.”10 In short, if an EPA staffer feels that a manager or other colleague is somehow preventing “scientific or technological findings, data, environmental information, or conclusions” from being “expressed” or “known” by anyone or to anyone, internal or external to the agency, at any time and for any duration or reason, then the staffer would appear to have grounds to file a scientific integrity allegation.
This definitional uncertainty creates a minefield. No hierarchical organization marshalling vast resources for a complex mission can operate effectively under the restrictions employed by the Draft Policy—and certainly not one as active as the EPA. During the development of regulatory actions, dozens of “scientific products” are created and reviewed, none of which are singularly determinative of the policy outcome. CEA goes into more detail in the hypothetical provided in Section IX. Suffice to say, these dozens of “scientific” decisions for a single regulatory decision are reviewed by career colleagues and managers, as well as political officials – with each review raising the potential for a scientific integrity allegation, unless one simply keeps their mouth shut rather than provide honest feedback.
If during the review of these dozens of “scientific products,” a scientific integrity allegation is made, then a group of career staff known as the “science integrity committee” – which operates outside any management chain and does not report to any political officials – interpret and apply the subjective terms of the Draft Policy. These insular arbiters of scientific integrity then have the power to destroy careers of public servants, career staff and appointees alike, with impunity. To be sure, scientific integrity allegations are meant to be confidential. However, EPA’s history of leaks does not instill confidence that confidential information, including potentially baseless allegations, will not become front-page news.
In the final analysis, the Draft Policy will not increase scientific integrity within EPA nor public trust in EPA’s science or actions justified based on appeals to science. Much the opposite. The Draft Policy serves as a textbook example of the “politicization of science.” EPA wants the public to believe that both scientists and career civil servants are objective automatons with no political views or personal agendas and that they would not abuse an allegation process based on a policy so vague and sweeping. This flies in the face of the experience under the existing scientific integrity policy established in 2012. Scientists and career officials are human. They suffer from typical human flaws, including the potential to be prideful, domineering, and arrogant. Some career scientists will be willing to seize on a flawed policy and process to intimidate or neutralize proponents of rival theories or methodologies or the people or ideas that they perceive as internal opposition to what they deem “the right thing to do.”
Inevitably, the Draft Policy will undermine science and sound policy making, and further reduce political accountability for EPA’s actions and further erode the public’s trust in bureaucratic expertise and EPA’s fidelity to its mission. Labeling the Draft Policy as a defense of scientific “integrity” is double-speak.
Comments: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Draft Scientific Integrity Policy
I. Introduction
“As long as men are free to ask what they will,
free to say what they think, free to think what they must,
science will never regress and freedom itself will never wholly be lost.”
-J. Robert Oppenheimer
The wisdom contained in this quote must guide any government policies related to science.
Allowing agency staff to express their views on scientific matters in the workplace without fear of reprisal is fundamental to the scientific process. An unfettered exchange of views, questions, and challenge forces scientists to defend their methodology and question underlying assumptions. This ensures, as much as possible, that scientific work product reflects the objective truth on the matter at hand.
Similarly, arming politically accountable policymakers with high-quality information and tools and abiding by their policy decisions is essential to ensuring government of the People. If a scientist wants to make policy, they must win elected office or secure a presidential appointment to a senior policymaking role at an agency.
Unfortunately, EPA’s Draft Scientific Integrity Policy undermines both the conduct of science and policy due to the practical reality that a scientific integrity allegation against an EPA employee can have devastating, irreparable impacts on that person’s professional prospects—even where the allegation is later determined to be unfounded. The implied threat of an allegation and the senseless damage caused by frivolous ones, silences critical voices among career staff and political appointees alike. For a vivid illustration of how this dynamic can chill the open exchange of ideas and lead society’s major institutions to abandon core aspects of their mission, one must only recall the rise of censorship and cancellations on university campuses.
The Draft Scientific Integrity Policy (Draft Policy) suggests that EPA, too, may have lost it way. The Center for Environmental Accountability (CEA) is deeply concerned that the Draft Policy is not designed to advance scientific integrity or evidence-based decisions, and instead to ensure that agency leadership arrives at particular policy decisions, is obstructed from making alternative ones, and discourages internal feedback during the deliberative process from those who would question the efficacy of the Biden administration’s environmental regulations or would question the rigor or validity of their scientific and technical foundations.
Instead of advancing scientific integrity, this Draft Policy:
1) Creates a climate of fear that enables individual EPA staffers to police scientific debates within the agency without pushback from other career staff and free from direction from superiors in career management or agency leadership.
2) Attempts to prevent EPA under future administrations from implementing policies contrary to those of the Biden Administration.
3) Undermines the rigor of evidence-based decision making by ingraining progressive social engineering goals (e.g., diversity, equity, and inclusion or DEI) and other non-scientific considerations (e.g., Indigenous Knowledge) into government led and funded science.
Many of the Draft Policy’s problems stem from its definitions section. When dealing with written policies produced by large bureaucracies, the devil is often in the definitions. Here, the Draft Policy’s definitions are vague, over-inclusive and subjective. Ill-defined terms are strewn throughout the operative “Policy Provisions” section, making it impossible to determine what would (and would not) constitute a violation or expose an employee to a potential scientific integrity investigation.
For example, while the text makes clear that exercising “inappropriate influence” violates the Draft Policy, what this means in practical terms is as clear as mud.6 The Draft Policy defines the operative phrase as “an attempt to shape or interfere in scientific activities, or the communication about or use of scientific activities or findings, against well-accepted scientific methods and theories without justification.” (emphasis added)
What does it mean “to shape” activities or communication? The policy never says. What constitutes “use” of scientific activities or findings? On this, too, the policy is silent. What are the universe or hallmarks of “well-accepted . . . theories”? And what constitutes “scientific justification” to go “against” them? Again, the definitions section leaves us guessing because none of the terms material to defining “inappropriate influence” are themselves defined in the Draft Policy.
And where material terms are defined, the primary effect is to create additional ambiguity. Often, this results from a Russian-nesting doll of poorly-defined terms, or because defined terms are so sweeping they could be stretched to ensnare any manager simply by virtue of managing. As noted, “inappropriate influence” involves an “attempt to shape or interfere.” In turn, the definition of “Interference” begins by launching into a volley of undefined terms, “inappropriate, scientifically unjustified intervention…”8 We are told that “interference” includes “censorship” (nowhere defined), “distortion” (also not defined), and “suppression” of certain types of information.9 “Suppression” is then defined as “preventing something from being expressed or known.”10 In short, if an EPA staffer feels that a manager or other colleague is somehow preventing “scientific or technological findings, data, environmental information, or conclusions” from being “expressed” or “known” by anyone or to anyone, internal or external to the agency, at any time and for any duration or reason, then the staffer would appear to have grounds to file a scientific integrity allegation.
This definitional uncertainty creates a minefield. No hierarchical organization marshalling vast resources for a complex mission can operate effectively under the restrictions employed by the Draft Policy—and certainly not one as active as the EPA. During the development of regulatory actions, dozens of “scientific products” are created and reviewed, none of which are singularly determinative of the policy outcome. CEA goes into more detail in the hypothetical provided in Section IX. Suffice to say, these dozens of “scientific” decisions for a single regulatory decision are reviewed by career colleagues and managers, as well as political officials – with each review raising the potential for a scientific integrity allegation, unless one simply keeps their mouth shut rather than provide honest feedback.
If during the review of these dozens of “scientific products,” a scientific integrity allegation is made, then a group of career staff known as the “science integrity committee” – which operates outside any management chain and does not report to any political officials – interpret and apply the subjective terms of the Draft Policy. These insular arbiters of scientific integrity then have the power to destroy careers of public servants, career staff and appointees alike, with impunity. To be sure, scientific integrity allegations are meant to be confidential. However, EPA’s history of leaks does not instill confidence that confidential information, including potentially baseless allegations, will not become front-page news.
In the final analysis, the Draft Policy will not increase scientific integrity within EPA nor public trust in EPA’s science or actions justified based on appeals to science. Much the opposite. The Draft Policy serves as a textbook example of the “politicization of science.” EPA wants the public to believe that both scientists and career civil servants are objective automatons with no political views or personal agendas and that they would not abuse an allegation process based on a policy so vague and sweeping. This flies in the face of the experience under the existing scientific integrity policy established in 2012. Scientists and career officials are human. They suffer from typical human flaws, including the potential to be prideful, domineering, and arrogant. Some career scientists will be willing to seize on a flawed policy and process to intimidate or neutralize proponents of rival theories or methodologies or the people or ideas that they perceive as internal opposition to what they deem “the right thing to do.”
Inevitably, the Draft Policy will undermine science and sound policy making, and further reduce political accountability for EPA’s actions and further erode the public’s trust in bureaucratic expertise and EPA’s fidelity to its mission. Labeling the Draft Policy as a defense of scientific “integrity” is double-speak.