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UCS Survey: Hundreds of EPA Scientists Experienced Political Interference
The Associated Press quickly picked up on a report released yesterday by the Union of Concerned Scientists revealing that 889 of nearly 1,600 staff scientists who responded to an online survey indicated that they experienced political interference with their work at some point in the last five years. A report author was careful to explain to the AP that many scientists did not respond to the survey (1,586 out of 5,500), and that it does not represent a random sampling of EPA scientists. Some of the details of the respondents highlighted in the AP story are particularly disturbing, however:
The survey covered employees at EPA headquarters, in each of the agency’s 10 regions around the country and at more than a dozen research laboratories. The highest number of complaints about political interference came from scientists who are directly involved in writing regulations and those who conduct risk assessments such as determining a chemical cancer risk for humans.
Nearly 400 scientists said they had witnessed EPA officials misrepresenting scientific findings, 284 said they had seen the “selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome” and 224 scientists said they had been directed to “inappropriately exclude or alter technical information” in an EPA document.
Nearly 200 of the respondents said they had been in situations where they or their colleagues actively objected to or resigned from projects “because of pressure to change scientific findings.”
This is merely the latest in a string of black marks on the reputation of the Agency. Along with Administrator Stephen Johnson’s dismissal of his staff’s recommendation in favor of California’s request for a waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions, a strong juridical rebuke of the the Agency’s failure to properly regulate mercury emissions, and internal rifts between the staff union and Agency management over the handling of scientific information, this is further indication of an EPA without adequate leadership, and an executive branch with a contempt for scientific integrity.
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