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."

Comments

Sounds great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or should people be opposed to this because its a Republican administration?

Re:Sounds great!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Sounds great!

[Rei]

Sounds like a bill based on an understanding of science from people who've never worked in a scientific field. All research affected by HIPAA would be banned by this bill. Which is the majority of medical research. All research involving external sources of proprietary data - which no researchers like using, but sometimes you have no choice - would also be banned.

And furthermore, not all research is reproducible. "Hey, I just detected the highest energy cosmic ray collision ever in my detector, here's my paper showing proof of the detection!" "Sorry, unless some other team can reproduce the same cosmic ray event in their own detector.... " Most research is reproducible, of course, but the need for things that can be reproduced to be able to be reproduced is such a given in the peer-review process that it goes without saying. Of course, some things make it through peer review that are later shown not to be reproducible - or put more simply, wrong. This is not a fault of people not caring whether or not research is reproducible, but simply of errors (something that's unavoidable when humans are involved). The fact that someone would assume that reviewers are indifferent to whether research is reproducible or not boggles the mind. On the other hand, if their goal is to require that all results actually be reproduced before publication... hey, if they're going to at least double the total funding for science in the US to pay for it, then sure, go right ahead! Want independent reproduction of the results of the LHC running at high energies, from a different team using their own equipment? Step one: Build another LHC....

The real scientific issue that congress could actually do something about the exploitive stranglehold of publishers. Most commonly charging researchers for the review, not paying the reviewers anything, charging readers to read it, and charging other people to reproduce figures from the research, even if not-for-profit usage. And what great service do they provide for this? Typesetting? Nowadays researchers even have to do most of that work for them as well. But you have to publish. And in as high ranked of a journal as you can.

A federal regulation banning publication in non-open-access journals and journals with exploitive fee schedules would force publishers hands by taking away the vast majority of their content.

Re:Sounds great!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're delusional. Science is science - if it cannot stand scrutiny or skeptical inquiry, then it is NOT science. Period. Common Science, medical science, corporate reports (wtf?) have nothing to do with the ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency.

Re:Sounds great!

[bekeleven]

When it comes to government, never ascribe to stupidity that which can be explained with kickbacks.

Re:Sounds great!

[SNRatio]

Whoosh.

Re:Sounds great!

[SNRatio]

And furthermore, not all research is reproducible.

Quite true, but what non-reproducible research is necessary for writing regulations? Even when the data is incidents and accidents that no one wants to reproduce, the research itself is reproducible by redoing the analysis.

Re: Sounds great!

[sg_oneill]

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

Re:Sounds great!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Sounds great!

[superwiz]

What retribution? Isn't the federal government immune from torts?

Re:Sounds great!

[pipingguy]

And yet, some people fail to understand this (or at least claim to not understand it).

"Why should I show you my code/data when all you're going to do is try to find something wrong with it?"

Re:Sounds great!

[superwiz]

Well, they can (for example) do research based on asthma increases based on environmental factors. But any such research would be statistical and any personal information would be easily anonymized. Someone did make a point that it precludes them from using licensed data, but if their methodology of data processing cannot be independently verified, it can't be deemed to have been scientifically vetted. In other words, it's more important to be able to see the inputs they use for the methods they claim to use in order to see that they get the outputs they claim to generate. Otherwise, it's garbage-in-garbage-out.

Re:Sounds great!

[pipingguy]

I believe you've carefully danced around the key point of the issue: EPA. Congratulations!

Re: Sounds great!

[ooloorie]

A lot of datasets are owned by corporations that are very protective of their copyrights. Elsevyr

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.

Re:Sounds great!

[hackwrench]

Why would patiient name need to incuded? Just how is that part of the scientific data that is used as oppoed to merely collected as part of the process?

Re:Sounds great!

[hackwrench]

Why would any of that be banned?

Re: Sounds great!

[radarskiy]

-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.

Re:Sounds great!

[Crashmarik]

Sounds like a bill based on an understanding of science from people who've never worked in a scientific field. All research affected by HIPAA would be banned by this bill. Which is the majority of medical research. All research involving external sources of proprietary data - which no researchers like using, but sometimes you have no choice - would also be banned.

no
HIPAA provides for anonymizing records for research heres the guidelines https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-...

And furthermore, not all research is reproducible. "Hey, I just detected the highest energy cosmic ray collision ever in my detector, here's my paper showing proof of the detection!"

If the EPA wants to regulate cosmic rays let me know I need a laugh. Anything that will need regulation will inherently be reproducible if it's not it's B.S. not science.

Nice try.

Re: Sounds great!

[serviscope_minor]

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.

Re:Sounds great!

[SandorZoo]

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.

Thanks for the link to the bill. The actual text for the bill reads "publicly available online in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results". How about things like ESA's Copernicus Programme of Earth observation satellites? The data access requirements say that public online access is only available to a "rolling on-line archive covering the last month(s) of selected Sentinels core products". You need at least an "International Agreement" (whatever that is) to access the full data set. Does that mean the EPA can't use any science based on Copernicus/Sentinel data?

Re: Sounds great!

[Applehu Akbar]

"A lot of datasets are owned by corporations that are very protective of their copyrights. Elsevyr , the various satellite owners and the like. "

And if we can bust even just the Elsevier monopoly, this initiative will have done great good.

Re:Sounds great!

[Applehu Akbar]

"And furthermore, not all research is reproducible. "Hey, I just detected the highest energy cosmic ray collision ever in my detector, here's my paper showing proof of the detection!" "Sorry, unless some other team can reproduce the same cosmic ray event in their own detector.... " "

Of course this is reproducible. If the paper describes a real phenomenon, other high-energy cosmic rays will be caught and documented. If the onservations then lead to detector improvements that result in more such events being caught, that nails it.

Re: Sounds great!

[ooloorie]

What you quoted is only about works *created* by US government employees. It does not apply to works CITED by US government employees.

No, it applies to data used by government employees. If the EPA rules based on results from the literature, it should be able to independently reproduce it, either by conducting its own observations or using the data from that paper. If the EPA can do neither, it should not be allowed to act.

You seem to think that if Prof. Beaker publishes a paper in the scientific literature reaching some conclusion or other and the EPA cites it, that should be enough for the EPA to take away people's houses, land, and other property, without any recourse or any ability to check his data. That is not acceptable, and that is precisely why we need this bill.

Your view that we should take whatever result is in the scientific literature as truth, without the ability to verify it independently, is unscientific and proto-fascist. It's unacceptable.

Re: Sounds great!

[king neckbeard]

We invade sovereign countries just because. I think we can bend copyright law on publishing climate change data and get away with it.

Re:Sounds great!

[mysidia]

Common Science, medical science, corporate reports (wtf?) have nothing to do with the ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency.

The study of Medical science has something to do with How People are Harmed by negative environmental impacts necessary
to show that certain environmental impacts are BAD for people.

CORPORATE REPORTS are Germane to some science, because private industry has done research or collected data.

Re: Sounds great!

[Stephan Schulz]

What you quoted is only about works *created* by US government employees. It does not apply to works CITED by US government employees.

No, it applies to data used by government employees.

No, it does not. "It", i.e. the copyright clause cited upstream, refers to work created by US government employees. But only a small part of science is done by US government employees.

If the EPA rules based on results from the literature, it should be able to independently reproduce it, either by conducting its own observations or using the data from that paper. If the EPA can do neither, it should not be allowed to act.

Sure, it should be able to do that. If that possibility becomes a requirement, it means that either EPA would need funding on about the order of magnitude of all the universities and institutes that produce science relevant to its job. Who do you think will provide that funding? A Republican congress?

You seem to think that if Prof. Beaker publishes a paper in the scientific literature reaching some conclusion or other and the EPA cites it, that should be enough for the EPA to take away people's houses, land, and other property, without any recourse or any ability to check his data.

You seem to have no idea abut how science or the EPA work. If Prof. Beaker publishes an unexpected result with large implications, a lot of other scientist will try to refute, refine, or reaffirm that result, without the EPA ever stepping in.

That is not acceptable, and that is precisely why we need this bill.

Your view that we should take whatever result is in the scientific literature as truth, without the ability to verify it independently, is unscientific and proto-fascist. It's unacceptable.

This is not "Big Science" out to get you and control your life - science is an enterprise with many many independent researchers and opinions. It is not perfect, but pretty always self-correcting. Requiring actual reproduction instead of reproducibility from an agency that is not given the resources to perform this reproduction just means that EPA cannot use science anymore - which is just what some lawmakers have in mind.

Re:Sounds great!

[mysidia]

"Sorry, unless some other team can reproduce the same cosmic ray event in their own detector.

This kind of research is Not used to write policy, also has a Much higher bar for scientific rigor than a medical study,
such that the results of any medical study should have a higher level of doubt.

Also, particle physicists require 5 Sigmas of statisical confidence at a minimum.
That is beyond feasibility for most medical research.... indeed, medical researchers are known to have to fudge things,
such as by throwing out some data or abusive tactics like cherrypicking (that invalidate the theoretical foundation for
the statistics) to get the results they want.

Re:Sounds great!

[mysidia]

Exactly..... It is brilliant that they finally require this of the EPA.
Clearly, the next step should be to require ALL existing EPA regulation meet this bar or become invalidated on a specified date.

Also, this standard of rigor should be applied to other government regulators that purport to use Science, such as those wanting to restrict human activity based on supposed threats to a species or ecology, or, such as when the FDA wants to make decisions restricting the composition of foods, Or banning//revokingwitholding approval of a drug, etc.

Re:Sounds great!

[Stephan Schulz]

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...

Re:Sounds great!

[Merk42]

Anything that will need regulation will inherently be reproducible if it's not it's B.S. not science.

Nice try.

How about climate change?
Do we need to reproduce an entire other Earth?

Re: Sounds great!

[silentcoder]

The EPA has never kept a secret about a single piece of science it has used.

But, on occasion, they have used science that is kept secret by something else, like the law. Private medical data for example - can be the most reliable scientific data there is for determining polution damage - but it is also illegal to publish it publicly.

The republicans have been pushing versions of this bill for years and years - and it has NOTHING to do with science, it's about trying to destroy the EPA because (annoyingly) EPA regulations cost money from their rich friends. NOT dumping shit in your drinking water is more expensive than dumping it there.
Every time this bill has been proposed every major science organisation and scientist in the USA has opposed it. You'd think if it were 'good for science' then the scientists (remember most of them have nothing professionally to do with the EPA) would be cheering - not complaining !

They complain - because what the bill CLAIMS to do and what it is nakedly INTENT on doing have nothing in common with each other.

This bill is really very simple: it's Lamar Smith sucking off the Koch brothers, which is basically what he does for a living.

Re:Sounds great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a bill based on an understanding of science from people who've never worked in a scientific field.

No, your post sounds like an opinion based on an understanding of the bill from people who've never read the bill.

All research affected by HIPAA would be banned by this bill. Which is the majority of medical research.

Except, you know, the section of the amendment that specifically states that:

(3) Nothing in the subsection shall be construed as—
[...]
(B) superseding any nondiscretionary statutory requirement; or
[...]

You know, since HIPAA is a nondiscretionary statutory requirement . So no, they're not required to publish your medical record in order to use a study in which your medical records are part of the aggregate data set.

And furthermore, not all research is reproducible.

If NOBODY can reproduce your results, then it's a good bet that we shouldn't be building sweeping regulation regimes based on them. Your example of "the highest cosmic ray collision ever" is a poor one. What "reproducible" results mean in that context is that other people can witness events of similar energy levels using the same equipment and methods you used.

Of course, some things make it through peer review that are later shown not to be reproducible - or put more simply, wrong

And, of course, you're struggling not to also state the ugly truth: That there are numerous documented cases of scientists entirely falsifying their data set, and marching those falsified results through to publication with nobody even batting an eye in peer review, because the results confirmed existing biases and groupthink. This happens, even though you're twisting and turning trying to pretend it doesn't, and that every mistake in the data is just "honest error." Of course, even honest error makes it through peer review with a high level of frequency, which means that if you're going to pass sweeping regulations that will affect the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions (or even billions) of people, then you should make sure that the data is pretty solid.

A federal regulation banning publication in non-open-access journals and journals with exploitive fee schedules would force publishers hands by taking away the vast majority of their content.

Which would be a wonderful thing, but is completely and totally orthogonal to this discussion. The issue isn't that "all people can't easily access everyone else's data." The issue is that the EPA (and other government agencies) are making regulatory decisions that affect hundreds of millions of people, and in some cases are doing so based on very shaky data.

Re: Sounds great!

[silentcoder]

How exactly do you "independently reproduce" the data on a one-time event ? Most of this data is private medical data gathered under extremely specific situation after specific one-time events - to determine whether or not those events did harm and should be prevented in future.

There is no way to reproduce most of this data without flagrantly violating scientific and medical ethics anyway. "Patient had X level of lead in his blood, and showed symptoms Y and Z" is valid scientific data. But it's not reproducible because PUTTING X level of lead in somebody else's blood is a fucking crime against humanity !

Re: Sounds great!

[dwillden]

If that information is so restricted, then the EPA shouldn't be citing it in rule making. If they are going to impose a rule or regulation that will impact citizens and businesses, then those impacted must be able to see that science as well to challenge those rules.

Re: Sounds great!

[Renaissance Slacker]

One issue not pointed out - this move empowers any amateur crank to cherry pick outlying data points out of a study and say "SEE? They're lying to you! Since one Soviet paratrooper somehow survived a fall from 27,000 feet, it's safe to jump out of airplanes without a parachute!" Imagine what well-funded corporate deniers will do.

Re: Sounds great!

[ooloorie]

How exactly do you "independently reproduce" the data on a one-time event ?

If it is a one-time event and there is no physical evidence, just people's write-ups of it, that shouldn't be enough for the EPA to justify rules.

There is no way to reproduce most of this data without flagrantly violating scientific and medical ethics anyway. "Patient had X level of lead in his blood, and showed symptoms Y and Z" is valid scientific data. But it's not reproducible because PUTTING X level of lead in somebody else's blood is a fucking crime against humanity !

It is indeed scientific data, it is simply too weak to support scientific conclusions, let alone rules or laws. Hence the law.

Re: Sounds great!

[ooloorie]

You'd think if it were 'good for science' then the scientists (remember most of them have nothing professionally to do with the EPA) would be cheering - not complaining !

I wouldn't think that at all. The relationship between progressives and scientists is one of mutual worship, admiration, and support. That's why most scientists are Democrats and why Democrats love to give money to scientists.

The republicans have been pushing versions of this bill for years and years - and it has NOTHING to do with science, it's about trying to destroy the EPA because (annoyingly) EPA regulations cost money from their rich friends.

EPA regulations cost everybody lots of money, they limit growth, they cost jobs, and they result in loss of private property. Most environmental regulations should be made by the states, not the federal government. The EPA should be for rule making of last resort, for issues that are truly national and for which there is overwhelming evidence. The EPA has vastly overstepped those bounds and this is an attempt to rein them in. If this doesn't work, Congress may well abolish the EPA. The EPA only exists because Congress has chosen to delegate regulatory powers to it, and it can revoke that decision at any time.

Re: Sounds great!

[budgenator]

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. ... they are commercially forbidden from compliance on pain of retribution by the legal system

That is absolutely false, the only reason something needs to be licensed is because it is either trademarked, patented or copyrighted. Trademark would not be applicable; patents offer legal protection but require public disclosure so that someone "Skilled in the trade" can reproduce soi it can't be that.
That leaves copyright, but copyright only covers creative works and exclude facts, and data by it's very nature is a collections of facts.
Which brings us to the question, What The Fuck are you talking about?

Re: Sounds great!

[strikethree]

and sunlight is the best disinfectant.

I'm pretty sure chlorine trifluoride is more effective at killing germs.

Dead is dead. I am pretty sure that any living thing bombarded with gamma rays, x-rays, and infrared radiation will be just as dead as if it were exposed to chlorine trifluoride.

Not sure why the OP is claiming that CO2 is not a pollutant though. Any material/chemical/molecule/whatever that is undesired is a pollutant. Furthermore, you are 100% correct that CO2 is affecting the amount of heat being held within our planet, which is undesired.

Re:Sounds great!

[strikethree]

Rei,

Normally, you are a reasonably intelligent person who appears to want good things to happen. Something weird is going on here though:

You are arguing to allow secrets to guide public policy. I am unsure how they did such a mindfuck on you to where you are arguing against what you normally argue for. Perhaps it is the implied threat that your goals will not be achieved if you support this bill?

Regardless, take a step back for a moment and reexamine what is being proposed here. This is actually a good thing, even if it could enable some bad things. All data that guides public policies should only use publicly available data. To insist otherwise is to allow private corporations to guide policy based on studies that can not be examined for errors or plain old falsified data.

Re: Sounds great!

[rgbatduke]

Since I'm sure you will be trolled to death here, let me chime in and agree with you completely. Furthermore, let me add that the products -- and I mean all of them, papers, data, methods, etc. -- produced by government funded research should ALL be available freely to ALL Americans, and (because of the difficulty of a citizenship-based distribution system) to ALL of humanity. It is work done for hire that we paid for and don't need to pay for again. Time to end paywalled science altogether and re-open the scientific publication process to realize its full potential. If that forces us to re-evaluate how to publish and referee in the first place, well hey, even 340 (or so) year old traditions may actually have to give way before the advent of the Internet and instant global communications. Non-reproducibility, confirmation bias, and the enormous pressure to get positive, not null, results are also an open suppurating wound on the entire scientific community and are negatively impacting every aspect of science ESPECIALLY medical science.

I was calling for this almost a decade ago, and the issue needs to be addressed quite independent of partisan politics. Science should never be done on a "trust me" basis, especially not when there are special interests, corporate interests, political interests, commercial interests, and even personal interests galore that hinge on the results. It's not like we didn't just spend the last 40 years being told dietary cholesterol was the Devil Himself as far as coronary artery disease, in spite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary (such as drugs like Zetia that dropped cholesterol but had NO EFFECT on coronary artery disease rates) before the entire medical community finally got its act together and issued a mind-numbing "never mind, eat all the cholesterol you want" announcement a few years ago. Its not like the sugar lobby, the tobacco lobby, the all-drugs-are-evil lobby haven't successfully biased the course of government funded research for decades as well.

Science -- and really, everything and not just science -- should be conducted in the open light of day. It gains its strength FROM the fact that it is nominally reproducible and absolutely open to criticism and contradiction by further work. Nothing in the legislation is going to overturn HIPAA or require the release of patient names or personal data, and these are typically redacted anyway in any publication. What it WILL hopefully prevent is cherrypicking patient data (absolutely rampant), data dredging by idiots who have never heard of Bonferroni (see https://xkcd.com/882/), debacles such as the recent Arizona release of what amounts to synthetic pot by a company that has lobbied hard in that state to prevent its legalization, and yeah, the use in climate science of data without pedigree (something that is not so common anymore anyway since NASA already obeys the rules of this legislation but which once was a real problem). Will this affect "our" access and use of private satellite data? Possibly. But there are simple legislative and economic solutions to that as well, and we should be pursuing them.

I have to ask why anyone would want a special exception to the general rules of science to be made for the EPA, or NASA, or DOE, or NSF, or NIH funded research. "Black Box" data has no place in science. If I can't look at your apparatus, your methods, and your actual data and see what you did and how you did it, reproducibility is impossible. Assessing the probability that your result (in and of itself) is correct and reasonable becomes difficult. Without this, there is nothing to prevent people from just making up a spreadsheet of data with some made up error bars and publishing it to (say) get tenure and keep your job, and don't tell me that this never happens or I'll cite you a dozen cases where it happened and EVENTUALLY, the person who did it was caught. But nothing as spectacular as the cholesterol debacle. That one illustrates how a made up res

Re: Sounds great!

[Bartles]

Right. Far better to keep everything secret, have government rule by decree, and simply trust them.

Re: Sounds great!

[silentcoder]

>If it is a one-time event and there is no physical evidence, just people's write-ups of it, that shouldn't be enough for the EPA to justify rules.

Of course there is physical evidence of the event. But the impact on the victims - that evidence is in their bodies, what other evidence could possibly exist ? Do you deny that physical harm to a person is evidence that something can harm them ? And what if the person has since died ? Does the event stop having happened because the evidence was cremated ?

>It is indeed scientific data, it is simply too weak to support scientific conclusions, let alone rules or laws. Hence the law.

The law has, always had, and always MUST have a lower standard than science - because unlike science there IS such a thing as a legal truth. There's no such thing as a scientific truth. If it would have been good enough to cite in a court of law as evidence of harm, it's scientific evidence enough for a law. If actionable harm has been caused by something, that's evidence enough to make a preventative law and avert future harm.
There can just about never be such a thing as overreach here. These laws prevent cold-blooded, brutal murder of people who have ZERO opportunity to defend themselves. The single most critical reason for having any government at all - is to have laws of the kind the EPA enforces.

Re: Sounds great!

[budgenator]

How exactly do you "independently reproduce" the data on a one-time event ? Most of this data is private medical data gathered under extremely specific situation after specific one-time events - to determine whether or not those events did harm and should be prevented in future.

There is no way to reproduce most of this data without flagrantly violating scientific and medical ethics anyway. "Patient had X level of lead in his blood, and showed symptoms Y and Z" is valid scientific data. But it's not reproducible because PUTTING X level of lead in somebody else's blood is a fucking crime against humanity !

Why prey tell would you think it is appropriate for the Federal EPA to base a ruling one a "one-time event", wouldn't regulating a "one-time event" after the event be an oxymoron?

Your example is also bogus, it is perfectly expectable to take the researcher's data base and analyse it from a basis of;
"What is the mean and standard deviation of blood lead levels for people displaying Sx Y, Z and (Y+Z)"
and later follow it with,
"of people with a blood lead level of X, how many display SX Y, Z and (Y+Z)?"
If you have the raw data, it's much easier to integrate additional studies into the database on an apples to apples and oranges to oranges basis to yield more robust results.

Re: Sounds great!

[EndlessNameless]

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.

Re:Sounds great!

[Crashmarik]

Anything that will need regulation will inherently be reproducible if it's not it's B.S. not science.

Nice try.

How about climate change?
Do we need to reproduce an entire other Earth?

Being able to have the same data from year to year would be a start.

Re:Sounds great!

[rgbatduke]

If only I had mod points, I'd add to your +5 still further, sir AC. If only people who ranted above noted that no, it doesn't supercede HIPAA before making absurd allegations that it did, or that the EPA would itself be required to reproduce every piece of science it uses to arrive at its conclusions and rules, starting by reproducing Brahe's observations of planetary motion, Kepler's analysis, and Newton's solution just so it can use the law of gravitation when assessing the environmental impact of falling asteroids.

It is actually HIGH TIME they were held to the basic standard of science, because as it is one cannot even fight its star chamber edicts. Now, is everything it does bad? Of course not -- this bill doesn't mean that either. It just means that when it SAYS something is bad, it has be able to show that it is bad based on actual data that anybody can look at, obtained with methods that are openly published, and it has to show in some equally scientific way that its remedies to the problem (that is now proven to actually exist and be objectively serious) are at least scientifically effective if not cost-effective. How can this be a problem? How can this be viewed as some unreasonable burden? If only we held ALL government activity to such a standard! Drug laws would vanish overnight. People of alternative sexual orientation would be loudly ignored until and unless it is demonstrated scientifically that their sexual proclivities involve blood sacrifice of babies. But the commons could and will still be protected -- dumping mercury into our drinking water is an objectively demonstrably bad thing all the way down to some very small level indeed, and this permits cost-benefit analysis to be conducted on an objective basis.

Since even now a huge fraction of the artificial light we use comes from exciting mercury vapor (in both my laptop and the overhead lights in my office at this instant, for example) this issue is extremely relevant. In the real world we have to trade off many evils in order to realize a greater good. If we use incandescent lighting, the bulbs themselves have little impact but we literally burn a lot more stuff and spend in the long run a lot more money. If the EPA had completely banned mercury use ANYWHERE because all mercury used in e.g. a light bulb sooner or later makes its way into the water and/or biosphere, then we would have burned a lot more coal over the decade or so where CFL bulbs were available in parallel with incandescent. Coal (in addition to containing mercury on its own) releases bad things that cost money to remove and aren't always fully removable, and has an ecological cost to the commons mining it. It isn't OBVIOUS how to balance the interests, the costs, and the benefits here, but doing it without full transparency and open public debate is not a good solution no matter how good your intentions. The advent of LED bulbs makes this even more complex, as the LEDs are themselves doped with still OTHER toxic metals (less toxic than mercury, fortunately). They also use still less energy, and as economy of manufacturing scale kicks in so they are overwhelming cheaper as well in even a pretty damn short run, they will probably obsolete all other forms of bulb except for a few special use cases in short order, with or without regulation.

The point of which is, that decisions in the public interest, even ones in defense of the commons, are not necessarily "simple" -- they involve cost-benefit tradeoffs and often hurt a lot of people even as they (perhaps) help the majority. Government agencies in general, and to be frank government LAWS in general, should ALL be based on transparent, openly debated from a common set of assumptions and data, reasoning.

I'm frankly hopeful that this law, if passed, can be used to challenge each and every regulation throughout government based on religion. Republicans might find that what is really good medicine for all government agencies in their decision making process tastes bitter to them as it is even BETTER medicine for the legislative process itself.

Re: Sounds great!

[silentcoder]

>Why prey tell would you think it is appropriate for the Federal EPA to base a ruling one a "one-time event", wouldn't regulating a "one-time event" after the event be an oxymoron?

Only if the "one time event" had natural causes. If it was man-made then, by definition, it can happen again - and the PERFECT time to make a law against a bad thing is when it's only happened once so far. That's how you KEEP it a one-time-event.

Re: Sounds great!

[budgenator]

CO2 is causing climate change.

So show us the data, the raw unadjusted, non-quality controlled, un-infilled, non-normalized data.
Then tell us why you made the adjustments you made to get your data-product.
Now reproduce your data product using the algorithms you've documented to reproduce from the original data.

After that you can demonstrate whether or not the climate is changing in a manner that is unique and unprecedented and we can move on to causation.

Re:Sounds great!

[Rei]

HIPAA provides for anonymizing records for research

Perhaps you missed the "...and allow anyone who signs a confidentiality agreement to view redacted personal or trade information in data." in the summary?

Re: Sounds great!

[Rei]

Sounds like, just like the above poster, you missed the "...and allow anyone who signs a confidentiality agreement to view redacted personal or trade information in data." in the summary.

Re:Sounds great!

[Rei]

In a perfect world, of course. The reality is that this is not a perfect world. Huge amounts of data contain personally identifiable data, or are only available from private sources that consider their dataset to be of value and thus don't allow it to be publicly released. I wish this wasn't the way it is, but it is reality. I've worked in medical research before (hence the reason I brought up HIPAA). The concept that all work that can't have the dataset publicly released and anyone and their cousin can view is simply unthinkable. That would have been first off illegal, and second, highly immoral. And have a chilling effect on all research. We were working on schizophrenia research. Want to find something to blackmail a person with to their employer or in a court proceeding? Digging up that they're diagnosed with schizophrenia would probably be a good start.

Again: I wish that the reality was different, that all datasets contained no harmless information, and were all from publicly releasable sources. But it's just not the case. It's not such a perfect world. I fully, 100% support policies that mandate the release of all information that doesn't contain personal information and doesn't come from restrictive sources. And policies that mandate the choice of using open data vs. closed wherever there's something remotely equivalent as an option. But a lot of times there really is no open equivalent. Even with things that you'd think should be open data. To pick a random example, aircraft collect weather data as they fly (ACARS), which becomes the property of the airlines. Some of these airlines are under US jurisdiction, but most aren't, and thus bill doesn't mandate anything of private entities anyway, so it's irrelevant - the data is theirs, it's proprietary, and they see value in owning it. So it's generally made available only under proprietary licenses. It's stupid, and it absolutely shouldn't be like that, but what are you going to do - just omit a huge amount of data? How does that help anyone? There are whole countries who consider their met service data to be proprietary. Do you omit entire countries from your analysis? Electric utilities data on power usage, data from ships at sea, countless reems of internal data from industrial facilities.... do you just ignore all of it because you're not free ? You're ruining scientific accuracy if you do so. Anyone can contact the data owners and request permission to use it (generally under the same conditions / fee schedule as the original study got it), so it is reproducible, but not publicly releasable.

Re:Sounds great!

[budgenator]

Independently verified, doesn't mean the EPA has to do it, it means a Scientist that is independent from the original researcher has to do it before the EPA can make a finding that potentially costs Billions of dollars to the country.

Re:Sounds great!

[green1]

Maybe because real scientists WANT people to find the problems with it?

If there are problems with the data, it's better if people find the problems, than that they get swept under the rug and new laws are passed based on faulty data.

Re:Sounds great!

[budgenator]

Sounds like a bill based on an understanding of science from people who've never worked in a scientific field. All research affected by HIPAA would be banned by this bill. Which is the majority of medical research. All research involving external sources of proprietary data - which no researchers like using, but sometimes you have no choice - would also be banned.

Research cover by HIPAA would involve "personally identifiable data", most of the "personally identifiable data" is easily anonymized . Most Patients and subject sign release agreement without even reading them that allows data sharing, and the Verifying Researcher would simply sign a business agreement.

Worrying about HIPPA in an EPA finding should happen very very rarely, you would expect those concerns at the FDA much more often.

Re:Sounds great!

[gosand]

The point of which is, that decisions in the public interest, even ones in defense of the commons, are not necessarily "simple" -- they involve cost-benefit tradeoffs and often hurt a lot of people even as they (perhaps) help the majority. Government agencies in general, and to be frank government LAWS in general, should ALL be based on transparent, openly debated from a common set of assumptions and data, reasoning.

I'm frankly hopeful that this law, if passed, can be used to challenge each and every regulation throughout government based on religion. Republicans might find that what is really good medicine for all government agencies in their decision making process tastes bitter to them as it is even BETTER medicine for the legislative process itself.

While I agree with you in principle, and I think this bill can be a good thing, I have a sinking suspicion that it won't make much difference when it comes to making policy. At best, it is a misdirection. Our government (which happens to be Republican currently) will find a way to push their own agenda, regardless of what data there is. Look at climate change, and how that clear-cut data has been spun to point some opinions in the opposite direction. It's almost like having the data just leads to more smoke and mirrors. They can come to a conclusion based on "the data" and yell loud enough to drown out any further proof to the contrary. And this is by no means limited to the current administration, it happens all across our governmental machine.

Re:Sounds great!

[Obfuscant]

You see, "independently verified" is not spelled out, but the subtext (given the jackass who's pushing this pile of shit) means that any and all science would have to verified by the EPA.

This is the same bill that has come up before, and the same lies are appearing about it again. You say "have to be verified", but the bill actually says "CAN be verified" (emphasis mine.) Do you TRULY not understand the difference between "have to be" and "can be"?

This bill says "peer reviewed science is not good enough".

Bullshit. The bill says that all science used to make laws must be presented with enough data to be verifiable. It says nothing about "peer review", because "peer review" and "verified" are two very, very different things.

"Peer-reviewed science" means that the paper has gone out to a very limited number of presumed experts in the field for them to see if there are any obvious errors. They comment on how the figures are presented, are they clear, and do they show something relevant and important? Is there an obvious flaw in the scientific method? Were the results based on incorrect or inappropriate assumptions or equations? Did the scientist ignore existing precedent that would contradict his results? And, unfortunately, many reviewers are so biased that they skewer any paper that doesn't fit their world view. (I've seen papers come back from review where you can clearly identify the reviewer based on his comments.)

But if you think ANY of the reviewers of this "peer-reviewed science" are actually verifying the RESULTS by repeating the experiment, you are a fool. The reviewers do NOT get to look at the data unless it is already in the paper (and most is not), and they do little to no manipulation of any of the data to "review" it.

No, "peer-review" and "verify" are two different things. The law deals with the ability to verify. Not "must", just "can be". This is a Good Thing, and it allows for free and open science.

Re:Sounds great!

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

You don't have to name patients in medical research. In clinical trials, patients are assigned an ID (generally based on order of enrollment), and data is tied to that. Only a few people (or just one, depending on the size of the trial) actually have the sheet that tells you which ID goes with an actual name. Nothing says you have to publish that based on the other data.

Re: Sounds great!

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

"More effective" does not always mean "better". Chlorine trifluoride would be more effective at killing cancer too, but we don't want to start using it for that.

Re:Sounds great!

[Stephan Schulz]

We have this story right on the frontpage where an average biology graduate makes $31,000 a year.

If you follow your article to it's source, you can see that US$ 31000 is the salary of the average fresh biology bachelor. To work as a scientist in biology and the life sciences, a Ph.D. is essentially a requirement. A bachelor degree is a start, but hardly something that enables you to evaluate serious scientific reports. And biology is not the only subject - statisticians with a bachelor make around US$50000, . And those salaries do not include employer payroll taxes and benefits.

In words, that is One Million Dollars [youtube.com], or, with overheads, maybe around 5 qualified employees.

If the EPA's overhead is 84.5% for paperwork, not even novel science, it's time to end the program.

As pointed about, your salary costs are way off. And then you need to figure in office space and equipment, potentially lab space (and equipment), and yes, administrative and managerial overhead. For desk jobs, a factor of between 2 and 3 seems to be normal in the US - more in countries with a substantive social security system. For lab jobs, the factor is certainly a lot higher. So I doubt that "around 5 qualified employees" is far off even for a reasonably efficient organisation.

Re: Sounds great!

[NicknameUnavailable]

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

Nice try, but no. FOI requests of to science orgs occur because they are hiding something. Research coming from multinationals shouldn't even be allowed, but this is a baby step in the right direction. For years regulations have been pushed "because we say so" - that isn't democracy, at best it's oligarchy and most of the time it would fall more under an ochlocracy directed by a bunch of globalists with separate interests.

Re:Sounds great!

[Crashmarik]

Perhaps you missed how you can't use unanonymized data anyway ?

Or perhaps you missed how you can go to the census bureau and see all their results without seeing anything confidential.

Re: Sounds great!

[ooloorie]

The law has, always had, and always MUST have a lower standard than science - because unlike science there IS such a thing as a legal truth.

Quite the opposite: legal standards of evidence are higher in the legal system than for science. The legal system requires things like chain of evidence, well-defined formats for hearings and resolving conflicts, well-defined procedures, and stiff penalties for misrepresentations and carelessness. Most scientific papers are written with little accountability or liability, and often by people who don't even have formal credentials (graduate students).

There can just about never be such a thing as overreach here. These laws prevent cold-blooded, brutal murder of people who have ZERO opportunity to defend themselves. The single most critical reason for having any government at all - is to have laws of the kind the EPA enforces.

Quite the opposite: the EPA is largely redundant. Everybody's first defense against environmental injuries is the court system, followed by local and state regulatory agencies and legislatures. If something becomes important enough to rise to the level of the EPA, Congress should probably look at it anyway.

Your faith in EPA regulations is also foolish. A lot of what the EPA does amounts to a license to pollute; that is, companies can say "the EPA determined this is safe, so you need to put up with it". The EPA also causes enormous harm by taking away people's private property and livelihoods.

Do you deny that physical harm to a person is evidence that something can harm them ?

No, I deny that the observation of physical harm to a person is sufficient justification for the EPA to regulate anything. The EPA should only become active after a problem has shown up in numerous court cases and if local and state regulatory authorities are unable to handle it.

As I was saying, you have a paternalistic, progressive, proto-fascist view of government in which government is your guardian and your protector and you just submit to it for your own good and some mythical common good. That kind of view is shared by probably a third of Americans and a majority of Europeans. The rest of us will not stand for it. We want to deal with these issues primarily on an individual basis in the court system, or through the legislative branch. We tried to compromise on allowing "reasonable regulation" as a shortcut because it might be beneficial, but progressives have obviously abused those powers, so it's time to roll things back.

Re:Sounds great!

[rgbatduke]

No argument, but that process will occur independent of the data. Having the data out there at least makes it possible for people TO challenge conclusions based on it. Not just climate change data, although that is an excellent example. For example, the scaling of error bars in HADCRUT4 makes no sense at all, with error estimates in the temperature anomaly from the mid/late1800s being only three times as large as error estimates from the last decade. The error as represented in the DIFFERENCE in the anomaly estimates from the major anomaly products is already as large as their acknowledged error even in the present, making it almost certainly larger now than is acknowledged.

In the mid 1800s, Antarctica was terra incognita. Much of Africa was lightly explored, if explored at all. Central Asia (most of Tibet) was more or less inaccessible. Huge tracts of the Pacific Ocean had little to no systematic observation. El Nino had been neither observed nor named. The number of thermometers representing the globe was perhaps two or three orders of magnitude fewer than today. The quality of the records kept and methodology used and instruments used are nothing like as accurate as they are today. And yet total error then is only a factor of three larger then than now? I don't think so...

But it is not easy, not easy at all, to get the data even if you have the time, the money, and the inclination to challenge this to try to show that this absurdity (for statistically, that is almost certainly what it is, an absurdity, given that in general, error scales like 1/\sqrt{N} as the number of samples increases, with some fairly substantial multiplier for the lack of representation of almost all of the 70% of the Earth that was ocean and the entire continents without a single systematic measurement site or sampled only at a handful of places on the periphery.

God invented double blind, placebo controlled trials for a reason. Pesky humans find it all to easy to fool themselves, to find any patterns that they WANT to be true in pure noise that's all that they have to work with. We also LIKE to pretend that we know all about the Dinosaurs when we write textbooks on them and so on, which works really well until somebody finally makes a few discoveries that demonstrate that we don't even have the major divisions right or probable evolutionary trajectories right over a hundred million years or so (where even the correction may not be right, because we may never FIND the evidence that would let us GET it right difficult as it is to acknowledge it). Proxy-derived data is even worse, and even more susceptible to meddling and selection, since you have to START by making selections and those selections cannot avoid being made with assumptions that may be consciously or unconsciously biased or just plain wrong.

Even reproducibility won't rescue you from sufficiently entrenched bias, because your Bayesian priors that underlie the analysis may be wrong. If they are, it will show up (usually) in subtle ways -- like absurdly small errors signaling the inflation of a less noisy signal selected out of noisy data but reweighted to cover territory it cannot possibly be said to cover (which still happens in Antarctica, BTW) -- but fixing it may not even be possible. You cannot manufacture evidence that no longer exists or never existed in the first place.

Science often, even usually, does correct all of this stuff eventually, but it isn't quite as simple as some people seem to think, that a referee can run off and in ten minutes show that some paper they are refereeing is right or wrong. Lots of what ultimately proves to be crap gets through simply because the referee DOESN'T know what is right or wrong, but the result presented is "reasonable", the methodology clear, and it is up to future research to verify it or disprove it. Which may not happen for years to decades, even for hot button topics. I just read that "Dark Energy" may end up being an artifact of an approximation used in solving

Re: Sounds great!

[silentcoder]

The court system is reactive and expensive. Two things that make it completely fucking useless for the topic.

Re: Sounds great!

[balbeir]

... Most environmental regulations should be made by the states, not the federal government..

You seem to assume that no rivers cross state borders. They also should make it illegal for a tornado to cross a state border.

Re:Sounds great!

[Rei]

It requires the release of all data. It says nothing about anonymized data being fine.

I've worked in medical research before, schizophrenia studies based on MRI and fMRI. So you take scans and questionaires, and then you run them through a variety of anonymization processes. Because it's not just enough to hide someone's name from a MRI scan; you can take the DICOM and render it and show what the person's face actually looks like. So we used skull stripping algorithms. These were ANNs that were trained based on human manual skull stripping, because it's too much work (read: expensive) to have humans trim the skull of every single scan. So we get stripped brains out of it. We also used the ANNs to segment the brain into different regions - and from that you can do size, shape, etc studies.

But of course someone could contest whether the ANNs overstripped the skull. So what then? The skull stripping - the anonymization itself - was an algorithm. According to the bill, the raw data would either have to be released, or we couldn't do the research.

The raw (identifiable) data is always kept. It's compartmentalized, with each stage of the pipeline only passing on the data needed for its section. But you can't just get rid of the data. You can't get rid of the data on things like the questionaires either because these things almost always involve patient followups, crossreferencing records, and all sorts of other things. You compartmentalize, but you don't toss data. And you absolutely do not release it just because some random person wants to play amateur scientist rather than doing their own study and following HIPAA rules.

Re: Sounds great!

[ooloorie]

Science -- and really, everything and not just science -- should be conducted in the open light of day. It gains its strength FROM the fact that it is nominally reproducible and absolutely open to criticism and contradiction by further work.

Let me add two observations. First, I think one of the reasons Americans are increasingly souring on science in government is because it is being conducted in this way; the average American these days is smart enough to have figured out for themselves that "trust me, I'm a scientist" doesn't cut it anymore. You see similar things happen with other professions: people want reasons and evidence when they see their doctor, their lawyer, their accountant, their PC repair man. Second, the US government, as well as the US academic community, has a long and horrific history of misusing science to further political and personal agendas, and I think that also makes people suspicious. So, I agree: I think these kinds of laws actually strengthen science and the trust people have in science.

Re: Sounds great!

[ooloorie]

You seem to assume that no rivers cross state borders. They also should make it illegal for a tornado to cross a state border.

Where do you think I made any such assumption? Please point to it.

Re: Sounds great!

[ooloorie]

The court system is reactive and expensive. Two things that make it completely fucking useless for the topic.

And who do you think enforces EPA regulations? That's right: the court system.

Re:Sounds great!

[soc_cost_priv_gains]

I agree but this should not just be limited to the EPA. The CIA needs to publish their methodology to the public so we can scrutinize it for accuracy lest we end up in another war based on dubious evidence ( see Iraq war ).

Re:Sounds great!

[Obfuscant]

All research affected by HIPAA would be banned by this bill.

Not true. So much not true that I cannot imagine it is untrue by simple mistake. This same untruth popped up (and from the same person, IIRC) the last time and was refuted ad nauseum, so how it could arise again now leaves me scratching my head as to the agenda.

In fact, this bill WOULD NOT BAN RESEARCH OF ANY KIND.

Any claims that this bill would ban research are simply ridiculous.

All research involving external sources of proprietary data - which no researchers like using, but sometimes you have no choice - would also be banned.

Ditto untrue.

What might be HINDERED is the use of such research to create new regulations. I don't think that's a problem. The government shouldn't be making scientific-based regulations based on science that the government itself cannot know, and cannot be told to other scientists. "I have super secret data that proves that we need to create more laws..." is not acceptable.

And furthermore, not all research is reproducible.

Then it isn't science.

"Hey, I just detected the highest energy cosmic ray collision ever in my detector, here's my paper showing proof of the detection!" "Sorry, unless some other team can reproduce the same cosmic ray event in their own detector.... "

That's not what "verifiable" or "reproducible" means. "Can someone build a similar detector" doesn't mean every detector will make identical measurements of transient phenomena.

What is required is the data that shows that a specific event of specific type and with specific properties occurred at a specific time and date and with a sensor of a specific type, such that other scientists who have similar equipment can look through their records to see if they see something that matches. Or so that others in the field can build a sensor that would catch it the next time. That's science.

Cold fusion shows the kind of crap and moneywasting that takes place when people don't provide sufficient data to verify results.

Of course, some things make it through peer review that are later shown not to be reproducible

This bill has nothing to do with "peer review".

On the other hand, if their goal is to require that all results actually be reproduced before publication...

This bill has nothing to do with what can and cannot be published. It does not require that any studies BE reproduced, even.

Re:Sounds great!

[pipingguy]

Yes, I agree. I put that part in quotes because it's a famous statement from a climate "scientist" (Phil Jones) over 10 years ago.

“Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

Here are the current top fifteen climate science reasons for not disclosing data or code:

15. It’s on a diskette somewhere, but I don’t know where.
14. If we get a good climatic story from a chronology, we write a paper using it. That is our funded mission! The rejected data are set aside and not archived.
13. A source code request by a reviewer is unprecedented in the 28 years since I founded the journal.
12. It’s on our FTP site, but I’ve forgotten the location.
11. His research is published in the peer-reviewed literature which has passed muster with the editors of those journals and other scientists who have reviewed his manuscripts. You are free to your analysis of climate data and he is free to his.
10. With regard to the additional experimental results that you request, our view is that this goes beyond an obligation on the part of the authors.
9. It’s password protected.
8. It’s the property of the originating author.
7. It will be available after we publish an article.
6. We’re planning to publish another article.
5. As an ex- marine I refer to the concept of a few good men. A lesser amount of good data is better without a copious amount of poor data stirred in.
4. I’ve misplaced it.
3. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.
2. Giving them the algorithm would be giving in to the intimidation tactics that these people are engaged in.
1. No reply

https://climateaudit.org/2005/...

Re: Sounds great!

[Immerman]

And how many times do you suppose we can do that before foreign companies simply stop sharing their data with us in the first place?

Re: Sounds great!

[Immerman]

Sure, *if* sunllght kills something, something more effective won't kill it any deader. "More effective" doesn't mean it kills stuff any deader, but that it kills a lot more stuff. Because there's an awful lot of pathogens that don't mind sunllght at all, but will be killed quite easily by something like chlorine bleach. Heck, there's stuff like tardigrades that doesn't suffer appreciably from prolonged exposure to the vacuum and unshielded direct sunlight and cosmic radiation of space.

Re: Sounds great!

[Immerman]

Maybe because it's been repeatedly shown that it's usually fairly simple to "de-anonymize" personal data, even assuming significant effort has been put into anonymizing it in the first place. And replacing "Mr. Barry Johnson" with "Patient 12245" doesn't even begin to qualify.

Re: Sounds great!

[Immerman]

That's great for federally funded research, but what about the majority?

Re: Sounds great!

[LeftCoastThinker]

If global warming really is a global crisis, I would think everyone would be shouting their data from the mountaintops (metaphorically) rather than hiding them behind paywalls and copyright laws. Also fairly certain that there are ZERO companies, foreign or domestic who actually produce research who are not funded in part or whole by governments, who have zero interest in restricting the data that they paid to have collected.

Re: Sounds great!

[LeftCoastThinker]

Nice sock puppet downmods to my post.

Pretty sure the US pays for the vast majority of climate research, both locally and globally.

Elsevier is a $2B/year mega corp that steals research paid for by taxpayers and it needs to be destroyed, by law or force if necessary, and I am confident that the Netherlands will agree that Elsevier is a criminal cartel stealing the research results paid for by taxpayers the world over and then selling them back to everyone else. The fact that they use publishing requirements of universities against essentially everyone (researchers, reviewers, readers) is even more damning. If the Netherlands doesn't like it, the US can unilaterally declare all their content nationalized, since the US paid for nearly all of the research to be done in the first place. If the Netherlands still throws a fit, we can ship them a few thousand metric tons of pot or ordinance, their choice.

Going forward to fix this mess, all US grants must require publication in open source media as well as the Library of Congress to prevent this ridiculous form of information theft by foreign entities or corporations.

You think CO2 is causing climate change. There are 3 main CO2 bands of IR absorption at wavelengths 1388, 667, 2349 cm-1 (HITRAN) and these are already saturated at current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Infra Red measurements from space show that the atmosphere is opaque at these wavelengths. I have had people point to Venus and say "look how hot the CO2 makes it on Venus" And yes, it is hot on Venus, but Venus receives 2600 W/sqmeter vs Earth at 1100 W/sqmeter and it's atmosphere is 97% CO2 vs our atmosphere at 0.04% CO2. So no, I don't think CO2 is causing climate change, and have yet to see any proof that it is (lab proof, not hand waiving/correlation vs causation observations that do not have any means of controlling for the natural change of the global climate).

                "and sunlight is the best disinfectant."

    " I'm pretty sure chlorine trifluoride is more effective at killing germs."

I'm pretty sure I said best, not most powerful. Go ahead and soak in some chlorine trifluoride and let me know how that goes for you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Sunlight kills just about all viruses, bacteria and fungi in short order and is not overly harmful to surfaces, pets or humans, and is only mildly carcenogenic (it takes many years of daily exposure).

Re: Sounds great!

[Immerman]

For global warming, they mostly have. Which is why it's easy for everyone competent to analyze the data to agree that there's a problem. (Though of course there's plenty of individuals that *aren't* competent to do so creating ridiculous scientific-sounding counterarguments)

Medical data on patients that can be used to establish environmental hazards? Less so.

Re: Sounds great!

[LeftCoastThinker]

See my post above:

"You think CO2 is causing climate change. There are 3 main CO2 bands of IR absorption at wavelengths 1388, 667, 2349 cm-1 (HITRAN) and these are already saturated at current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Infra Red measurements from space show that the atmosphere is opaque at these wavelengths. Our atmosphere is at 0.04% CO2 and already opaque at those wavelengths. So no, I don't think CO2 is causing climate change, and have yet to see any proof that it is (lab proof, not hand waiving/correlation vs causation observations that do not have any means of controlling for the natural change of the global climate)."

On the other hand, CO2 is essential for all life on this planet, hardly the description of a pollutant. If you were to build a machine that consumes and captures all CO2 on the planet, you would wipe out all life in a mater of months, and with the death of all plant life, the planet temperature would soar to desert levels at lower lattitudes. So the real question that a scientist would ask is if zero CO2 kills all life on the planet, and CO2 at current levels already blocks all the outbound radiation that it can, what exactly are we afraid of with CO2 levels? A real scientist might look at (OMG) scientific studies done on CO2 levels for plants and find that they love the stuff at nearly any level up to something like 20% atmosphere (that's 200,000 ppm for those who are bad at math), and that CO2 only becomes noticeable for animals at around 1000 ppm (0.1%). https://www.kane.co.uk/knowled... So we could literally double our CO2 levels with no effect on outbound radiation or human comfort. (CO2 has gone from an estimated 335ppm to 380ppm at most in the last 100 years; the older data has been cherry picked, but there is a lot of pre-industiral revolution data showing atmospheric CO2 levels in the 400ppm range). If you are truly interested to learn more about earlier CO2 measurements, this paper has some very interesting HISTORICAL FACTS that have been for the most part ignored by the climate change orthodox fanatics because it doesn't fit their narrative or agenda (note this is not the practice of good scientists). https://friendsofscience.org/a...

Re: Sounds great!

[LeftCoastThinker]

Best and most powerful are not the same thing. As I noted above, try rubbing some bleach on your skin and get back to me. Does sunlight kill absolutely everything? No. Most things? Yes. Is it a good balance of disinfectant power and harmlessness to the environment/pets/your skin? Yes.

Does everyone on /. not understand what the saying "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." means? Apparently...

Re: Sounds great!

[LeftCoastThinker]

LOL Anon, I love the name and echo your sentiments.

Re:Sounds great!

[Crashmarik]

It requires the release of all data..

All except it doesn't

`(3) Nothing in the subsection shall be construed as--
                        ``(A) requiring the Administrator to disseminate scientific
                and technical information;
                        ``(B) superseding any nondiscretionary statutory
                requirement;

Re: Sounds great!

[Immerman]

Nope - just the politicians, talk show hosts, chemists, psychologists, etc,etc,etc that feel they're competent to comment on a complex topic completely outside their area of expertise.

Go ahead, find me someone who's actually spent a decade or two studying climate, *and* who isn't on the payroll of a fossil fuel company who says we don't have a problem. Heck, even the researchers for Exon, Shell, etc. agreed that fossil carbon was a major problem in their (formerly) secret studies - the counterarguments were complete fabrications created to sustain the business.

Meanwhile, lots of legitimate researchers have come up with other mechanisms for global warming - but even they (mostly) don't deny that fossil carbon is a massive contributor.

Re: Sounds great!

[radarskiy]

"Your view that we should"

I will thank you to note that no where did I make any statement about the way things *SHOULD* be, only about how there are. Any claim that you make about my preferences is speculation on your part.

Re: Sounds great!

[slashrio]

If Prof. Beaker publishes an unexpected result with large implications, a lot of other scientist will try to refute, refine, or reaffirm that result, without the EPA ever stepping in.

And where do these scientists get their funding? Prof. Beaker might have been funded by, let's say, very big pharmaceutical industries with a direct interest in the outcome, and Prof. Beaker might be depending for 90% on that kind of funds.
Now, who is going to pay the independent scientists to reproduce the research?

In other words: dream on, 'science' doesn't work the way you describe it. Maybe it should, I agree, but it doesn't.

Re: Sounds great!

[slashrio]

...it's Lamar Smith sucking off the Koch brothers...

That was Hedy Lamar.
No, jokes aside, how are the Koch brothers interested in publishing secret corporate data?

Re: Sounds great!

[slashrio]

And if we can bust even just the Elsevier monopoly...

Support science-hub.

Re: Sounds great!

[silentcoder]

They aren't. They are interested in rendering it unusable in order to castrate the EPA.
They want to poison people for money, so they want to deprive the EPA of the evidence that the poison is poisonous.

Re: Sounds great!

[slashrio]

I thought it worked the inverse way: If an industry wants to apply a chemical, they have to prove scientifically that it's safe. Don't they want to publish that science, too bad, the substance will be forbidden until they will. Or is that too naive?

Re: Sounds great!

[silentcoder]

Thats how you would think it works eh ? Sadly no. Any chemical dumped any-old-how is legal unless specifically forbidden by a law or regulation. And the EPA is only allowed to make such regulations after obtaining scientiffic evidence of harm - even then outright bans are reserved for only the most severe 'no safe dosage exists' stuff like lead - others they can only limit how much you are allowed to dump, or how you are required to dispose of it. Sadly even this pro-business, anti-citizen system is still deemed to much of a regulatory 'burden' by the wealthy donors of republican representatives.
So they kick back like mad. We had proof all lead is deadly in 1955. We had proof, undeniable physical proof that the natural lead level of the atmosphere is zero - from the greatest expert on lead detection in the world - in 1960. We finally managed to get a law against it in 1985. How many millions of people died to safe oil companies a few pennies per tonne ?
And yet those pennies are so sorely missed that they will do anything they can to gutt the EPA even further.
This bill has no intention of getting anything published - the EPA already publishes everything it is legally allowed to. This bill is written to make the information they cannot publish unusable and effectively legalize every known people killer when the evidence that it killed people is their private medical data.

Thos bill is nothing but a blatant attempt to make it legal for rich people to pour arsenic in your drinking water. But people do nlot like it when governments let rich people do things which would get you and me the (fulle deserved) death penalty on a terrorism charge... so they have to use underhanded tricks like pretending its about scientific integrity. Lamar Smith is the creationist moron who took a snowball to congress and claimed it disproves climate science. The man does not give a fuck about science - on the contrary he despises science and scientists. If he wanted to defend the scientiffic method he would first have to learn what it is. He thinks it means 'read the bible'. Simce the bible does not mention hexavalent chromium it cannot possibly be a real bad thing ?

Re: Sounds great!

[Stephan Schulz]

If Prof. Beaker publishes an unexpected result with large implications, a lot of other scientist will try to refute, refine, or reaffirm that result, without the EPA ever stepping in.

And where do these scientists get their funding? Prof. Beaker might have been funded by, let's say, very big pharmaceutical industries with a direct interest in the outcome, and Prof. Beaker might be depending for 90% on that kind of funds. Now, who is going to pay the independent scientists to reproduce the research? In other words: dream on, 'science' doesn't work the way you describe it. Maybe it should, I agree, but it doesn't.

If Prof. Beaker is Prof. Beaker, he will be paid by a university, and he will most likely have tenure, so his personal income is safe - this is what the tenure system is all about. And his additional research funding will come from a large number of different sources - from the NSF, from NASA or ESA, from the European Union or the Chinese Academy of Sciences. And, of course, potentially also from industry partners. But not all Beakers get their money from the same sources. See e.g. the sad Andrew Wakefield story - which eventually got corrected, just as expected.

Re: Sounds great!

[slashrio]

Don't move the goal posts.
I mentioned funding, not salary, so your post is worthlessly based on your erroneously (but probably purposefully--see below) twisting of thoughts.

And don't try to sneak in a sneer to a supposedly anti-vaxxer, as he isn't.
The only thing Wakefield advised was to postpone the measles component in the MMR with 6 months to (best) 1 year. Not to stop vaccinating altogether.
And that stupid link to non-journalistic hit man Brian Deer is ridiculous. Deer isn't even remotely a scientist yet his 'article' got published in the BMJ.
The same setup as with the reproduction of the Monsanto lab-rat test results by Seralini, clearly showing cancer caused by the application of RoundUp, whose article was retracted by Elsevier--against there own rules for retraction--after a phone call (and probably money) by Monsanto: The science has to be pushed aside in favor of money interests.
Chemical, Oil, Pharmaceutical and Tobacco industries (to mention a few) are psychopathic monsters without regard for anything that has to do with life, and it shows.
And apparently you're their shill.

Re: Sounds great!

[LeftCoastThinker]

Well, for starters, I am a thermal engineer with over 20 years of experience. As far as a climate scientist, try John Coleman, he has about 60 years of experience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If you have a truly open mind, you might want to read this article on the majority farce: http://www.nationalreview.com/...

If you really want some hard science, from first a first principles perspective, the temperature of the planet is driven by the energy received from the sun plus the energy released on the planet (fossil fuels/nuclear/etc.) minus the energy stored by the planet (plant and animal biomass changes) minus the energy radiated out to space. The earth radiates heat to space which is essentially at absolute zero with essentially a 100% view factor (black body radiation). The incident energy from the sun is more or less constant over time (1100 W/m^2). The big concern is changing the emissivity of the atmosphere or surface which affects the equation Qdot=(emissivity)*(Stephan-Boltzman constant)*Area*(Tabs^4). The area of the planet and Stephan-Boltzman constant are essential unchanged. Note that if the atmosphere changes the emissivity of the planet by 20%, the energy radiated is changed by 20%. However, if the global temperature increases by 1C, the amount of energy released increases by 95,054,975 times (assuming a global average temperature of 14C or 287K: 288K^4-287K^4). So on the one hand we have a theoretical, potential emissivity change of around 0.2 and the "climate scientists" are acting like chicken little, but on the other hand, if the global temperature goes up a SINGLE DEGREE the radiated energy goes up 95,054,975 times. In my book, 0.295,054,975 ( means massively smaller) and therefore AGW is highly unlikely and the planet changing temperature as we know it always has based on a multitude of factors for the most part unrelated to human activities.

BTW, CO2 already completely blocks IR radiation in the 3 bands that it absorbs and therefore adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will not change the emissivity of the atmosphere. A cloudy day can block 60% of the incoming solar energy and a cloudy night can change the emissivity of the planet by 75%

Re: Sounds great!

[Immerman]

Umm, no. Recheck your math. You're looking at the difference, when you should be looking at the ratio.

Using your own equation, a one degree C increase in temperature increases the radiated energy of the planet by 288^4 / 287^4 = 1.014, or 1.4%, where are you getting 95,054,975 from? (Qfinal/Qoriginal = Tfinal^4 / Toriginal^4)
To get a 20% increase in radiated energy requires 1.20^(1/4) =1.0466, or 4.66% increase in planetary temperature, which would be 287*0.0466 = 13.4 degrees C.

As for CO2 completely blocking IR, that's bullshit - It's true that between water and CO2 the atmosphere is almost completely opaque to IR, yet the IR still escapes. Why? Because every time a gas molecule absorbs a photon it also re-emits it, and there's a 50/50 chance that it will be emitted upwards. Rayleigh scattering in action - the same effect that causes our basically white sun to look yellow while the sky glows blue - water and CO2 also absorb the blue light from the sun, but the light still makes it through eventually, just in a very diffused form as it bounces between molecules in the air. The big difference being that not all the blue light makes it through, since much gets bounced back into space, while any IR that gets bounced back to the surface will eventually get re-emitted to try again.

It's rather like shining a light through a separated stack of 50/50 silvered mirrors - adding more CO2 is analogous to adding more layers mirrors - light that would have previously passed through the top one and escaped into space now has an additional chance of being reflected by the extra mirrors, so that it spends longer bouncing between mirrors (heating the atmosphere), and a better chance of getting bounced all the way back down to the surface again.

Re: Sounds great!

[Immerman]

Sorry, never mind the "where are you getting 95,054,975 from?" I missed that when I changed my introductory line after realizing where it was coming from.

Re: Sounds great!

[Luthair]

A weather man is not a climate scientist, they're predicting very localized weather based on what they're seeing nearby.

Re: Sounds great!

[LeftCoastThinker]

So he has 60 years of experience and somehow spending 3 years working as a professors bitch on some super small segment of a phenomena makes you more competent? (That's all it takes to get a PhD these days, I have seen it.) I believe he also holds a degree in climatology though. And what exactly makes you a climate scientists? A degree? BS? MS? PhD? Working at a research institute funded to research global warming?... You might want to rethink your position.

Re: Sounds great!

[LeftCoastThinker]

Talking about percentages is a mistake. I am not talking about the ratio, I am talking about the energy radiated from the planet into space. Change the emissivity by 20% and you multiply that through the equation f(T)*(Emissivity-0.2)= 20% decrease in energy radiated (or alternatively multiply your original equation by 0.8) (this is for demonstrative purposes, pretty sure even obscene CO2 levels of 1000 PPM don't lower global emissivity by anything close to 20% in the climate models I have seen). Alternatively, bump up the global temperature by 1C, Your outgoing radiation energy is MULTIPLIED by 95,054,975. Thats not the energy delta, that is the delta in the T^4 multiplier. On the one hand you have multiplication by 0.8, on the other, multiplication by 95,054,975. That is why all the global warming chicken little's running around have to have some catastrophic, amplifying, self re-enforcing effect that craters the emissivity to essentially zero to get global warming.

The caveat here is that if you get a very low emissivity (below 15-20%) small absolute changes in emissivity can have a large net effect because the %of emissivity change is large (for example at 10% emissivity, if you lose 5% that is a 50% reduction in outbound energy) but all human life will be dead from a poisoned atmposhere long before we get into those ranges of emissivity and there is absolutely no way to get there with CO2.

Regarding CO2, you seem to not understand radiation at all. IR is a spectrum that runs from 0.8 um to 1000 um. CO2 absorbs THREE WAVELENTHS IN THE IR SPECTRUM and is essentially TRANSPARENT outside of those wavelengths. I did not say that the atmosphere was opaque in IR, just those three wavelengths. Each object radiates IR based on it's temperature, and any IR (including IR re-emitted by CO2) outside of those wavelengths goes straight through CO2 with no interaction (it has to do with the molecular bonds and how they match up with the various wavelengths, from what I remember). The point is though that adding more CO2 won't block more than the 100% of those three bands that are already absorbed.

Re: Sounds great!

[Immerman]

I'm beginning to suspect that you're intentionally trying to cloud the issue.
As soon as you say MULTIPLIED, we're talking percentages, and your multiplication factor better not have any units in it. Yours does. If I'm currently radiating 100W, and increase to 120W, the multiplier is 1.2, not 20W.

> Alternatively, bump up the global temperature by 1C, Your outgoing radiation energy is MULTIPLIED by 95,054,975. Thats not the energy delta, that is the delta in the T^4 multiplier.
Exactly - the delta, as in the absolute change in, NOT the multiplying factor. That delta has units of K^4 - multiply it by the other factors and you'll get the delta in the energy output, NOT the multiplication factor. To get the multiplication factor you'll need to divide by the original value to get the percentage increase, which is:
287K^4 = 6,784,652,161
and 95,054,975 / 6,784,652,161 = 0.014, or 1.4%

Here's my math, please point out exactly where you think I'm wrong
Lets say initial radiated energy is Qinitial, and post-heating radiated energy is Qheated, and will be some multiplying factor F times the original radiation. F is the multiplier we're discussing
1) Qheated = F * Qinitial
solving for F gets us:
1b) F = Qheated / Qinitial

Plugging in your equation:
  Q=(emissivity)*(Stephan-Boltzman constant)*Area*(Tabs^4)
Gives us
2) F = [ (emissivity)*(Stephan-Boltzman constant)*Area*(Tabs_heated^4) ] / [ (emissivity)*(Stephan-Boltzman constant)*Area*(Tabs_inital^4) ]
and since everything in your equation is a roughly constant except the temperature, that will simplify to
2b) F = (Tabs_heated^4) / (Tabs_initial^4)

Plug in 288K and 287K respectively and again, you get that factor of a 1.014, or a 1.4% increase, total.

As for CO2 - you're probably right about the absorption bands - What I've read suggests that the effect has a broader band, but I haven't seen any explanation for it, so perhaps it's an oversimplification. Regardless, you're missing the point that nothing is blocked, it's scattered - every photon absorbed by a molecule is almost immediately re-emitted at the same frequency. And the stronger the scattering effect, the more IR makes it back down to the surface. And scattering *does* increase with density.

I don't have a problem ...

[CaptainDork]

... with it.

Good science withstands close scrutiny and is dam hard to deny.

As for personal information, it can be redacted.

Re: I don't have a problem ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You, obviously, did not read the article. Personal, redacted info can be viewed by ANYONE who signs an non-disclosure agreement.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to deny by people who are being honest - so practically no one in office today, and definitely not the ones pushing this.

Having it be "replicable" creates the burden of doing things twice, which adds delays and costs.

Meanwhile the opposition:
    - hires shills to generate contradictory data in rigged or irrelevant experiments
    - keeps saying "it isn't proven" so that later the voting public remembers only that
    - makes doing the research illegal or impractical by denying access

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[slack_justyb]

The problem isn't scrutiny. The EPA also has to deal with medical issues that arise from environmental issues. The problem is there's currently a law that restricts medical information being handed out in a manner that agrees with the language of this proposal. Simply put, it would be impossible for the EPA to make rules on certain issues without running afoul of confidentiality laws, but that's really simplifying the process that they are outlining. There's ways to get it all to mesh well but those methods can take several years of legal paperwork which basically means that scientist will need to get lawyers at the ready should they decided to publish anything that *might* be peer reviewed.

This isn't a law hoping to add more scrutiny, this is a law to make scientific research take longer than a two term president before it even hits the peer review stage. The idea is that if science starts looking like it might hurt an industry, on the next presidential cycle, the opposing party can get someone in that will defund the whole thing, thus delaying it another four to eight years. It's entire purpose is to lengthen the process to outlandish time frames, that Congress in all of it's slow to react to anything, will have time to mount a political opposition to.

So yeah, taking a two year research project and extending it to something to the tune of twenty years isn't something I'd be so receptive to. However, it is worth pointing out, that the constant defunding of science in the US will just ultimately push scientist to find funds elsewhere. There is no shortage of nations willing to pay top dollar for people who can innovate. The US isn't anywhere near the tipping point, but we're not going in a direction that really encourages researchers to learn here and more importantly *stay* here. A lot of folks in science could not care less about politics and would greatly like it for Congress to bind it to being political. Basically tying research to Presidential schedules runs counter to that whole idea.

But who knows, maybe the whole legal process will become streamlines with zero butt-hurt changes from Congress along the way and lawyers and scientist will be in good company and all of the road blocks that I mentioned will never come to pass, who knows!?

Re: I don't have a problem ...

[msauve]

Fine. Bitch about the collection of personal information, not about the release of information used to regulate our lives.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[Ol Olsoc]

... with it.

Good science withstands close scrutiny and is dam hard to deny.

As for personal information, it can be redacted.

Do not underestimate our power of denial. Laws of physics do not stand up to us. And we're going to take care of HIPPA as well. Privacy is so overrated, and if someone had to get treatment for STD's or any other embarassing personal thing, well they shouldn't have gotten them in the first place.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[CaptainDork]

The USA, as a group of citizens, is dunber than a box of rocks.

Recall that they had Waxahachie and lost the opportunity to be the Cern and find the Higgs first.

Texas would have been a major center for the world's greatest talents and would have gained all the logistical support business that comes with it.

Instead, we will get the Young Earth theory, climate change denial, and increasing poverty, crime, and drug overdoses.

I'm not worried at all about the decline of American science.

America is off the rails, driven insane by greed.

Like you said, scientists don't need no steenkin' country.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[interkin3tic]

Good science withstands close scrutiny and is dam hard to deny.

And yet some 50 years after it was proven, the link between smoking and cancer was still "Well, we don't really know, do we?"

Science withstands scrutiny and skepticism, not financially motivated ignorance. Industries that make money on the tragedy of the commons paid for these laws and Lamar Smith. This isn't scrutiny.

Replicate, one way or the other, the greenhouse effect on a planetary level. You can't. Guess the EPA has no business regulating greenhouse emissions. If it were real science, we'd have multiple earths we'd be testing on.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[CaptainDork]

Your logic is tiresomely old or sarcastically humorous.

In either case, it fails.

Following that reasoning, a victim of robbery shouldn't have possessed any items of value.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[Ol Olsoc]

Your logic is tiresomely old or sarcastically humorous.

In either case, it fails.

Following that reasoning, a victim of robbery shouldn't have possessed any items of value.

Yes me hearty, sarcasm. Looks like I might have been a Poe.

Because I do know some folks who believe that sort of thing.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[khallow]

We still have tobacco because

We still have tobacco because people want to smoke it.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[hackwrench]

Then why did you not cite the portion of the bill you believe does this?

Re: I don't have a problem ...

[hackwrench]

I read the article several times. I came up with a different interpretation of what it says. Defrnd your interpretation or retract your statement.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[hackwrench]

And the support of that statement is?

Re: I don't have a problem ...

[hackwrench]

You are obviously unaware there are two articles, and you appear to relay on statements made in the second not backed by facts.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[hackwrench]

If there is such a law, cite it and not just allude to it. Also cite the specific language of this bill you believe conflits

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[hackwrench]

Privacy is overrated. If people had to defend themselves from the attacks they instead rely on privacy to protect them from, they wouldn't be so quick to attack.

Re: I don't have a problem ...

[Z00L00K]

And the US missing out on the accelerator was because a senator wanted to know if he could find god with it and approve the funding in that case.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[Raenex]

The USA, as a group of citizens, is dunber than a box of rocks.

I imagine most could spell dumber or use the built-in spell checker on their browser.

Recall that they had Waxahachie [scientificamerican.com] and lost the opportunity to be the Cern [wikipedia.org] and find the Higgs first.

So?

Texas would have been a major center for the world's greatest talents and would have gained all the logistical support business that comes with it.

Sounds good for Texas, but it's debatable if the US taxpayers as a whole would have received a return on their investment.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[Major Blud]

Recall that they had Waxahachie [scientificamerican.com] and lost the opportunity to be the Cern [wikipedia.org] and find the Higgs first.

The USA is one of the leading contributors to the LHC, spending over $500 million towards it's construction and operation.
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/...

Texas would have been a major center for the world's greatest talents and would have gained all the logistical support business that comes with it

What makes you think it isn't?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[peragrin]

No you know some folks that believe privacy is over rated for every One but themselves. If you started telling people their private secrets they would flip out.

A lot of conservatives believe that rules should apply to only to themselves.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[Ol Olsoc]

No you know some folks that believe privacy is over rated for every One but themselves. If you started telling people their private secrets they would flip out.

A lot of conservatives believe that rules should apply to only to themselves.

Wait - do you mean apply to everyone but themselves?

I 'have long applied the "Who''s yelling loudest" tool to people. And it works pretty well.

I'm always suspicious of the upstanding citizen who rails on about homosexuals, or family values. These people tend to have inner demons that cause them to project. Some times it's because they know they have that problem, and are trying to stop. Other times just because they think the kink is a little more fun when it's really dirty or sick.

I've always said, The devil will appear as a man of the cloth, and the traitor will wrap himself in the flag.

And these folk might rue the day they put up a profit mechanism that might expose their own "issues"

Re: I don't have a problem ...

[Bartles]

How did the EPA get the private medical records without violating medical privacy laws? Anything the EPA can view, we can view.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[slack_justyb]

HR1430 amends 42 USC 4363 sec 6b paragraph two adds the following.

(2) The redacted information described in paragraph (1)(C) shall be disclosed to a person only after such person signs a written confidentiality agreement with the Administrator, subject to guidance to be developed by the Administrator.

By all means you can look up 42USC 1320 and 45CFR Part 162 to see some of the process that would be required by paragraph two here. This would also seem to give the administrators some ability to setup a rule making process so lone as it ran parallel to established law.

Also, just FYI, there's a thing called Google, you should try it.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[interkin3tic]

There was a lot of BS about the link to cancer though. Their strategy was diversified, they realized that congress would be swayed by jobs in tobacco districts, not pseudoscience. But you have to admit there were a lot of people up until the 90's at least who were fooled by pro-tobacco FUD about the link to cancer. There were smokers who were convinced tobacco wasn't bad for you. They weren't getting that from their doctors or real scientists or infowars.

Likewise, big coal is whining about jobs jobs jobs won't someone think of the poor coal miners, nevermind we're the ones firing them and replacing them with more automation. Running prime time commercials of "Climate change isn't really real" is likely to backfire. That doesn't mean they're not pursuing lies in parallel.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[khallow]

So what? Freedom means the freedom to do stuff that's harmful to yourself and/or disliked by others. The earlier poster's assertion that it was some economic "jobs" argument that kept tobacco products going is absurd. It was the demand for tobacco products which kept them going.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[CaptainDork]

Nitpicking is all the reach you have?

Taxpayers don't make profits.

If they did, the national debt wouldn't be an issue, right?

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[Raenex]

No, it's not nitpicking. Taxpayers have a right to know that their money is well-spent. You raised the issue about all the supplemental benefits that would come from such spending, and I responded to it.

Re: I don't have a problem ...

[slack_justyb]

Anything the EPA can view, we can view.

That's incorrect. That's incorrect for every department in the executive.

Re: I don't have a problem ...

[Obfuscant]

You, obviously, did not read the article. Personal, redacted info can be viewed by ANYONE who signs an non-disclosure agreement.

You, obviously, did not read the actual bill, because your claim is a lie.

"(3) Nothing in the subsection shall be construed as --
"(B) superseding any nondiscretionary statutory requirement;

HIPAA is a nondiscretionary statutory requirement.

Re: I don't have a problem ...

[soc_cost_priv_gains]

You mean like driving without wearing a seatbelt?

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[Obfuscant]

The problem is there's currently a law that restricts medical information being handed out in a manner that agrees with the language of this proposal.

You mean this language:

(3) Nothing in the subsection shall be construed as --
(A) requiring the Administrator to disseminate scientific and technical information;
(B) superseding any nondiscretionary statutory requirement;

That language? The language that explicitly excludes redacted personal information covered by other statutory requirements from the public disclosure requirements? The PII that is required to be removed by this section of the law:

(C) publicly available online in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results, except that any personally identifiable information, trade secrets, or commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential, shall be redacted prior to public availability.

There's ways to get it all to mesh well but those methods can take several years of legal paperwork which basically means that scientist will need to get lawyers at the ready should they decided to publish anything that *might* be peer reviewed.

Peer review has nothing to do with this. All research should be peer reviewed. All of it. This law doesn't touch that.

What it DOES require is that research results be provided with enough detail to be verifiable, with the specific exclusion that I just quoted to deal with PII that is required to be redacted by the previous section.

This isn't a law hoping to add more scrutiny, this is a law to make scientific research take longer than a two term president before it even hits the peer review stage.

This law has nothing to do with peer review. How do you keep coming up with this claim? This does nothing to change the length of time it takes to do research. It has nothing to do with the peer-review process that takes place before the EPA should ever consider relying on someone's research for regulatory guidance. It requires that data be available so the research, which has already been done, can be verified. If it doubles the amount of time to do a bit of research so that the data can be cleaned up for public viewing, then the data wasn't ready for use anyway.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[CaptainDork]

I agree.

When "family values" is the topic, I get very distrustful of the source.

Duggars, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Alabama's Robert Bentley, ... and many others.

Family values is a unicorn concept.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[CaptainDork]

I did not know that I raised an issue and that you responded.

Thank you for the information.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[geminidomino]

That's not true. Even ignoring the explicit disclaiming that the law does not supersede any nondiscretionary statutory requirement, aggregated medical data is not personally identifiable and can be (and has been) collected and used for years under both HIPAA and HITECH.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[slack_justyb]

That language? The language that explicitly excludes redacted personal information covered by other statutory requirements from the public disclosure requirements? The PII that is required to be removed by this section of the law:

If you think part b means nondisclosure then you lack an understand of what nondiscretionary actually means legally.

Nondiscretionary relates to budgets not information.

(C) publicly available online in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results, except that any personally identifiable information, trade secrets, or commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential, shall be redacted prior to public availability.

However, while you state section C in paragraph 1. Paragraph 2 moves on to state.

(2) The redacted information described in paragraph (1)(C) shall be disclosed to a person only after such person signs a written confidentiality agreement with the Administrator, subject to guidance to be developed by the Administrator.

Again, while the language in (1)(C) feels like it would provide privacy, that's wholly dependent on the guidance that's given as stated in (2). But more so, PL 95-155 indicates in (6)(b) that

Grants made by the Aministrator under this section shall be subject to the following limitations:

Those limitation in the original law are just three but amended by PL 96-569 and made bound to Congressional approval via discretionary assignment as such. That is made clear in section three of the original law.

Appropriations made pursuant to the authority provided in section 2 of this Act shall remain available for obligation for expenditure, or for the obligation and expenditure, for such period or periods as may be specified in the Acts making such appropriations.

That means guidance for the enforcement of HR 1430 (1)(C) as indicated by (2) in HR 1430 is pursuant to the rules outlined in 42 USC 4363 as given in PL 95-155, which ultimately is Congressional consent to what that guidance would be. That obviously cannot run afoul of 42USC 1320 or 45CFR Part 162 but Congress may mandate disclosure as indicate by PL 114-38 under Title 26 when pursuant to discretionary matters of Federal employee.

In short Congress has the right to unveil anyone or anything that has tax payer dollars attached to it. They also have the right to change the guidance granted to the EPA under the limitations of section six of the original law under this bill. That means scientist will need to lawyer up to ensure that they are in full compliance of the law as outlined by subsection 1395 under the same title.

Doctor's make it look easy because an industry had to grow up around this law to ensure that compliance could be met. Scientist taking medical information would thus need the same requirements but since they're researching and not having the person actually come to them, it get a lot stickier. It would actually be easier if people who felt they had topics covered by Section 4 of 4363 related illness went to researchers as then the burden could easily fall under 1378 part d and like I said, who knows, the path might get smoothed over if such things start becoming normal. But that is not how it is done today and it seems that tying the entire process to budgetary procedures in the House is a sham way of saying, we can delay you if we don't like what you are doing.

All of that affects peer review. Yes, research should be peer reviewed, no one is saying is shouldn't. What I am saying is that researcher are less likely to publish if they feel that doing so will get their asses sued into oblivion. The law so makes that a reality in section (2) by means of section 3 in the original law. Congress can easily tie anything granted under section 4 to discretionary requirements. HR 1430 further

Re: I don't have a problem ...

[Bartles]

In the context of Medical Records, you are incorrect. Sorry.

Re:I don't have a problem ...

[Obfuscant]

If you think part b means nondisclosure then you lack an understand of what nondiscretionary actually means legally. Nondiscretionary relates to budgets not information.

Bullshit. Nondiscretionary means "not at the discretion of". Whether that is spending, as in "nondiscretionary spending", or action, as in the vast number of "must nots" that appear in the law. Such as in HIPAA.

Again, while the language in (1)(C) feels like it would provide privacy, that's wholly dependent on the guidance that's given as stated in (2).

And (3) which clearly exempts nondiscretionary information. The redacted information that cannot be legally disclosed will not be disclosed because of any NDA because it is ALREADY AGAINST THE LAW TO DISCLOSE IT.

It has nothing to do with the peer-review process that takes place before the EPA should ever consider relying on someone's research for regulatory guidance.

Yes it does, it requires that a "minimum" amount of clearance as outlined by whatever Congress dreams up.

Read the fucking law. It has nothing to do with peer review. The review that must take place is that the administrator must ensure that the data IS AVAILABLE in a way that anyone who wants to verify or try to duplicate the research can do so. It does NOT require the administrator to verify anything other than that. That is not "peer review".

What it DOES require is that research results be provided with enough detail to be verifiable

Science by default already does that.

Bullshit. Absolute nonsense. Published science does not publish the data -- it would take too much space to do that in any existing journal. And many, if not most, if not the vast majority, of scientists do NOT make their raw data available to anyone who they don't specifically decide they want to share it with.

But this law isn't talking about how to "do science", it is talking exclusively about how scientific research may be used to justify regulatory actions. That's moving out of the realm of science into politics and sociology.

we don't have an industry currently that is adjusted enough to support all the crazy stipulations that bind medical records with the unique requirements of environmental research.

More absolute nonsense. There is an entire industry revolving around HIPAA and other regulator compliance issues for scientific research. "Environmental research" has no "unique requirements" to start with, and any requirements that do exist can already be dealt with.

Additionally, that this ties it to budget

That this bill has a spending limit doesn't mean it is tied to budget.

I have to scratch my head and wonder why you trust the federal government so much when it comes to broad regulatory powers that you'd not care even a tiny bit about being able to see what scientific research is being used to justify EPA regulations. "We're from the EPA, trust us..." seems to make everything ok for you. That's moronic.

Doesn't sound all bad

[Anonymous Coward]

While they are at it, how about all tax payer funded research be open to US citizens and allies.

So now they'll believe the science?

[superposed]

Ooh, does this mean House Republicans will start reading the science now? And having confidence in the EPA decision-making process? Yay for transparency!

Re:So now they'll believe the science?

[parallel_prankster]

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!

Re:So now they'll believe the science?

[whoever57]

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.

Re:So now they'll believe the science?

[superwiz]

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.

Aha. So despite the fact that even the summary addresses this, you are still peddling this lie? Here's from the summary:

allow anyone who signs a confidentiality agreement to view redacted personal or trade information in data

The gist of the law is to allow anyone verify that the data on which research is based can actually yield the outputs given the stated methodology. Otherwise, it's garbage-in-garbage-out.

Re:So now they'll believe the science?

[drew_kime]

Here's from the summary:

allow anyone who signs a confidentiality agreement to view redacted personal or trade information in data

Right. If a government agency wants to publish, they must agree to release the data to anyone who signs the NDA.

And if the original research was not done by that government agency, then they may not have the authority to release that data.

So if they aren't allowed to release the data, they aren't allowed to publish the data.

Re:So now they'll believe the science?

[superwiz]

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.

Re:So now they'll believe the science?

[superwiz]

Just so we are clear, there is already a lot of the data which is not available for public examination. Insurance companies don't have to justify the data to which they apply their actuarial models, for example. But they carry burden of having to apply the models correctly because they suffer the cost of mistakes (at least in theory). So it maybe overall that some data will not be available for EPA research. But since it's such a large customer, it's more likely that the data will just have to be purchased with re-print rights (and at higher cost). But, since it will restore public confidence in the conclusions, this cost is justified.

Re:So now they'll believe the science?

[strikethree]

This is a clear anti-renewable energy move.

Byte me. Public regulations and policies should not be driven by "hidden" information. If renewable energy can't provide open information about why it is more desirable, then renewable energy is not something we should pursue.

"Hey, force the taxpayer to pay for this "renewable energy" product."

"Why?"

"We could tell you, but then we would have to kill you."

"Say what?"

Re:So now they'll believe the science?

[meta-monkey]

Well if you can't publish the data you don't get to make laws and regulations based on that data.

"New law, /. users must be sterilized and/or executed."

"Why?!"

"They're bad! We know because science!"

"Well can I see the science?"

"No!"

"Oh okay then that make sense."

Re:So now they'll believe the science?

[Obfuscant]

Right. If a government agency wants to publish, they must agree to release the data to anyone who signs the NDA.

I'm sorry, but that is a lie. If the EPA wants to use this research to create regulations it must ensure that the source of the research has made the data available to the public, with some exceptions, so that anyone who wants to can verify or try to replicate the research. It has nothing to do with just publishing something.

And if the original research was not done by that government agency, then they may not have the authority to release that data.

This law has nothing specific about "government agency research."

Why do you think an agency that is creating regulations based on scientific research should be able to create those regulations based on secret data? Why shouldn't the data used to justify regulations be available to the people being regulated?

So if they aren't allowed to release the data, they aren't allowed to publish the data.

I think that is called a tautology. And "irrelevant", since this law has nothing to do with publishing research in general, only with using that "published" research to justify regulations when it really hasn't been published after all.

Why are so many people here happy to have government agencies create regulations based on "science" that nobody can look at? Is it because you want regulations that aren't supported by scientific research? Please, be honest and say so. Making up all this crap about "peer-review" or "publish" or "prohibiting research" or "HIPAA" is not honest at all.

Re:So now they'll believe the science?

[Obfuscant]

So it maybe overall that some data will not be available for EPA research.

This has nothing to do with "EPA research". It has everything to do with EPA officials reviewing the existing research when creating regulations. It says, in very simple terms, that they may only consider research when that research is available to the public in a form that allows verification and replication if desired. In other words, they may NOT use "someone told us that this was bad, so we're going to ban it." Or "it is obvious that this is bad ...". Or "if a lot of this is bad, then a little of it must be bad, too, so ..."

But since it's such a large customer, it's more likely that the data will just have to be purchased with re-print rights (and at higher cost).

The EPA is not responsible for making the data public. The "administrator" is responsible for ensuring that the data is available to the public if it is to be used as a justification for regulation. That means by the source of the research, not EPA. Section 3A is explicit in saying that nothing requires the administrator to be the one making the data public.

Nor does this law require the EPA to verify the data or replicate the results.

Nor does it prohibit research of any kind.

Nor does it force the release of PII that is already protected by law.

None of that.

Re:Capitalism is garbage!

[epyT-R]

Yeah, because it worked out so well in the 20th century.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

the most recent disastrous trumpcare bill was done in secret. I guess "trust me" legislation is still in force, huh science denier?

Yep. The big "trust me" law is still in place.

"If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor."

"If you like your insurance plan, you can keep your insurance plan."

Re:And yet

[PPH]

Pelosi: "We Have to Pass the Bill So That You Can Find Out What Is In It".

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[quantaman]

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.

GOOD!

[Gravis Zero]

I hope the released science info is validated and that politicians actually believe the EPA's claims.

Re: And yet

[meglon]

Yeh... you forget to mention the teabaggers shut it down because it was still TOO MANY services.

Re:Indeed

[epyT-R]

On paper, maybe. Reality was quite different. Sure women had equal rights: equal right to the same nothing men had. Famine was common, civil rights nonexistent, while the party elite feasted on what little they did produce, living the lap of luxury at their expense.

I'll pass.

Re:Indeed

[HornWumpus]

You're being trolled. Literally _nothing_ in the GPs post is true.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[chipschap]

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?

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Congress sucks

[clancey]

I, for one, have no faith in this new version of the EPA. Do they think the average congressman would ever read or comprehend scientific data?

Re:Congress sucks

[superwiz]

The point is to allow 3rd parties to verify that given data sets can yield the outputs they purport to yield with methodologies listed. Otherwise, they can list methodologies and then not follow them or follow them erroneously in producing stated results.

Re:Congress sucks

[clancey]

I realize the purpose. Congress response indicates that they want to check the data.

Re:Congress sucks

[clancey]

Also, Has any of the EPA's information not agreed with the results obtained by any other environmental study?

Democratization of science?

[Kwyj1b0]

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.

Re: Democratization of science?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, we have 100 people saying mixing lead into their food improves the taste and texture, but exactly two complaints of poisoning.

The data supports more lead in the environment, not less.

Science!

Re: Democratization of science?

[Ol Olsoc]

Look, we have 100 people saying mixing lead into their food improves the taste and texture, but exactly two complaints of poisoning.

The data supports more lead in the environment, not less.

Science!

At one time, lead was used as a sweetener. https://www.scienceabc.com/eye...

Re:Democratization of science?

[Anonymous Coward]

Science isn't a democracy, and this proposal will only make it harder for any regulations to be implemented.

Yes, science isn't a democracy. This is why science alone should not decide policy in a democracy. It being hard to implement regulations is a feature.

Re:Democratization of science?

[Raenex]

a stepping stone to (a) Allow lay persons (or even entire industries with paid "scientists") to challenge the results

Oh noes! Science data might be made public, and the public will have the freedom of speech to challenge it! This is horrible!!!1

Re:Democratization of science?

[AmiMoJo]

Bingo. It's about making it easier to generate "alternative facts" and "interpretations" of the results. It also allows them to reject a lot of climate science, because we can't build a second Earth to reproduce results on.

Re:Democratization of science?

[meta-monkey]

It also allows them to reject a lot of climate science, because we can't build a second Earth to reproduce results on.

Yes. Climate "science" is rejected because it's not science.

Re:Democratization of science?

[NicknameUnavailable]

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

This is what Liberals (especially the ones who "love science") tend to fail to grasp: science is not a means of rule, if it goes unchallenged it is not science. Either makes laws haphazardly and suffer the consequences of an untrusting body of citizens or make them soundly, you don't get to say "trust me, this is sound" and have every just go along thinking "it's OK guys, they have a scientist that told them something magical."

EVERYONE, and I do mean everyone, makes mistakes from time to time - scientists have been responsible for some of the most profound ones in history. Science is as much about eliminating Human error as it is about discovering or predicting things (arguably moreso because the latter two don't happen without the first.) Unchallenged data/results/hypothesis are no better than the ravings of a hippy on LSD, in any regard.

Re:Democratization of science?

[Obfuscant]

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

Gee, how awful that "science" be "challenged" by anyone. So you'd rather keep the science a secret so nobody can verify that it is reasonable?

and (b) delay the process of making new regulations by requiring the agency to jump through hoops (both in responsible releasing of confidential data,

The EPA is not responsible for releasing "confidential" data.

I can just see a politician saying that he read 100 facebook posts by citizen-scientists disproving the EPA experts' conclusions,

And this differs from today exactly how? The only difference is that the data MUST be available for review under this bill, and cannot be kept secret.

and that is why a ban on setting up oil refineries in national parks should be repealed.

"National parks" are a political creation, not a scientific one, so whether setting up an oil refinery in a "national park" is good or bad is a political question, not scientific. If you have some data showing that "national parks" have some special status scientifically compared to "just anyplace", then why shouldn't you share that data with the rest of us if you want the rest of us to be regulated in that matter?

Re:And Now For Something Off Topic...

[HornWumpus]

Too good for them.

Re:"scientific studies be replicable"

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Requiring studies to be able to be reproduced will kill them. My girlfriend works for Emory, and I sometimes do contract work on the math. As far as I know, nothing I've ever worked on is reproducible. This is a horrific move by the Republicans.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[Orgasmatron]

Is a study based on a particular disaster replicable?

Not all scholarly works are "science". Science is a method for testing ideas to determine which ones are good and which ones are bad. Very few studies report on testing beyond made up assumptions, aka the author's opinions.

Mythbusters

[PopeRatzo]

1) The EPA's science is already released publicly.

2) This bill requires the data to be released publicly.

3) The EPA's data is already released publicly.

On February 22, 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directed federal agencies that conduct research to develop plans ensuring peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals and related digital scientific research data resulting from federally-funded scientific research are accessible to the public.

February 22, 2013.

Re:Mythbusters

[Oligonicella]

If it is regulation that simply enforces what is already occurring, the only reason to repeal it is to allow things to change from open reporting to less than.

Re:Mythbusters

[ooloorie]

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.

Re:Mythbusters

[drew_kime]

On February 22, 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directed federal agencies that conduct research to develop plans ensuring peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals and related digital scientific research data resulting from federally-funded scientific research are accessible to the public.

If they conduct the original research, yes. But they will no longer be able to cite anyone else's research. Will the EPA's budget be increased sufficiently that they can perform original research to duplicate all that is currently performed by other entities?

Re:Mythbusters

[bongey]

Except it wasn't the Trump administration, so BeauHD didn't care.

Re:Mythbusters

[ShakaUVM]

>develop plans

Says it all. This bill will actually implement it. It's a good thing. And it can't be overriden by Trump, which is also good.

The Replicability Crisis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) is the most serious issue in modern day science. When 70% of published papers can't be reproduced, that means that you are making the correct bet to believe that any published, peer-reviewed, landmark study in a prestigious journal is wrong. And that's a very sad thing that I just had to write. But this is what happens when people set up a system that works the way ours does - people game the system and the trust and credibility of science is hurt by it.

So yeah. We really, really need to be pushing hard for public datasets and replicability of results.

If I were the head of the NSF, I would treat any paper that has not been replicated yet as tentative, and only accept it as a scientific finding until it has been repeated at least once by a third party.

Re:Mythbusters

[serviscope_minor]

The Replicability Crisis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) is the most serious issue in modern day science. When 70% of published papers can't be reproduced, that means that you are making the correct bet to believe that any published, peer-reviewed, landmark study in a prestigious journal is wrong

Speaking of wrong, that's what you're not even.

First the biggie. No matter what you say about replicatability, the results around climate change HAVE been replicated. Likewise, eating lead or hexavalent chromium are know to be bad and that knowledge is there through replication long gone.

Second, science ain't religion. The papers don't come from on high and represent the absolute prophetic truth until a new prophet comes along to overturn the old order. It has always been nd always will be the case to consider any new paper with a grain of salt. A new paper comes along and says "I think X". If X is boring, no one will care and it will languish in a dusty corner of the librry to be forgotten. If it's interesting, people will look and publish papers along the lines of "I think Y" or "X is right".

If that bit of science was easy, it would have been figured out by now. It hasn't, it's hard and figuring out the truth is hard. So you get back and forth with papers publishing new insights, new contradictory results or new confirmatory results. Eventually is all settles down, the field reaches a consensus, practising scientists generally accept it as right and move on with other things, building upon it. If the things built upon it start to crumble, then the foundation becomes ripe for change (though usually the change is in the details else it would have never got that far).

So yeah. We really, really need to be pushing hard for public datasets and replicability of results.

Public datasets are great, but they're not a panacea. Having all data for all things published wouldn't make a sea change in science. It would affect less than you expect in practice. It's certainly a bit useful for other scientists, but most scientists are keen on doing their own science.

If I were the head of the NSF, I would treat any paper that has not been replicated yet as tentative, and only accept it as a scientific finding until it has been repeated at least once by a third party.

Has the EPA or NSF ever passed a regulation based off a brand new paper for which there's been no further work in the scientific community?

Re:Mythbusters

[ShakaUVM]

>Having all data for all things published wouldn't make a sea change in science.

It would reveal if the scientists were p-hacking to get a significant result. On the downside, there is no downside. The NSF has been pushing for open data for a while, but it's nice to see it encoded into law.

> It would affect less than you expect in practice. It's certainly a bit useful for other scientists, but most scientists are keen on doing their own science.

Which is what needs to change. The NSF needs to fund more replicability grants.

>Has the EPA or NSF ever passed a regulation based off a brand new paper for which there's been no further work in the scientific community?

I didn't say no further work. I said we need to get way from thinking of peer reviewed papers as being actual scientific findings, even if they have p-values included. We used to consider a peer reviewed published paper as being something meaningful, but if it's worse than a coin flip, we need to set up a whole new grant infrastructure for repeating tentative findings that look interesting.

Re:Mythbusters

[serviscope_minor]

It would reveal if the scientists were p-hacking to get a significant result.

That's not a sea change. p hacking is a well known problem (also related: p hunting). In order to make a sea change, a significant number of people would have to download the dataset, understand it, understand the science enough to process it themselves and then do so. Most of the people capable of doing that are professional scientists in the field and they usually have better things to do, like their own science for example.

Publishing data is good, but it is not and will never be a panacea.

On the downside, there is no downside.

It costs money to administer it all. Can that money be better spent elsewhere?

The NSF has been pushing for open data for a while, but it's nice to see it encoded into law.

Not really. They way this one has been codified into law falls foul of patient privacy information, and is designed t ohobble the EPA by preventing them from using any medical studies to decide if something is dangerous.

Which is what needs to change. The NSF needs to fund more replicability grants.

No, the NSF needs to give more full time, pemanent jobs to people doing replication and a lot of them. Science is an incredibly competitive field with a huge culture of "up or out". Replicating other people's work is a sure-fire way to generate low impact papers which spells career death. To get over that you'd have to offer entire alternative careers. That's phenomenally expensive.

And you won't get the best people either because scientists like doing new science, not playing political games for the benefit of science deniers like Rep Lamarr.

I didn't say no further work.

Yeah you pretty much accused them of jumping all over the latest papers and passing laws as a result.

I said we need to get way from thinking of peer reviewed papers as being actual scientific findings

They are scientific findings. What they're not is scientific facts. The only "we" confused is people who aren't scientists. I don't see how fucking wit hscientific organisations will help that seeing as they work with scientists who are already fully on board with the idea.

We used to consider a peer reviewed published paper as being something meaningful

It is.

but if it's worse than a coin flip,

It's not. If you flipped a coin enough times to generate the contents of a scientific paper you'd get utter garbage. Doing science isn't a binary flip between right and wrong. There's one right and infinite amounts of wrong.

we need to set up a whole new grant infrastructure for repeating tentative findings that look interesting.

Is that going to be cost effective compared ot the current system?

Re:Mythbusters

[moeinvt]

"the results around climate change HAVE been replicated"

You mean "replicated" in the sense that one guy ran a multiple least squares regression on a data set and someone else used the same technique on similar data and got similar results.

Science is done through observation and experiment. People studying climate change are looking at observations in a time series. They can't "replicate" the observations because they can't go back in time and re-do the measurements. Similarly, they can't "replicate" an experiment because they don't have a parallel earth to use.

"Science ain't religion" but this "climate change" gospel seems more like a religion every day.

Re:Mythbusters

[Goldsmith]

Did you read what you quoted?

I am a scientist, and I've been a government scientist.

There is a HUGE (pun intended) difference between mandating that data is open and mandating that plans are developed to ensure open data. I've developed plans for all sorts of things that never actually happened.

Re:Mythbusters

[serviscope_minor]

You mean "replicated" in the sense that one guy ran a multiple least squares regression on a data set and someone else used the same technique on similar data and got similar results.

Multiple people have examined the thing in multiple different ways.

FFS you can verify that CO2 traps heat using equipment you can cheaply obtain, but you'd rather spread shite over the internet than actually attempt to verify results for yourself.

Science is done through observation and experiment.

OK yeah you have a schoolboy level of understanding of actual science. I bet you think every true scientist carefully sets out hypothese before conducting experiments too.

A *huge* amount of science is observational.

People studying climate change are looking at observations in a time series

Right, so physics doesn't apply then? The physics behind these things is well understood. We know about radiation and CO2's absorbtion spectra. We know fluid dynamics and etc. The Earth is big and complicated, so nailing the finer details is going to be tricky. Nonetheless we know the basics.

complaining that you can't replicate the earth is facile in the extreme.

Re:Mythbusters

[PopeRatzo]

There is a HUGE (pun intended) difference between mandating that data is open and mandating that plans are developed to ensure open data.

The plans created in 2013 have been fully implemented.

Re:Mythbusters

[ShakaUVM]

>It costs money to administer it all. Can that money be better spent elsewhere?

Yes, and if it costs a dollar, it would be well worth it, but if it is a trillion dollars it is not well worth it. So the question is how much? At the Department of Education, they do something similar and the overhead is between a tenth and a hundredth of a percentage point. So yeah, it's well worth it to make a public database. Especially since a lot of people will dig into the datasets for free on their own time, like I do. And if you find something damning, hey, you get a free paper out of it, which is great.

Frankly, your attitude that scientists won't go after replication because they want to chase after new stuff all the time is basically exactly the problem that we have. It's not as sexy as chasing after new research, but since new research is based on old research, this crisis means we're building giant edificies on foundations of sand. We're talking hugely influential, highly cited papers being unable to be replicated. This is a very, very serious matter. We're essentially wasting our money when we get research that we don't know is accurate or not. So our national priorities should change to fix that.

If you think it is career killing to replicate other people's work, I will just say that if the NSF funds these efforts, you'll see replication centers springing up at universities all over the country as they chase that sweet sweet money. Being a professor isn't just about publishing papers, it's about publishing papers and getting grant money. (Teaching? What's that?) New tenure track professors live and die based on grant money, so if you build it, they will come... and fight tooth and nail for it.

Re:Mythbusters

[Goldsmith]

Ha Ha Ha. That's a load of BS.

Remember, I am a scientist. I know how much I pay to get access to papers and how difficult it is to get raw data. I'm also a government guy, I know all about unfunded mandates, and contracting clauses that are never enforced.

Re:Mythbusters

[PopeRatzo]

Remember, I am a scientist.

And I'm Geralt of Rivia.

This sounds too good to be true

[rsilvergun]

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...

Re:"scientific studies be replicable"

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't think that at all. They realize most studies cannot be directly replicated in the way they're demanding. They *know* this.

They worded it the way they did for a reason. Never attribute to incompetence that which can easily be explained by malice.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[Ol Olsoc]

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?

I can hardly wait until the Cuyahoga burns again. You need to do a little research to see how far we have come, and how far we still need to go. Anyone up for a glass of coalmine drainage water? Kids love it! I can get a shitload of it about a half hour from here. Looks a little like orange juice. Want some?

You see, if you think you want to get rid of "Trust us we're your Government", your saying you want "Trust us, we're from the industry." That isn't how it works. The short term profit motive demand making the most money possible with the least expense. That's why we have to protect capitaism from itself. Because if they don't have to spend money on cleaning up after themselves, they won't.

Lest you think I'm some sort of tree huggger, that land around here that is ruined, is ruined forever. No lumber company is going to cut the shit timber - if there is any - and make a profit, no real estate company is going to make neighbohoods with families that drive the economy. No Wal Mart is going to build in a place that has been ruined forever, and employ people and make a profit.

Popcorn anyone?

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[quantaman]

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.

Re:Indeed

[epyT-R]

Probably.. That or he's just insane. Either way, entertaining.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[quantaman]

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.

A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[mi]

All research affected by HIPAA would be banned by this bill.

No. If it is not personally identifiable, you can publish it. EPA could still use a paper, that says, for example, "Of the 5000 people exposed to such-and-such-sulfate, 537 developed such-and-such-iasis." As long as it does not identify the patients.

Indeed, if doing research in the first place and making it available to the EPA was not in violation of HIPAA (or, rather, HITECH) privacy rules, the EPA can publish it further.

To pretend, this is about "privacy" is a gimmick — a spin, employed by people afraid of the sunlight shining on the darker corner of the government.

This is not a fault of people not caring whether or not research is reproducible, but simply of errors

One is still at fault even if his was an honest mistake...

Whether Global Warming is, indeed, a (grave) threat to humanity remains to be seen. 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...

Though Americans — and other nations following America's lead — grew obese, no one was punished for that mistake. 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?

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.

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[drew_kime]

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.

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[LeftCoastThinker]

"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."

Except for the green lobby and the majority of federal politicians for the last 12 years who funneled billions of dollars to fund "green" jobs that never materialized and a global warming crisis that became a climate change crisis that became a nothing story... The politicians on the losing side are screaming that AGW is settled science, but the only "scientists" who say that AGW is settled are the ones looking for another grant to study it. These same "scientists" have been making wildly inaccurate global temperature models for the last 20 years and they somehow expect the rest of us to believe them yet again.

Abolishing the EPA gets to the root of the problem, as you note it is politicians and the government causing billions of dollars in damage and wrecking peoples lives because, though their intentions are good, they are frequently wrong and we all pay the price. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[bluegutang]

To pretend, this is about "privacy" is a gimmick — a spin, employed by people afraid of the sunlight shining on the darker corner of the government

I find it hard to believe EPA research is the part of the government that most needs sunlight. How about we start by releasing the tax returns of prominent executive branch officials, to see what connections they have to Russia? Isn't that a more urgently needed form of sunlight?

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[FellowConspirator]

All of the cancer cluster information, for example, not only has the sex and age of the affected person, but also their physical address (since it's necessary for establishing the geospatial location of a spill / release / plume. Under this law, they could only claim that there's a cancer cluster somewhere if they explicitly identified everyone effected.

The EPA couldn't use published data from journals, academics, geological surveys, and other information where they have rights to access and use the information but not to republish it.

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[mysidia]

The EPA couldn't use published data from journals, academics, geological surveys, and other information where they have rights to access

Maybe this is an incentive for scientists to stop publishing in journals that want to keep their data secret
that fundamentally makes science more open.

Perhaps next step should be a Law that federally funded public universities, When evaluating how qualified
a professor or team is for hiring or retention or working on a government grant --- may not consider
publications that appeared only in "closed journals" without free access to research datasets.

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[budgenator]

Maybe this is an incentive for scientists to stop publishing in journals that want to keep their data secret
that fundamentally makes science more open.

Dude that's not data, that is
summary of data,
analysis fo data,
representation of data
presentation of data,
in short creative works that are copyrighted, data is a collection of fact that is not copyrightable.

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[mi]

All of the cancer cluster information, for example, not only has the sex and age of the affected person, but also their physical address (since it's necessary for establishing the geospatial location of a spill / release / plume.

Easily replaced by ZIP code. You do not need the precise address — simply noting the distance to the spill is enough. I worked in both financial and health industry. There are "data-scrubbing" programs and scripts, that can obfuscate the clients' databases (hiding the trading positions and PHI respectively) before a dump is forwarded to the software-vendor for debugging. It is a solved problem — EPA and its water-carriers simply want to protect the organization. With lies, if necessary — because they are good, noble lies, aren't they?

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[mi]

Fuck Trump, fuck Republicans, fuck the cynical alt-right anti-government contrarians, and fuck you.

If only intellect were sexually transmitted — maybe, I would've agreed to some of that "fucking"... As a charity...

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[mysidia]

in short creative works that are copyrighted, data is a collection of fact that is not copyrightable.

Your comment on Slashdot is a Datum in a collection of data called a database on Slashdot's servers, and it is copyrightable.

Also, yes, journals and scientific databases contain data, and their publishers restrict access and require licensing of usage.

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[geminidomino]

Go Wolverines!!

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[budgenator]

in short creative works that are copyrighted, data is a collection of fact that is not copyrightable.

Your comment on Slashdot is a Datum in a collection of data called a database on Slashdot's servers, and it is copyrightable.

Also, yes, journals and scientific databases contain data, and their publishers restrict access and require licensing of usage.

No my comment , in short creative works that are copyrighted, data is a collection of fact that is not copyrightable., is a creative work and copyrighted,

ASN00037003,19500101,PRCP,0,,,a,
USC00242347,19500101,PRCP,53,,,0,1830
USC00242347,19500101,SNOW,51,,,0,
USC00242347,19500101,SNWD,178,,,0,
USC00300379,19500101,PRCP,8,,,0,0800
USC00300379,19500101,SNOW,5,,,0,
USC00217184,19500101,PRCP,0,,,0,
USC00443690,19500101,TMAX,139,,,0,
USC00443690,19500101,TMIN,-17,,,0,
USC00443690,19500101,TOBS,111,,,0,
is not.

While journals and scientific databases contain data, and their publishers may attempt to restrict access and require licensing of usage for usage; it doesn't mean the restrictions are legally defensible.

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[mysidia]

publishers may attempt to restrict access and require licensing of usage for usage; it doesn't mean the restrictions are legally defensible.

What do you mean? If they don't provide you access and require you sign a contract before you get access, then you are bound by the contract terms in your use and sharing of the data.

Also, the publishers can copyright the work in a country that has a Database directive, and then utilize the international Copyright treaties to enforce their rights in other countries such as the US.

Re:A gimmick by pseudo-scientists

[budgenator]

The publisher doesn't control the data, the author does; they data may even have originated from a third party. A publisher might hold copyright on a presentation of the data, such as data plotted as a graph, but not the data used to make the plot.

When they wantto force things on you slow is good

[raymorris]

> a stepping stone to (a) Allow lay persons (or even entire industries with paid "scientists") to challenge the results

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. Quite often, when I graph data looking for a relationship between X and Y, I'm surprised to find a clear relationship between X and Q, new information I didn't even know to look for.

> and (b) delay the process of making new regulations by requiring the agency to jump through hoops

Regulation - (verb) The process of a few people forcing millions of others to do as the few demand, ultimately enforced by threat of violence.

I, for one, am glad that Trump can't just start announcing new laws whenever he feels like it. Unlike North Korea, making law in United States *is* a slow process, with hoops to jump through. I'm very glad for that. It *should* be difficult for a few guys in Washington to tell you and I what we must do and must do. Because ultimately if you don't do as they say, eventually they'll send an armed squad to get you and make you comply, they *should* have to justify new laws, they *should* have to jump through some hoops (and regulations are laws).

Re:EPA and all other government agencies

[MightyMartian]

That view of government died with the Articles of Confederation

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[pipingguy]

Yes, it's curious, that double standard, isn't it?

Re:Indeed

[ooloorie]

Your posting is proof again that sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from sarcasm.

Re: And yet

[superwiz]

Sorry, do you really expect to be taken seriously after attaching a slur to a Tea Party? Are you going to slobber insults in response? It was just an opposition to crazy people exercising power. Are you gonna prove them right by proving that you are crazy? Just to save you time, you don't have to. You can just reply with a "yes".

Re:EPA and all other government agencies

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong "Confederacy," bub.

Re: And yet

[meglon]

Teabaggers chose their name, not me. I get it though, you're too stupid to know how stupid you actually are.

So, because you're a stupid little worthless anti-american fucktard: http://theweek.com/articles/49...

That lays it out for braindead little wastes of flesh like you, because you're too fucking stupid to remember anything other than the dick you sucked last night.

Here is one of your reich-wingers admitting that the name was first used by teabaggers themselves, because, like you, they're too fucking stupid to remember anything past their last social security check: http://www.nationalreview.com/...

The first big day for this movement was Tax Day, April 15. And organizers had a gimmick. They asked people to send a tea bag to the Oval Office. One of the exhortations was “Tea Bag the Fools in D.C.” A protester was spotted with a sign saying, “Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You.” So, conservatives started it: started with this terminology. But others ran with it and ran with it.

So... fuck your teabagger party, If you're too fucking stupid to remember anything, you're nothing more than a useless dipshit. They weren't in opposition to "crazy people" exercising power... they were in response to a black guy getting elected, and having more intelligence in his toenail clippings than their entire inbred family.

And by the way, fascist dipshit... i'm just trying not to be too "PC" for whiny little shitstains like you... because you've said so many times you hate having to be PC. So...fuck you. Either learn what you're talking about, or just stay down on your fascist teabagger knees.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[hackwrench]

Cite the portions of the bill you believe make the EPA have to jump through a lot of red tape, then.

In a way, the EPA invited this...

[KonoWatakushi]

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.

Re:In a way, the EPA invited this...

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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.

Re: In a way, the EPA invited this...

[Z00L00K]

Just because one radiation source have little impact doesn't mean that we shall have radiation sources everywhere. At some point the threshold is reached.

Re:In a way, the EPA invited this...

[thejynxed]

Japan's regulatory agencies have based quite a few of their policies on EPA regulations in similar areas, so it isn't as far-fetched as you might think.

Re: And yet

[superwiz]

Like I said, you didn't have to prove that you are crazy. You could have just said "yes".

Abolish EPA

[mi]

Who do you think should be punished?

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...

The scientists? They were saying at the beginning of the War on Fat that the science was inconclusive.

Not according to Guardian:

Ancel Keys was brilliant, charismatic, and combative. A friendly colleague at the University of Minnesota described him as, “direct to the point of bluntness, critical to the point of skewering”; others were less charitable. He exuded conviction at a time when confidence was most welcome. The president, the physician and the scientist formed a reassuring chain of male authority, and the notion that fatty foods were unhealthy started to take hold with doctors, and the public. (Eisenhower himself cut saturated fats and cholesterol from his diet altogether, right up until his death, in 1969, from heart disease.)

But as I said, the problem wasn't with the scientists. It was the politicians pushing the agenda

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?

It was the politicians pushing the agenda, and the sugar industry funding it

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...

In the case of fat, there was heavy industry lobbying in favor of a position that scientists said was unsupported by current research

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...

the suggestion that if the EPA isn't perfect, the solution is not to fix it but to abolish it. [...] a lot easier to destroy programs that benefit society

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

Re:Abolish EPA

[Raenex]

My argument is, the EPA does not "benefit society".

Disagree. The EPA was created by the Nixon administration amid protests about the quality of the environment, in particular our water and air. Things have improved a lot since then. You can compare that to the industrial hellholes that existed in the Soviet era or China's industrial binge.

Sure, the EPA can go off the rails, and hopefully Trump can reign it in without doing too much damage, but I think we need its basic functionality.

Re:Abolish EPA

[Applehu Akbar]

The EPA benefits us to the extent that its rulemaking is based on real science. A requirement that the agency's science be made public keeps it honest.

Re:Abolish EPA

[mysidia]

Things have improved a lot since then. You can compare that to the industrial hellholes that existed in the Soviet era or China's industrial binge.

I think if we roll back the last 20 years of ADDITIONAL EPA regulation and expansion, we should be good, and we won't be a hellhole.
Trouble is the EPA SOLVED those problems it was created to solve, Then like all bureaucracies its leadership decided to keep expanding and make more and more rules beyond its original and appropriate scope. They're not being paid to keep donig exactly what they're doing... Any person who is acting as a Leader/Committee person sees their agency's role to be constantly doing more than what they've been doing.

Re:Abolish EPA

[Raenex]

Trouble is the EPA SOLVED those problems it was created to solve, Then like all bureaucracies its leadership decided to keep expanding and make more and more rules beyond its original and appropriate scope.

I believe that's generally true, which also explains why "progressives" have gone insane.

Re:Abolish EPA

[mi]

The EPA was created by the Nixon administration amid protests about the quality of the environment, in particular our water and air.

A classic example of:

1. Something must be done!
2. This is something.
3. Therefore it must be done!

I do not see, how an ostensibly free country can tell citizens, it is illegal to use certain toilet models...

and hopefully Trump can reign it in

Only for the next President to reverse it all with the strike of a pen... As I say, all such "agencies" violate the spirit (if not the letter) of the Constitution and signify government overreach.

Re:Abolish EPA

[Raenex]

A classic example of: Something must be done! [..]

Something had to be done, something was done, and it was to good effect. Unless you think the alternative of heavily polluted air and water is better.

I do not see, how an ostensibly free country can tell citizens, it is illegal to use certain toilet models...

You're talking about toilet models, while I'm talking about polluted air and water.

Only for the next President to reverse it all with the strike of a pen...

Such is the nature of elections.

Re:Abolish EPA

[mi]

Unless you think the alternative of heavily polluted air and water is better.

False dilemma. Pollution could have been tackled without creating an office capable of dictating millions of people, how to shower...

You're talking about toilet models, while I'm talking about polluted air and water.

Freedom is more important than both — remember the one about trading "essential liberties" for "temporary security"?..

Re:Abolish EPA

[Raenex]

False dilemma. Pollution could have been tackled without creating an office capable of dictating millions of people, how to shower...

That wasn't in their mandate. Anything can be abused. And saying there could have been some other solution is moving the goalposts, as you were complaining that anything was done in the first place and providing no solutions at all in your calls to abolish the EPA. Instead you just complain about the worst the EPA does and ignore the good.

Freedom is more important than both -- remember the one about trading "essential liberties" for "temporary security"?..

Blah blah blah. There is no "essential liberty" to pollute the air and water.

Re:Abolish EPA

[soc_cost_priv_gains]

Freedom eh? Why should I be forced to use a toilet when I can just sh!t in the street, why am I forced to use garbage collections service when I can just burn my trash? Why am I restricted from buying biological weapons online? My freedoms are being impinged upon.

Re: EPA and all other government agencies

[Z00L00K]

Tell that to Nixon.

Re: Help me out, am I supposed to be for or agains

[Z00L00K]

If they publish their research for public scrutiny I don't see that they are prevented from using it.

That's the deal here - since the hockey stick failure there's a large mistrust of what's published on environmental research.

Re: And yet

[Z00L00K]

You can always eat soylent green.

Re: "scientific studies be replicable"

[Z00L00K]

If nobody can replicate it what value does it have?

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[jandersen]

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.

Re:EPA and all other government agencies

[jandersen]

EPA shouldn't exist in the first place. Neither should 99.9999 of what government is doing today, all its agencies and departments, none of it should exist. I suppose de-clawing the agencies, de-funding them as well is a good start in that direction. There shouldn't be such a concept as an income or a property tax, there shouldn't be such a concept as government funded anything.

So, with government reduced to .0001%, or 1 ppm, I assume you would throw away things like public roads, elementary education for all, fundamental, scientific research, etc etc, and with these things also the things that depend on them, like manufaturing, IT, agriculture, trade and all other things that depend on infrastructure, government regulations and international agreements? Not to mention police, military, rescue services, health care and so on. Yeah. let's go back to living in caves, having a life expectancy of 25 and childhood mortality of 75%.

Re:EPA and all other government agencies

[serviscope_minor]

Absolutely. Government is bad.

Those kids orphaned in a factory explosion and forced to drink arsenic laden water should hire a private army to extract justice and force the company to stop polluting. I mean if they can't do that, it's their fault for not being richer.

Re:When they wantto force things on you slow is go

[serviscope_minor]

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.

Excuse me, but why isn't ALL Science. . .

[Salgak1]

. . . . paid for by taxpayers, released to the public ??

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[whit3]

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.

Correct. That is why you shouldn't jump to conclusions based on such data.

Err... no, of course if you find a coelocanth alive, you needn't find a second one in order to conclude that they aren't yet extinct. Reproducing a result can be done for LABORATORY findings, but not for observations in nature.

There's no logical requirement to ignore what data we DO have, and it would be odd indeed to create a legal requirement.

The "jumping to conclusions" phrase is an attempt to introduce loaded language into the discussion. Disregard the phrase, that's NOT in the proposed law, and certainly doesn't describe any real event.

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.

That is indeed the basic function of the bill: the EPA should be forced to rely on reproducible public research...

The rub there, is not only the EPA work, but all the cited prior work, becomes subject to formal challenge. An objection without merit could waste years: courts would have no alternative but to hear it all out.

replication is the most important part of rule

[n2hightech]

Replication of results is key to determining if something is true or not. What sense does it make to force massive expensive changes based on studies that have often proven to not be replicable. There is a replication crisis in science where a massive number of published studies have results that cannot be verified by other researchers. Just because many/most scientists believe something does not make it necessarily true. Most scientists only know what they read in journals about subjects they do not personally study. (from Wikipedia) "According to a 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported in the journal Nature, 70% of them failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments (50% failed to reproduce their own experiment). These numbers differ among disciplines:chemistry: 90% (60%),biology: 80% (60%), physics and engineering: 70% (50%),medicine: 70% (60%),Earth and environment science: 60% (40%)". When half the people cannot reproduce their own results something is very wrong. We need to take a step back to understand and verify so we know whats really true before we make decisions that will need to be implemented by force which is what we do for all laws.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[ooloorie]

Err... no, of course if you find a coelocanth alive, you needn't find a second one in order to conclude that they aren't yet extinct.

Yeah, that's about what sums it up: "Hey, I saw a _____ in your pond, an animal that was thought to be extinct. The federal government should cease your property immediately! No, I don't have any physical proof for you to examine, why do you think that matters?" The EPA is ruling about taking away people's private property, and the standard for that should be higher than "scientists believe".

And the sad thing is that a lot of the EPA rulings are exactly about that kind of unscientific anecdotal reporting, with no scientific proof and no reason to believe that the observer didn't make a mistake.

I note that the same attitude you show here was the basis for forced sterilizations and segregation in the US: progressive policies based on the scientific beliefs of the day, promoted by people who are still heroes of the Democrats and progressives today. It is fundamentally wrong for government to operate that way.

An objection without merit could waste years: courts would have no alternative but to hear it all out.

And that is a problem... why? If it is about something where lives are at stake, courts can issue short term orders until the matter is resolved. And if there is any doubt, the courts should kick it over to Congress. Your fascination with having the executive branch just issuer decisions quickly is the typical progressive and fascist view of government.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[tomhath]

The alternative is that you publish your conclusions without any supporting data. Do you really think that's better?

Impossibly some people are against this !?

[fygment]

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.

Re:Impossibly some people are against this !?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're against it because Republicans.

If this were being pushed by Democrats, this would be haled as the victory for open access to publicly-funded research that it is.

Pure hypocrisy and knee-jerk bigotry.

That's a strawman argument right there...

[denzacar]

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."

The issue is not about "Trust us, we're your government." strawman.
Raised by the clown crew of a government, with only 21 executive nominations confirmed (out of 553), multiple ongoing scandals, not the least of which is appointment of an anti-EPA loon as the head of the agency, who then promptly ignores science anyway.
Trust us, WE are your government indeed.

It's about little facts like exposing patient data, various privacy concerns, various patent laws and rules, copyright...
In order to "release to the public... data used to support new regulations to protect human health and the environment" EPA would literally have to either be given godlike power to expose anything and anyone, regardless of laws, regulations or any kind of legal or physical protection...
OR... much more likely, simply NOT create regulations anymore... regulations "to protect human health and the environment".

Right now they can simply CITE data used in their science, like with any other scientific study.
Not release everything cited to public, or even be forced to replicate other people's science.
I'm all for replicable science but this is not about science.
It's about gagging the mouths and tying the hands of those who rely on science in order to "protect human health and the environment" by people who abhor science.

All publicly funded research should be public.

[zerofoo]

All research that is publicly funded should be public.

Why is it more complicated than that? The taxpayers paid for it - the taxpayers should own it.

You know everything about him, except his name etc

[raymorris]

> Rep Lamarr is hardly going to have a bill called "Rep
> Lamarr is a cunt bill". Rep Lamarr is a flat-out denialist
> ...
> Rep Lamarr is deeply anti science

It seems you know all about this "Representative Lamarr" guy. Well except anything, like his name, for example. Congressman Smith's first name is Lamar; he's not Lamarr, and certainly not "Representative Lamarr".

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[Ol Olsoc]

Yeah, because we are going to instantly revert to some state of dumping 55 gallon drums of oil right onto all the waterways now that there is some transparency in the system.

Never underestimate the profit motive.

EPA "Data GPL"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's now effectively impossible for the EPA to conduct research with HIPAA controlled data without individual releases. Pehaps even blind experiments of any sort become impossible. The unmasking portion of the law is the egregious bit.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[Ol Olsoc]

You need to do a little research to see how far we have come, and how far we still need to go. Anyone up for a glass of coalmine drainage water?

This comment struck me as amusing since the EPA is trying to shut down facilitates that process coal waste and turn that waste into something useful (e.g. ingredients of portland cement). The Obama administration's all out war on coal has a hidden cost, which includes more slurry ponds, more pollutants being stored there than are necessary, and increased risk of ecological disasters.

So what you're saying is that we need to mine more coal so we have to make more ways of treating the effluent.

Got it. You want a gallon of that mine drainage orangewater? I have a special going now You pay for shipping, and I'll send you all you want.

Re:When they wantto force things on you slow is go

[strikethree]

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.

It does not matter WHY this bill is being presented, it should be examined on it merits, or lack thereof.

For myself, setting policy and such based on information that is not freely examinable (not a word? Why not?) by anyone is ludicrous. "Trust us" is not ever the proper response to a query concerning public policy.

Re:He has data. He has it.

[tomhath]

You can't replicate it, but you can certainly publish your results and data. The problem is if three other teams also went out and did the same measurements but came up with a different conclusion. Should then EPA use only one of those studies without saying why or supplying any supporting data?

Or if there is only one set of data, should we all trust that it was collected correctly and that your instruments were properly calibrated? I think it's reasonable to require more than one data point

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[strikethree]

It's telling the EPA that it has to ignore the majority of the scientific research.

Scientific research that is imprisoned or shackled is not useful (to the public) scientific research and should not be used for public policies. Research all you want, but until you are willing to share the results of that research with the public, it should not be used to guide government policy.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[strikethree]

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. ...
Under this new law the EPA might be forced to ignore the results of that research.

As it should. Who is to say your measurements were correct? Who is to say you are not falsifying your data? Who is to say your instruments were not malfunctioning?

Sure, the EPA *might* want to keep a record of a one-off as a lead in to a full investigation of a follow-on disaster, but to set policy or create regulation based on a non-reproducible incident? Sheer insanity.

Maybe I'm missing something

[kingramon0]

But reading the actual text of the bill, it seems to me that it only requires that enough information be publicly available so that the research being used *can* be reproduced, not that it *shall* be reproduced. I don't think it is making it mandatory to replicate the research before it is used in rule-making, but that the information be available in case someone wants to try to reproduce it at any future date.

Hypocrisy is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You know everything about him, except his name

[serviscope_minor]

Well except anything, like his name, for example

I'm bad with names. It's not that I forget people: I can connect the abstract notion of the person with information about them, but I don't seem to have a good memory for names.

And you know what? It doesn't make me wrong. He's denialist scum.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[MobyDisk]

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.

Those are all easily reproducible because you do not have to replicate the event that you are studying. You didn't perform an experiment to create that event. So if i wanted to study tornadoes, and I could choose to study existing tornadoes. I would then need to cite the data I used or how I gathered data, and the techniques I used to come to my conclusions. On the other hand, if I chose to create tornadoes, then I would have the additional burden of documenting my system for creating tornadoes well enough that someone could replicate it.

Re:EPA and all other government agencies

[MightyMartian]

??? Confederacy ???

The Articles of Confederation were the United States' first constitution, and created just the kind of federal government you seem to want; one that was largely impotent, couldn't really raise money and really couldn't impose any kind of order on the union at all. It was quickly recognized to be a constitution that was sure to doom the young union entirely, which is why a new constitution was produced, one that very much created a strong centralized federal government. Yes, we can debate just how strong the Framers intended it to be, but considering even the kind of Federal government one of its authors, Jefferson, ran, I'd say while he certainly wouldn't be considered Lincolnian or Rooseveltian, neither was he some sort of minimalist Libertarian, and he certainly viewed Federal power as a useful club.

Paid for by tax dollars

[whitroth]

Gee... and here I was under the impression unless it contained classified or PII or HIPAA data, research done under public funding already *was* openly available.

Re:Paid for by tax dollars

[thejynxed]

You would think so, but you'd be surprised to find how much of it actually isn't, as it gets locked away behind one of the myriad non-public journal paywalls or in some corporate database while they patent the results.

Re:When they wantto force things on you slow is go

[Anonymous Coward]

Ross Perot used to say the devil is in the details. I completely agree considering the source, GOP Rep Lamar, this must have some dire consequences. Either, it is a stepping stone, or somewhere in the bill are some nefarious details that will cause EPA trouble. Like they won't fund the EPA's publishing of the data, so now since the EPA is required to publish the data, but they aren't allowed to spend money to publish it, the EPA can no longer conduct business.

This is similar to rule that the GOP implemented about cutting off funding of organizations that were under investigation by congress. They then started an investigation into Planned Parenthood, which cut off their funding by the previous rule change.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[budgenator]

Thank God we don't have to worry about the Cuyahoga river burning or 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill now that the EPA is protecting us!

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[budgenator]

Hopefully if you went to Fukushima, 24 hours after the Fukushima disaster, you took some water samples, you tested some of the water, sent a sample to an independent lab for testing to you know verify your testing, so you don't publish something stupid based a a miss-calibrated instrument and embarrass yourself and your sponsoring institution publicly. Maybe take some pictures of the algae, possibly culture some of the algae for future study, you know things real Scientists typically do.

Re:And Now For Something Off Topic...

[budgenator]

Prisoners from North Korean prisons, claim rats eat the eyeballs first, maybe we should verify that.

A wise commander named Ackbar once said...

[Chelloveck]

This all sounds good on the surface, but I sense a trap waiting to be sprung. I have a feeling that the "best available science" and "reproducible" requirements are specifically designed to eliminate any policies related to climate change. "It's not the best science available because I can find one guy with a science degree who disagrees with it. And you can't prove that global warming is real or is caused by anthropogenic sources, either. Even if you could, you'd need another planet to reproduce such claims! Ha! Suck it, libtards! Drilling starts tomorrow!"

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[Ol Olsoc]

Thank God we don't have to worry about the Cuyahoga river burning or 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill now that the EPA is protecting us!

The EPA didn't exist when the Cuyahoga burnt. Or I should say when it burned in 1969. There have been at least 13 fires on the river. The first one was in 1868. The fire in 1969 helped spur the creation of the EPA.

As for protecting us, its difficult. Your logic is complling however - it appears you are saying that we'd be safer from things like the fire and any harm if the EPA didn't exist. Perhaps we shall find out.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[soc_cost_priv_gains]

Isn't blaming the EPA for ecological disasters like blaming the police when crimes are committed?

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[soc_cost_priv_gains]

As long as they are compensated for their property what is the problem? Here is another example, the government wants to take away people'e private property to build a wall along the southern border. What is the proof it will be effective? There is none, you just have to trust the politicians.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[ooloorie]

As long as they are compensated for their property what is the problem?

They are generally not compensated.

Here is another example, the government wants to take away people'e private property to build a wall along the southern border. What is the proof it will be effective? There is none, you just have to trust the politicians.

Border security is the sole responsibility of the federal government and there is no way to handle border security through the courts in our system. Furthermore, the federal government already controls that land. Whether specific policies it wants to adopt today are effective or not is irrelevant, it needs control of that land because controlling it is its job. It's a long time oversight that it doesn't. The government can use eminent domain and it should compensate the current owners adequately.

Re:EPA and all other government agencies

[roman_mir]

where did you read that I want a government at all? I want no government whatsoever. The only thing that I am for is a mechanism for preventing so called 'legitimate' governments from appearing, funded by voluntary donations, nothing more than that.

I look forward to seeing

[CanadianMacFan]

I look forward to seeing all of the research and data behind the politicians claims about climate change not happening and everything else that comes out of their mouths. After all if they are writing the laws based on those claims then we should be able to see how the politicians arrived at them. Laws are much more important than regulations so the burden of proof should be much higher than they are demanding for the EPA and other departments.

Re: "scientific studies be replicable"

[geminidomino]

Jesus Christ, Poe's law is getting a hell of a workout today.

Can I get a ruling from the judges on this one?

Evidence

[Tenebrousedge]

We already have the causation. We've had the causation since 1896, and you could argue that it was evident since Tyndal 1856. The action of CO2 in the atmosphere is very well understood and has nothing to do with statistical data. Do you know how we can tell you know nothing about the science?

Re:Evidence

[budgenator]

Yes it is, is a closed simple system where all other things are equal, but we are talking about Climate where all things are never equal.

Re:Evidence

[Tenebrousedge]

You don't even know what you're saying. Support that statement any way you can.

Who determines if the data is the "best available"

[bplipschitz]

The bill specifically states,

"(b)(1) The administrator shall not propose, finalize, or disseminate a covered action unless all scientific and technical information relied on to support such covered action is-- "(A) the best available science:" ". . .

My obvious question is who is the arbiter of what whether it is the "best available science"? Folks who are actual scientists, or member of Lamar's committee, who are so deeply and philosophically scientific?

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[Ol Olsoc]

Isn't blaming the EPA for ecological disasters like blaming the police when crimes are committed?

Yes it is, despite the AC below calling it a false dilemma.

The people who think that keeping our ecosystem productive and allowing for muultiple generations to make a gaddamed profit off the lands largess is some sort of evil thing want to have it all ways. They want single company to be able to do whatever the hell they please, and destroy the land for future generations, or even ten years down the road. Then they want to starve off any attempts to make for sustainable profit and enjoyment. Then the stupidly evil asses want to blame the agency when something happens. And it's funny. These same peopel want to punish a d get tougher punishments on any other crime.

I never get the answer to why one single company is entitled to destroy land that can be productive for millenia. Seems kind of commielike to me. Personally, I think they all need a drink of that orangewater.

Re:Help me out, am I supposed to be for or against

[budgenator]

That particular ecological disaster was unleashed by the EPA, who took actions that were advised against by engineers on site.

Re:Let's be clear here

[toadlife]

Republicans who support it do so for three reasons, 1) a firm belief that God is on their side (stated, probably not truly believed) 2) They are being paid off in the form of campaign contributions (at least) by companies that do not want to have to follow rules. 3) a stupid belief that the earth is sooooooooo big that humans can't really have an effect on it.

Number 2 is the "reason." One and three are rationalizations aimed at distracting the people from the reason.