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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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.

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.

Re:And yet

[PPH]

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

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: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: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.

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: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?

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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[khallow]

We still have tobacco because

We still have tobacco because people want to smoke it.

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.

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

[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: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: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.

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.