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Data Quality Act
The New York Times has a heads-up about a little-noticed add-on to a massive appropriations bill, signed into law by Clinton but taking effect in October. The amendment allows anyone to challenge data published by the Federal government and have it changed or deleted. The main proponents of the law are pro-business groups seeking to tie up environmental and similar regulations by challenging the government's data.
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I seem to recall people doing this kind of thing to try and get out of a speeding ticket too =)
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Fabulous. Now lawyers will be the final framers of the scientific and technical truth. They've done such a spectacular job with the concept of "justice" that this is only the next logical step.
Lots of things have been described as "Orwellian" lately, and this just follows the trend...
Anyone that does not realize that such data is often willfully misrepresented or fabricated, or at best just a result of horrid incompetency and abuse by your friendly tax funded company/agency, has been asleep or is in a constant state of denial of reality. The question IMHO is not whether we should allow a reexamination of data from these organizations, but how that process is performed. At a bare minimum, the individual should have as much right as any formal organization (which includes lobbiests, companies, special interest groups, etc) Since there have been an increasing number of lies regarding environmentalism, it is important for a number of reasons to get the facts straight AND hold those responsible for misrepresentations accountable. Otherwise, the issue will continue to galvanize and polarize the positions and feelings of the very ones who are supposed to be the reason for all this... 'the Children[/people/future/etc]'. Maybe that is why honor and integrity are so important? Eco nazis that radiate nothing but irrational and inconsistent views, scorn, hate and malice have only given a weapon to those that would use that behavior as a weapon to gain more money and power. While the corporation is labled evil in a pavlovian jerking of the knee by those who lack gray matter and self thought, the fact that there will always be small to large companies who have people in them that WILL abuse such powers is the issue.
Who wants to be the first to challenge the extraordinarily limited government data that video games are incapable of expressing ideas?
-Evan
Libel law states that if someone publishes false and damaging statements about you, they can be forced to retract the statements and/or publish a correction. (If they published the false material deliberately, they can also be required to pay monetary damages.)
This is just the logical extension of that: Instead of having to prove that the statements caused harm to you, it is merely necessary to prove that the statements are false.
This is a Good Thing. Yes, it will result in less material being published... but the material which doesn't get published will be primarily the material which wasn't defensible in the first place.
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So it is OK that political power groups would remain the final framers of scientific and technical truth?
I'm usually the last to defend lawyers, but in this case I have no problem with lawyers getting involved in damaging the power of the ruling class to control our lives and create whatever "truth" it wants to perpetuate its own power.
I mean, it's a step in the right direction, but to the /. crowd, it should seem pretty darn obvious - if someone points out a mistake, you have to fix it. Oddly enough, since the government is there to serve the people, if the people point out that the government is a bozo, this is exactly what *should* happen.
The problem with this bill is just what the article says - no one is going to be challenging the data where a minor functionary has his phone number listed incorrectly. The *big* companies that probably want this sort of ability to challenge data would be the tobbaco companies. After all, those surgeon general warnings are technically government data.
Theoretically, it will depend on how this data can be used, once changed. A whole hell of a lot of court cases have been won and lost through government researched data. If some important stuff gets debunked, appeals will flood the system more than they do now, digging up old cases from as far back as human memory.
As an aside - remember the FOIA? It turns out that if the paper you're writing is a draft, it's not FOIA-able. Which is why, (and I'm in government service, sorry to say) that I spend so much time stamping draft on things.
rm -i `find / -name \*truth\*`
vi `find / -name \*truth\*
Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.
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Good point, valentyn. With slightly different spin, the ability of anyone to challenge data would have been seen as a Good Thing. I have no idea why you were modded "Offtopic."
-- MarkusQ
Fact of the matter is, half the environmental "data" that is produced by the federal gov't comes from private organizations who are already hell-bent on saving every last inch of nature at whatever expense is necessary (fraudulent/deceiptful data). It's bullshit.
Everyone knows 60% of all statistics are just made up - Homer J Simpson.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
You have accepted the Bush admin spin, oh sorry it was the Clinton whitehouse that did spin, the hero of Air Force One on 9/1 does not spin.
The real difference is that the Kyoto treaty mandates an actual reduction of greenhouse gases of 8% for the biggest polluters - which includes the US which is per capita the biggest polluter of all.
What the Bush admin 'committed' to was to reduce greenhouse emissions per unit of economic output by 7%. Why is this different? Well if we lived in the Victorian age when economic output was output of physical stuff the commitment might mean something. The US economy grew by 3-4% each year under Clinton but the actual manufacturing base was almost unchanged, the economic growth comes in industries that do not produce much in the way of greenhouse gases, mainly IT.
So in fact comparing like for like the EU is cutting emissions by 8% while the Bush admin is allow itself to increase them by 30%. So don't be suprised if the EU say that the US is not doing its share.
It will be interesting to see what the car industry does with this act since the recent increase in US steel tarifs will cost them (and consumers who buy cars) hundreds of millions. The data on which the tarif was justified is pretty flimsy, not all of the US steel industry is having dificulties. The mini-mill manufacturers in the US are as competative as the ones in the EU or anywhere and can sell steel to the auto industry for less than anyone because of shipping costs. The uncompetative steel producers are operating the old integrated plants
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