JLVernonPhD presents "American SciCo"

When President-elect Barack Obama hailed the virtues of “free and open inquiry” in his December 20, 2008 weekly address, American scientists and indeed many around the world surely shared a sigh of relief.  After 8 years of incessant assaults on science by officials in the Bush administration, the scientific community had grown weary.  From the ill-founded justifications for ending federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to the systematic distortion and manipulation of the Endangered Species Act, officials in the Bush administration showed little remorse for their misuse and abuse of science. Not to mention that Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain had offered few alternatives to the Bush policies. So, when President Obama took to the podium and vowed to “restore science to its rightful place” during his inaugural speech, scientists across the nation celebrated the idea of having a rational thinker in the White House, again. 

Nearly a decade of scientific setbacks had allowed China and India to further encroach on America’s scientific dominance. Not since Eisenhower witnessed the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik had American science faced a more critical junction.  Fortunately, President Obama appeared to be keen to the task by naming several science superstars Drs. John Holdren, Harold Varmus and Eric Lander to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).  Taking it one step further, he quickly overturned President Bush’s policy on embryonic stem cells and allocated billions from the 2009 stimulus package toward research and development.  Once it appeared that conditions were greatly improving for the scientific community, President Obama trumped himself by declaring that scientific integrity policies, lacking in the U.S. government, would be established for all federal agencies.  In March 2009, he charged the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) with the responsibility of creating the guidelines over the subsequent 4 months.  It seemed that science was receiving the attention that it greatly needed.  However, the initial enthusiasm for science subsided as the administration became bogged down in more pressing issues of dealing with the slumping economy. 

Perhaps the economic situation had some impact on the progress toward the President’s request, but it has taken nearly 17 months, now, for Dr. Holdren, also director of the OSTP, to deliver the past due guidelines.  Last week, at the AGU meeting in San Francisco, he made the inexplicable claim that it “has been a more challenging task than expected.” After delivering the guidelines in a memorandum this weekend, the justification for the delay seems bizarre.  As Chris Mooney noted on his blog, “there’s nothing here that couldn’t have been drafted fairly rapidly by someone familiar with the problems that had arisen during the Bush administration.”

In his original memo calling for the establishment of these guidelines, President Obama identified six principles of scientific integrity:

1) The selection and retention of candidates for science and technology positions in the executive branch should be based on the candidate’s knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity;

2) Each agency should have appropriate rules and procedures to ensure the integrity of the scientific process within the agency;

3) When scientific or technological information is considered in policy decisions, the information should be subject to well-established scientific processes, including peer review where appropriate, and each agency should appropriately and accurately reflect that information in complying with and applying relevant statutory standards;

4) Except for information that is properly restricted from disclosure under procedures established in accordance with statute, regulation, Executive Order, or Presidential Memorandum, each agency should make available to the public the scientific or technological findings or conclusions considered or relied on in policy decisions;

5) Each agency should have in place procedures to identify and address instances in which the scientific process or the integrity of scientific and technological information may be compromised; and

6) Each agency should adopt such additional procedures, including any appropriate whistleblower protections, as are necessary to ensure the integrity of scientific and technological information and processes on which the agency relies in its decision-making or otherwise uses or prepares.

The new OSTP guidelines address each of these principles in addition to many of the obvious issues for which the previous administration showed little concern: ensuring a culture of scientific integrity, strengthening the credibility of government scientists, facilitating the free-flow of scientific and technological information, and establishing principles for conveying scientific and technological information to the public.  To say that establishment of these guidelines was more difficult than anticipated leaves one to wonder about the causes of these difficulties.  Perhaps recent events can inform us of the challenges facing OSTP in the development of these guidelines. 

Over the course of the last year and a half, while the guidelines remained in absentia, officials have made several political moves that have led the scientific community to feel insecure about the administration’s commitment to scientific integrity. In anticipation of the arrival of these guidelines, Al Teich, Director of Science & Policy Programs at AAAS, stated, “They’ve talked the talk. We hope they’ll walk the walk.”  He had reason to be skeptical.

As the novelty of sound science policy diminished in the face of the economic crisis, administration officials on multiple occasions have exercised poor judgment regarding scientific issues and in some cases demonstrated outright disregard for the very science the president vowed to protect.  In March 2009, the same month President Obama requested that the guidelines be established, Steven Chu, Nobel Prize winner and current Secretary of Energy, announced that Yucca Mountain would no longer be an option for the storage of nuclear waste.  While this decision resolved many years of political squabbling over the site, it overruled the existing science of nuclear waste disposal. Justifications for this decision appear to undermine President Obama’s second principle of scientific integrity, protecting science from inappropriate political influence.  In other words, the administration decided to ignore the scientific evidence that had established the site as the safest in the continental U.S. Instead, they chose a political solution to a scientific problem. 

In other cases, it seems the pressure to compromise scientific integrity became too much for government officials to resist violating the president’s third principle, peer review of all scientific information used to inform policy decisions.  The BP oil disaster offered an unprecedented opportunity for scientists to demonstrate to the American people how science can address real world crises.  Instead, as the oil continued to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, unscientific accounts emerged that up to 75% of the oil had evaporated or naturally dispersed.  When the White House released a report produced by NOAA scientists that included these same notions, non-government scientists, including Ian MacDonald, one of the country’s foremost oil slick experts, responded.  MacDonald rejected the report as misleading and blasted the agency stating, “We have concerns about the numbers.”  To my knowledge, the data was never released to the public, a violation of the fourth scientific integrity principle.  Notably absent at NOAA were policies that met the President’s directive to protect scientific integrity.  When questioned about the absence of such policies, officials within NOAA stated they were waiting for guidance from OSTP.

Because the oil spill was such potent political poison for the president, it appears that the strain caused misconduct among more federal officials.  In a separate incident, the Interior Department’s inspector general concluded that alterations had been made to an official report written to elicit support for a 6-month moratorium on offshore drilling.  The modifications misrepresented scientific recommendations to make it appear as though the scientists endorsed the ban.  The administration argues that the implication of the scientists was inadvertent.  However, given these examples, the new administration was exhibiting characteristics indistinguishable from those of their predecessors.

Further misbehavior has not been limited to the Interior Department and NOAA.  A recent survey from the Union of Concerned Scientists reveals that regulatory scientists in the FDA and USDA continue to experience sustained political pressure to carry out scientific misconduct.  The report explicitly states that:

- 34% of respondents had personally experienced one or more incidents of political interference

-10% of respondents had frequently or occasionally received requests from agency decision makers to “inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or conclusions in an agency scientific document”

-16% percent of respondents had frequently or occasionally experienced “selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome”

-13% percent had frequently or occasionally experienced “changes or edits during review that change the meaning of scientific findings that occur without a meaningful opportunity to correct them”

-A majority of survey respondents with advanced degrees (217 respondents — or 59%) disagreed or strongly disagreed that they are currently “allowed to speak to the public and the news media about my scientific research findings”

Frighteningly, “instances [in the past year] where the public health has been harmed by businesses withholding food safety information from agency investigators” were reported by half of the respondents.

In light of these missteps, the guidelines could not come soon enough to restore the scientific community’s faith in the Obama administration.  Scientists need to know there is substance behind the rhetoric.  Government agencies have been given another 120 days before they must report “the actions they have taken to develop and implement policies” that meet the requirements defined by the OSTP guidelines.  Because the guidelines appear to address most of the concerns of the scientific community, there is hope that progress will be made toward improved conditions for government scientists. 

However, Scientists should not take for granted that the agencies will rise to the task.  When the Department of the Interior released a draft version of their scientific integrity orders in August, it was highly regarded as a step in the right direction.  The Union of Concerned Scientists noted, though, that the document lacked any penalties or punishments for violations and largely excluded government appointees from its jurisdiction.  Further, despite offering rhetoric that encouraged whistleblowers to come forward, it was slim on protections for government scientists who were courageous enough to speak out about violations.  This led to a revision of the document, which was subsequently released in September.  We will surely see many evaluations of these policies as they emerge from the various agencies. 

While there is clearly much more work left to be done, the OSTP guidelines will go far toward setting the right tone for preventing further transgressions against science.  Not only will these guidelines protect science, if applied effectively, they could lead to better protections for the American people.  For now, these guidelines renew the president’s commitment to science. Let’s hope renewed commitment leads to renewed scientific advancement.  If we can get back to where we started in January of 2009, we’ll have a much greater likelihood of success.