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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."
Or should people be opposed to this because its a Republican administration?
... with it.
Good science withstands close scrutiny and is dam hard to deny.
As for personal information, it can be redacted.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
More transparency in public policy. Good, right? Wait, the Republicans are pushing it. There clearly has to be something bad going on.
I'm confused. Could somebody tell me if I am supposed to be for or against this?
While they are at it, how about all tax payer funded research be open to US citizens and allies.
Nope, thats not it at all. This is because they will put up some excuse and create "alternative facts" over everything the EPA does so as to pretty much destroy the EPA if they have not already done so. Only an idiot would think that Republicans, especially this administration, cares about science!
More transparency in public policy. Good, right? Wait, the Republicans are pushing it. There clearly has to be something bad going on.
I'm confused. Could somebody tell me if I am supposed to be for or against this?
Sadly that's not a ridiculous assumption, when Republicans get involved with science it's generally not on friendly terms. Lamar Smith in specific is a dedicated AGW skeptic who really wants the EPA to stop regulating fossil fuels and discredits scientists to do so. To think he's actually trying to improve the quality of science at the EPA is naive.
As for the bill itself, one issue is what is meant by "replicable". Is a study based on a particular disaster replicable? What about a study based on historical climate data? Or a long term health study? There is a lot of legitimate research that is difficult to reproduce.
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.
The basic function of the bill is that it makes it really tough for the EPA to cite research, and if the EPA can't cite research it has a much more difficult time justifying regulations.
I stole this Sig
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?
No, it's not ridiculous. The problem is that the Left has bastardized "science"...and now it will be forced to have the "conclusions" survive in the sunlight.
"Is a study based on a particular disaster replicable? What about a study based on historical climate data? Or a long term health study? There is a lot of legitimate research that is difficult to reproduce."
All of those are replicable - simply hand over your raw data, explain your methodology, and allow other scientists to confirm your conclusions. That's how science works.
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.
While I agree with the idea that any science conducted should be available to the public that pays for it, it seems like the current proposal is a stepping stone to (a) Allow lay persons (or even entire industries with paid "scientists") to challenge the results, and (b) delay the process of making new regulations by requiring the agency to jump through hoops (both in responsible releasing of confidential data, and providing enough evidence to justify their conclusions).
Science isn't a democracy, and this proposal will only make it harder for any regulations to be implemented. Even with a majority of scientists on one side of the fence, lawmakers are fighting environmental regulations tooth and nail. So this clearly isn't about improving regulations through good science, it is about creating more noise that allows a politician to justify their (pre-selected) bad position on scientific issues. I can just see a politician saying that he read 100 facebook posts by citizen-scientists disproving the EPA experts' conclusions, and that is why a ban on setting up oil refineries in national parks should be repealed.
Congressmen don't write their own bills, especially corrupt ones like this, so I'm not going to chalk this up to stupidity. It makes me wonder what bit of nastiness is behind all this...
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No, it's the opposite.
This is a clear anti-renewable energy move.
Some of the climate science relies on non-free information. Since it cannot be released, no regulations that depend on this data can be promulgated.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
No, it's not ridiculous. The problem is that the Left has bastardized "science"...and now it will be forced to have the "conclusions" survive in the sunlight.
"Is a study based on a particular disaster replicable? What about a study based on historical climate data? Or a long term health study? There is a lot of legitimate research that is difficult to reproduce."
All of those are replicable - simply hand over your raw data, explain your methodology, and allow other scientists to confirm your conclusions. That's how science works.
So 24 hours after the Fukushima disaster I send out my team to a nearby shoreline we've been studying and we find that algae species X is 10x prevalent than any other time we've measured, and within a week the levels are back to normal.
So we write up our findings and publish.
I think that could be very useful research, particularly to the EPA who has to potentially deal with Nuclear accidents. But is that really reproducible science?
I can give you my data, but you can't recreate the conditions that generated the data so you can't properly reproduce the findings.
Under this new law the EPA might be forced to ignore the results of that research.
I stole this Sig
But we already know another blatant mistake of the governments, which has lead to the explosion of the obesity epidemics and millions of premature deaths — the War on Fat. And on cholesterol — though manufacturers are still marketing "low cholesterol" foods, the government's current stance is Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption...
I'm with you so far.
Though Americans — and other nations following America's lead — grew obese, no one was punished for that mistake.
Umm, maybe. Who do you think should be punished? The scientists? They were saying at the beginning of the War on Fat that the science was inconclusive. It was the politicians who said, "We don't have time to wait for facts. We need to act."
Without any accountability for the FDA personnel even when the fault is obvious, what is there to restraint the EPA? What "checks and balances" are there to prevent them from banning anything another "charismatic and confident" doctor suggests to ban without much proof?
I see how you can get there. But as I said, the problem wasn't with the scientists. It was the politicians pushing the agenda, and the sugar industry funding it.
The "Trust Us" science is junk science — and Congress is absolutely right to fight it, even if they are too chicken to abolish the EPA altogether.
And that's where you go off the rails. In the case of fat, there was heavy industry lobbying in favor of a position that scientists said was unsupported by current research. We now know that it wasn't just unsupported; it was wrong.
In the case of environmental regulations, the industry money is all lining up to say we don't need to reduce fossil fuel use. And the vast majority of scientists are saying that the science is settled, and it goes against what industry is pushing.
But my biggest gripe with your solution is the suggestion that if the EPA isn't perfect, the solution is not to fix it but to abolish it. That's a common solution for certain advocacy groups (and political parties) who know that it's a lot easier to destroy programs that benefit society than it is to build them.
Nope, no sig
Wrong "Confederacy," bub.
Then why would you trust that their methodology leads to the results they claim? If it can't be independently verified, it's not science. This model may be used for commercial purposes because trade secrets are the norm. But it breaks down when it comes to public policy. You can't have public policy based on data you can't verify. There is no way to verify that the data wasn't doctored to fit a model or that the model was not applied erroneously. Garbage-in-garbage-out is ok if you are willing to carry the cost of it. But when the cost is to be carried by the general public, it has the right to see the data. If that means that the payment model for the data has to change, then this has to be accounted-for in the grants.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The EPA has left harmful regulations in place for decades, which caused 1600 unnecessary deaths at Fukushima, and countless more by helping suppress the most effective source of clean energy. While renewables may capture the limelight, the leading source of new energy worldwide is coal, and it is growing far faster.
Present radiation regulations are based on bad science. The linear no threshold hypothesis is provably false today, and counter evidence already existed even at the time of its adoption. Since then, a growing body of evidence and scientific understanding show that low levels of radiation are harmless and potentially beneficial. Aside from providing a basis for fear-mongering, misinformed regulations also prevent promising research into the use of low level radiation for medical applications.
Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information have recently petitioned the EPA for scientific/risk-based radiation regulations. There are also other areas where the EPA adopts the ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) principle for regulation, which is fundamentally misguided. Such regulation carries an opportunity cost, and the extensive effort to eliminate infinitesimal perceived damage is wasted when it could achieve a much greater positive effect if applied to other more serious risks.
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).
*pling* (sound of coin dropping). So, in effect the EPA will not be allowed to publish any findings about what goes on in private companies, I suspect, thus granting big polluters more secrecy and protection.
That certainly sounds good. Everyone can see the data discuss the analysis, see if it holds up to scrutiny, and often see other, completely unexpected information revealed in the data
Lol no. Sure it's designed to look like that on the surface, but Rep Lamarr is hardly going to have a bill called "Rep Lamarr is a cunt bill". Rep Lamarr is a flat-out denialist and he's been trying to hamstring the EPA for ages because he doesn't believe science. The climate is (a) changing and (b) we're the primary cause. Science showing this result have already been replicated numerous times with many sources of data and you personally getting access to the exact set that the EPA uses is not going to change a thing.
Rep Lamarr is deeply anti science, and if he's put this forward as a good thing then you should bee deeply suspicious of it because it's not designed to promote science, it's designed to suppress scientific results that he personally wishes were otherwise.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Forcing publicly financed science to be made ... public.
Demanding that results be replicable?
In what universe are these things wrong? Finally some measure of a move to try to ensure that any policies that are spawned are actually based on real science.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
And if a Democrat were president right now, this story would be hailed as a victory for freedom of information, open access to taxpayer-funded research, and so on.
Yet it's a Republican president and congress now, so this law is a bad, terrible thing, "attacking" science, blah blah blah.
Particularly amusing since less than a page down is a story about open access to Georgia's laws, with the exact opposite slant on it.