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House Approves Bill To Force Public Release of EPA Science (ap.org)
schwit1 quotes a report from Associated Press: House Republicans are taking aim at the Environmental Protection Agency, targeting the way officials use science to develop new regulations. A bill approved Wednesday by the GOP-controlled House would require that data used to support new regulations to protect human health and the environment be released to the public. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said "the days of 'trust me' science are over," adding that the House bill would restore confidence in the EPA's decision-making process. Connecticut Rep. Elizabeth Esty and other Democrats said the bill would cripple EPA's ability to conduct scientific research based on confidential medical information and risks privacy violations by exposing sensitive patient data. The bill was approved 228-194 and now goes to the Senate. According to The Hill, "The bill would also require that any scientific studies be replicable, and allow anyone who signs a confidentiality agreement to view redacted personal or trade information in data."
Sound Great when you just Post the Republican that pushed the Law side of the story.
It means a lot of Common Science can not be used.
Corporate Reports.
Medical Research unless all the Patients are named.
And the Congress limits what can be researched on the Public's Money.
That leaves them controlling the outcome of certain research.
So No it is Not that good.
Pelosi: "We Have to Pass the Bill So That You Can Find Out What Is In It".
Have gnu, will travel.
You, obviously, did not read the article. Personal, redacted info can be viewed by ANYONE who signs an non-disclosure agreement.
Another issue is the open data requirement. It's a nice idea, but a lot of studies are done with proprietary data, and even for the ones with open data the EPA is going to have to jump through a lot of red tape to satisfy the requirements.
I can see that side of the question, but in the end, if EPA can promulgate regulations without revealing the underlying data, we're accepting the argument, "Trust us, we're your government." Are we really willing to go there? We're forced into that situation with our spy agencies. How well has that worked out for us?
This bill isn't about forcing the EPA to publish its own data, it's about not letting the EPA cite studies that don't make all of their data publicly available (according to the standards of the bill).
It's telling the EPA that it has to ignore the majority of the scientific research.
I stole this Sig
It's got nothing to do with that. A lot of datasets are owned by corporations that are very protective of their copyrights. Elsevyr , the various satellite owners and the like. They won't just let the EPA publish that data because some guy in Washington has weird conspiracies on what scientists do, because that data has to be licensed. The end result of this is The EPA will be excluded from referencing journals , accessing datasets not generated by government , pretty much any satellite data (since trumps people are defunding earth science satellites leaving just the private sector). It will leave the EPA incapable of performing basic science.
And despite what the conspiracy mongerers might claim this is why most rejected FOI requests to science orgs occur. Because they are commercially forbidden from compliance on pain of retribution by the legal system
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
That is not what the bill does (read it here). It is actually refreshingly concise and readable for a federal bill.
In fact, the bill specifically does not require disclosure of personally-identifiable confidential information and allows that kind of information to be redacted. While there is a provision on allowing people who sign a NDA via a yet-to-be-developed EPA process to gain access to redacted data, the bill also clarifies that it does not and is not intended to supersede nondiscretionary statutory requirements (i.e. even the NDA process it describes cannot circumvent HIPAA privacy protections).
The EPA can use "Common Science", reports from private parties, and medical research, but only if sufficient data is provided that the conclusions of the reports can be independently verified. Note that without this information, even the EPA cannot validate the conclusions of the reports it was using. The problem, therefore, is that without some kind of requirement like this, who and what EPA chooses to use as the basis for decision making is incredibly discretionary.
There is nothing inherently wrong in providing an agency discretion, but this bill can be seen as blowback against EPA's efforts to brand itself as a science-based regulator, despite an incredible lack of scientific rigor within the agency. It is common to run into the sentiment that "X is too urgent/important to wait for the science to catch up" or "While we may lack the data/resource to collect the data to prove it scientifically, I know X is true". That would be perfectly understandable except you cannot run the agency on that level of discretion and simultaneously claim to be a science-based regulator with any expectation of credibility and legitimacy.
They claim to be scientific. They're being held to a fundamentally basic standard of science. If they don't want to be held to basic standards of science, don't claim to be a science-based regulator. Nothing to see here.
Elsevier: For US government employees, works created within the scope of their employment are considered to be public domain and Elsevier's publishing agreements do not require a transfer or license of rights for such works.
In the UK and certain commonwealth countries, a work created by a government employee is copyrightable but the government may own the copyright (Crown copyright). Click here for information about UK government employees publishing open access
I won't even bother to comment on your subsequent bullshit and fear mongering You just don't know what you're talking about.
Yes, it's fine to require the EPA to make its data available freely: it's good for science, it's good for politics, and it's good for the people. Your delusion that in order for the EPA to do good science, it needs to keep it secret is utterly ludicrous.
Right now, that is a presidential directive that can be revoked whenever the president feels like it. Putting this into law will ensure that it will happen under future presidents as well.
-1, irrelevant
What you quoted is only about works *created* by US government employees. It does not apply to works CITED by US government employees.
I, actually, didn't say, somebody should be. What I said was, since no one was, there is nothing to hold the EPA in check...
Not according to Guardian:
Stipulating for a second, the scientists were innocent and it were all the politicians at fault at the FDA, how is the EPA different? That is, what did happen at the FDA, that does not and will not happen at the EPA?
Wrong. First of all, your link describes (with the weaselese "may have" rather than firm "has") such efforts, which ended in 1967 — USDA's "dietary guidelines" denouncing fat were published only in 1980ies. And second, the "sugar industry", according to your link, didn't lobby the politicians — instead, they paid scientists. And it was hardly a massive bribe — the three scientists from Harvard were paid an equivalent of today's $50,000 to publish a paper, which the believed to be valid.
In other words, the smart assholes at NYTimes realized what massive egg is on the Big Government's face and wanted to create some smokescreen for it to shift the blame towards the Greedy KKKapitali$t$, but failed. Well, almost failed — you fell for it...
You aren't citing any sources and I call bullshit. Why would industry lobby — heavily! — for a major overhaul of its production lines? The "fat free" stuff is not any cheaper, the margins on it aren't specifically higher, while developing it requires work and brings about uncertainty. No. Once the demand was there, the industry responded to satisfy it — praise be to Capitalism — but it made no sense for anyone to lobby for it...
My argument is, the EPA does not "benefit society". If only for this reason — they can ban and banish anything they please willy-nilly... We already have toilets, that don't flush (even the EPA themselves admit such problems "in earlier models") and dishwashing machines, that do not wash dishes. In a rush for "renewable energy", we
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
> The EPA has left harmful regulations in place for decades, which caused 1600 unnecessary deaths [nytimes.com] at Fukushima,
Lolwut?
EPA regulations caused people to die in Japan?
Yeah... I'm putting your post in the loony bin.
Pretty sure the government can appropriate whatever it wants in the public interest.
Only if it's in the US.
Corporations can either play ball and get paid or bend over.
Elsevier is not an American company and publishes articles from many non Americans working in not-
America.
CO2 is not a pollutant,
CO2 is causing climate change.
and sunlight is the best disinfectant.
I'm pretty sure chlorine trifluoride is more effective at killing germs.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That is not what the bill does (read it here). [...]Nothing to see here.
What can be seen is “(5) The Administrator shall carry out this subsection in a manner that does not exceed $1,000,000 per fiscal year, to be derived from amounts otherwise authorized to be appropriated." In words, that is One Million Dollars, or, with overheads, maybe around 5 qualified employees. How much vetting of science and handling of NDAs do you think 5 people can do? Assuming you get someone qualified for such a mind-numbing job...
Stephan
The government has a limited immunity.
But even then, the government should respect contracts and copyrights in general.
If the data providers include a non-disclosure clause (because they need to sell the data more than once to stay in business), then the government should respect that. If the data providers require confidentiality because there is medical data, the government should respect that.
This law, however, means that the government MUST disclose the data if they use it for science. If the organization supplying the data cannot authorize public disclosure, then the EPA (and other agencies) would not be able to use that data anymore.
This is one of those "sounds good" ideas that is really poisonous in practice.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.