Science Funding, Integrity Focus Sharpens
A bipartisan panel of scientific and regulatory experts called on the White House and federal agencies Wednesday to make specific changes to clearly distinguish scientific questions from policy disputes. The report from the Science for Policy Project, which is co-chaired former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., and former Science editor Donald Kennedy, was released on the eve of the first meeting for the Obama administration of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
The report recommends requiring new information when regulations are proposed by agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, and enhancing the credibility of federal advisory committees to ensure the integrity of science in regulatory policymaking. Many recommendations are relevant to ongoing efforts by agencies to implement President Obama's March memorandum on scientific integrity. The White House has reviewed an interim version of the report to inform forthcoming guidelines on scientific integrity and regulatory reform.
"The fundamental theme of the report is that the administration needs to put in place procedures to try to distinguish science questions from policy questions," Boehlert said in a press release. "Often, policy disputes are cast as fights over science. This damages the credibility of science and obscures the real issues that ought to be debated." The SPP paper coincided with the release of a memo from OMB Director Peter Orszag and Obama's science adviser John Holdren asking agencies to build on federal science and technology priorities reflected in the stimulus package and the FY10 budget in their planning for the next fiscal year.
Read more about the Orszag-Holdren memo in CongressDaily's AM Edition here (subscription required).
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