EPA Scientists Complain About Political Pressure
WASHINGTON - Hundreds of Environmental Protection Agency scientists say they have been pressured by superiors to skew their findings, according to a survey released Wednesday by an advocacy group.
The Union of Concerned Scientists said more than half of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a detailed questionnaire reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work.
EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar attributed some of the discontent to the “passion” scientists have toward their work. He said EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, as a longtime career scientist at the EPA himself, “weighs heavily the science given to him by the staff in making policy decisions.”
But Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Scientific Integrity Program, said the survey results revealed “an agency in crisis” and “under siege from political pressures” especially among scientists involved in risk assessment and crafting regulations.
“The investigation shows researchers are generally continuing to do their work, but their scientific findings are tossed aside when it comes time to write regulations,” said Grifo.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., in a letter sent Wednesday to Johnson, called the survey results disturbing and said they “suggest a pattern of ignoring and manipulating science.” He said he planned to pursue the issue at an upcoming hearing by his Oversight and Government Reform Committee where Johnson is scheduled to testify.
The group sent an online questionnaire to 5,500 EPA scientists and received 1,586 responses, a majority of them senior scientists who have worked for the agency for 10 years or more. The survey included chemists, toxicologists, engineers, geologists and experts in the life and environmental sciences.
The report said 60 percent of those responding, or 889 scientists, reported personally experiencing what they viewed as political interference in their work over the last five years. Four in 10 scientists who have worked at the agency for more than a decade said they believe such interference has been more prevalent in the last five years than in the previous five years.
Timothy Donaghy, one of the report’s co-authors, acknowledged that a large number of scientists did not respond to the survey and said the findings should not be viewed as a random sample of EPA scientists.
Nevertheless, said Donaghy, “we have hundreds of scientists saying there is a problem” with assuring scientific integrity within the federal government’s principal environmental regulatory agency.
Asked to respond to the survey, EPA spokesman Shradar said, “We have the best scientists in the world at EPA.”
The EPA has been under fire from members of Congress on a number of fronts including its delay in determining whether carbon dioxide should be regulated to combat global warming. Johnson also has been criticized for rejecting recommendations from science advisory boards on a number of air pollution issues including control of mercury from power plants and how much to reduce smog pollution.
In the survey, the EPA scientists described an agency suffering from low morale as senior managers and the White House Office of Management and Budget frequently second-guess scientific findings and change work conducted by EPA’s scientists, the report said.
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.”
Donaghy said EPA management was aware of the survey, conducted by the Center for Survey Statistics & Methodology at Iowa State University. He said while some EPA managers initially instructed employees not to participate, the EPA’s general counsel’s office later sent an e-mail to employees saying they could participate on their private time.
© 2008 Associated Press
Ideological influence to toe the conservative Christian Republican corporate capitalism war-profiteering line at every level of government has been the hallmark of the illegal Bush administration. EPA, Labor, Justice, State, Defense - no department is left untouched in the Cheney effort to rewrite facts to match policy. It has been the extension of Reagan’s doublethink revisions and the continuation of the downfall of America.
A small group of evil stupid men are destroying to world for their own personal gain in a very short-sighted episode of greed. The level of stupidity of these people is staggering.
The level of stupidity of MOST people is staggering; More beer and popcorn please!
Yes, I count myself among the stupid people. As aware as I am, I still refuse change to the extent that we need to change.
Between the outright evil people in government manipulating scientists and the general public, far too many of which don’t understand and fear science, it is suprising that anyone is willing to do the hard work necessary to become a scientist. It’s no wonder we have to import so many from the rest of the world.
If a fact was a fact we wouldn’t be fuct.
Sean Hannity says these arrogant, unamerican, godless scientists are part of a vast liberal conspiracy to socialize the world!
High school science teachers in some areas are asked by their school boards to benignly neglect global warming. Just too controversial!
What the fuck is Laura Bush always smiling about? If I had to live with that dolt, watch him eat, pretend to take him seriously, I’d be so depressed I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed.
She is just as shitty as he. Looks like a picture of three idiots trying to march in step.
She’s giddy ’cause she still can’t believe she got away with running down her ex-boyfriend in high school.
I think George is holding a tazer gun at her upper back/lower neck?
(”Smile….keep smiling …and just keep walking…act like every thing’s normal…just a few more months…keep smiling…”)
wcdevins … and that’s EXACTLY why geo loves her SO much
When did this administration ever have a greater appreciation for facts over fiction, spin (LIES), or politics? They write their own reality, remember? Their mindset is 1) Do anything to get elected, 2) Steal anything they can, 3) Destroy anyone objecting, and 4) Prove government is bad by not governing well. They embody the concept of a ’self-fufilling prophecy’, and until this evil is rooted out completely “We The People” will continue to be continually shafted. Wake up America (and especially YOU Nancy Pelosi)!!! What business does Congress have right now more important than IMPEACHMENT??? You’re a fool (or conspirator) to think any different.
PaulMagillSmith — How many envelopes were mailed and opened ( to Congress, governors, … ) which contained a suspicious white powder ?
Is extortion any worse than all the other crimes ?
I think Laura’s kinda cute! The camera adds a few pounds. Its a better photo than that Cheney sneer on another article.
If she’s smart, she’ll divorce Dubya and move on. He’s gonna be one drunk, guilt ridden, feelin’ sorry for himself SOB in retirement. She will probably wait until she can’t take it any longer.
What a bully we have in our Commander in Chief. Slapping mouths shut all over Washington. Shame on the republicans! Shame on them!
If they had any common decency they’d impeach their Loser in Chief!
The Union of Concerned Scientists has an A-Z list of abuses of science by this administration:
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/a-to-z-alphabetical.html
Every agency now has a representative of the administration to ensure that the agencies policies and announcements are consistent with the administration.
Science, when passed through a sieve of politics or religion, ceases to be science.
As a engineer working for the US govermnent myself - currently working for a regulatory agency - I see nothing taht will prevent the fox’s from continuing to guard the henhouse for some time to come.
I have found that higer ranking career-workers in the US government involved in regulatory functons are almost invariably very right wing - my current boss has pictures of Bush, Rush, Ann Coulter, and pro-industry-we-are-regualting bumper stickers adorning his office wall.
And regardless of who’s in the white house, these people are many years from retirement.
Whether these conservative attitudes are just because managerial, upper-middle class USAns are generally very conservative, or there has been something at work in the culture of US government agencies, I can’t tell.