Slashdot Mirror
USDA Scrambles To Ease Concerns After Researchers Were Ordered To Stop Publishing Publicly Funded Science (popsci.com)
Layzej writes: Popular Science reports that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now barred from communicating with the public. [And early this morning, BuzzFeed revealed that] The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has banned scientists and other employees from sharing the results of its taxpayer-funded research with the broader public. From the report: "The memo outlining these new rules has not been made public, but the ban reportedly includes everything from summaries of scientific papers to USDA-branded tweets. Scientists are still able to publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, but they are unable to talk about that research without prior consent from their agency. This is not the first time that public science has been hamstrung by a gag order. To this day, the quantity of oil spewed into the ocean during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil spill remains something of a mystery. Many of the scientists who worked on the spill were hired by BP and barred from speaking on it. But gag orders -- while always troublesome -- have usually been limited to one specific issue. Right now, the EPA and USDA have been forbidden to speak about all of their scientific research. It means that many of the kinds of stories we now cover will never see the light of day." UPDATE 1/24/17: The USDA has disavowed the memo sent to employees at its Agricultural Research Service unit. USDA's deputy administrator, Michael Young, clarified that the gag order specifically applies to policy-related statements in press releases and interviews, which need to be vetted with the secretary of agriculture. He told The Washington Post that peer-reviewed scientific papers from the unit should not be blocked, nor should food safety announcements. The Washington Post notes that "the memo's shortness and terse language seems to have exacerbated the confusion: 'Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents. This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content,' wrote ARS chief Sharon Drumm in an email to employees."
It's not just the USDA.
It's also the EPA and the Department of the Interior. Tweets containing non-controversial scientific facts were deleted this afternoon.
http://thehill.com/policy/ener...
http://www.miamiherald.com/new...
Don't be alarmed, it is for your own good. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Our former government didn't have any problem at all with muzzling scientists, their organizations as well as defunding anybody who didn't step up to their pro-oil agenda.
Very disturbing to see an anti-science government, regardless of where it is.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
You can help mirror the climate data. Go to climatemirror.org and grab the torrents, the National Land Cover Database has been completely uploaded (11GB). There's also a mailing list for further info and future efforts.
Gosh.. An administration trying to control its messaging and making sure it's not undercut from Obama hires still within those departments. Shocking!
And about that National Park Service tweeter:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article128506319.html
The tweets have been deleted. Buzzfeed reported that the tweets “were posted by a former employee who was not currently authorized to use the park’s account. The park was not told to remove the tweets but chose to do so when they realized that their account had been compromised,” quoting a National Parks Service official.
Couple that with Trump's stated goal of eliminating the EPA entirely
Can you provide a quote for that?
Q: Would you cut departments?
TRUMP: Environmental Protection, what they do is a disgrace. Every week they come out with new regulations.
Q: Who's going to protect the environment?
TRUMP: We'll be fine with the environment. We can leave a little bit, but you can't destroy businesses.
Source: Fox News Sunday 2015 Coverage of 2016 presidential hopefuls , Oct 18, 2015
Slashdot changed the headline to reflect the new statement made by the USDA's deputy administrator. A statement which is, frankly, backpedaling. When the original order was "Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents." the submitted headline was accurate, albeit overly specific.
The interviewer clearly thought that he meant to eliminate it entirely, and then in response to being questioned on that he says "We can leave a little bit." That's a conciliatory statement. He's not hellbent on destroying every last shred of the EPA, but he stated a preference to do so.
Further: "leaving a little bit" does not make for an effective regulatory body. Even if there does remain a shred of EPA left after all of this is said and done, the original point of this thread, namely that this gag order is a genuine cause for concern, remains true.
That, and save billions. For example, the EPA air rules cost $11.3 billion, saved $55–146 billion annually, including 6,800 to 17,000 lives. From 1990 to 2020, that's an expected $65 billion spent to save $2 trillion.
The White House's Office of Management and Budget found that the annual benefits of major federal rules over a decade ranged between $193 billion to $800 billion, with costs of only $57 billion to $84 billion (EPA air regulations were the greatest source of these benefits). Google cache link, because Trump deleted the original.
Found the archived OMB report.
Meanwhile conservatives still think Carter was "history's greatest monster"
Are you kidding me? Jimmy Carter has demonstrated a lifelong commitment to global peace and charitable works, even if I personally disagreed with some of his post-Presidential actions and statements. Every conservative/Republican I know of, myself among them, thinks Carter is good person, but made a lousy President.
He's kind of the opposite of Bill Clinton, I suppose.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
You mean "part of the article". Because it goes on to say:
Per usual, Trump supporter misrepresents an article. Film at 11.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It's fine. The coasts will always be fine. We have the strongest and most sustainable economies. It's not a coincidence that the counties that went Democrat make up 64 percent of the economy. Trump will cut a bunch of federal funding and programs that help poor people in the "taker" states that receive more federal money than they give (hint: almost all Republican), and Democratic states will replace the cut programs with their own at the state level. You guys wanted more power to the states, right? Now see how that works out for you.
Republicans are dividing the country without realizing that their part of the country is rapidly becoming irrelevant. There's also the fact that Democrats won every state but Kentucky in the under 30 vote so eventually all of you backwards idiots are going to just die out. Looking forward to that.
You know that Evita is a fictional play, right? And also that the Che in that play is not Che Guevara... That quote is basically from Andrew Lloyd Webber.