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EPA Dismisses Half the Scientists on Its Major Review Board (nymag.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A few weeks after the election, pro-Trump commentator Scottie Nell Hughes heralded the dawn of a new era when she declared, "There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts." In the age of Trump there's little need for people who've devoted their lives to studying scientific facts, and over the weekend the administration finally got around to dismissing some of them. According to the Washington Post, about half of the 18 members on the Environmental Protection Agency's Board of Scientific Counselors have been informed that their terms will not be renewed. The academics who sit on the board advise the EPA's scientific board on whether its research is sound. The academics usually serve two three-year stints, and they were told by Obama administration officials and career EPA staffers that they would stay on for another term. But on Friday some received emails from the agency informing them that their first three-year term was up and they would not be renominated. Republican members of Congress have complained for some time that the Board of Scientific Counselors, as well as the 47-member Science Advisory Board, just rubber-stamp new EPA regulations. A spokesman for EPA administrator Scott Pruitt confirmed that he's thinking of replacing the academics with industry experts (though the EPA is supposed to be regulating those companies). Gretchen Goldman, research director at the Center for Science and Democracy, expressed her disappointment and asked, "What's the scientific reason for removing these individuals from this EPA science review board? It is rare to see such a large scale dismissal even in a presidential transition. The EPA is treating this scientific advisory board like its members are political appointees when these committees are not political positions. The individuals on these boards are appointed based on scientific expertise not politics. This move by the EPA is inserting politics into science."
Who's watching the watchers if they're watching themselves?
#DeleteFacebook
Those damn scientists think they're so smart, with their highfalutin PhDs and science stuff. We need more straight-shooting regular people doing science.
OK, this shit ain't funny no more.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The academics who sit on the board advise the EPA's scientific board on whether its research is sound.
Ok, then if you are producing a bunch of faulty research that is getting past these advisors, why should they not be fired? They obviously are not working out.
I mean the EPA actually CAUSED more pollution than they have prevented in recent years, without any consequence - so there is some major house cleaning to be done there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In these sad times I would appreciate a story about a person wising up after an issue, that you warned about, backfired. Do you have some?
Lead in poor peoples drinking water for starters
love is just extroverted narcissism
Trump and his cronies, advisers, and buddies, can't let facts get in the way of their beliefs.
Since more scientists are better, why doesn't the government just employ ALL the scientists? This 18 member panel didn't actually do scientific work, but they reviewed the scientific work of the actual working scientists, so that makes them more like bureaucratic scientists? The scientific work produced by the EPA should be peer reviewed in any case, and not reviewed by a static group of scientists that almost certainly have a net bias towards the viewpoints of whatever administration made the decision to hire each of them.
The academics usually serve two three-year stints, and they were told by Obama administration officials and career EPA staffers that they would stay on for another term.
Well that's just ridiculous. I hope no one believed that had any merit in reality.
Better known as 318230.
Simply get rid of anyone with an education.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Isn't that what the 45th President of the United States was elected to do?
Or was it take out science with politics? It's so hard to keep these things straight.
When has not being renewed for your a second term equal dismissed? If they were guaranteed employment for six years and they were let go half way through that would be dismissed. Being told by the way we are not going to renew your contract, and maybe to save money we will offshore these positions... I wonder what other industry's hear that.
Could someone name two or three of the dismissed people, for whom he can vouch that they do not have a Che Guevara T-shirt?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
A spokesman for the henhouse comfirmed that he's thinking of replacing the roosters with "chicken experts" (i.e. foxes).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Elections have consequences. In this case, America spoke with a single unified voice
Is that intended to be ironic? If so, you need to understand that irony is invisible on the internet, since it is camouflaged by the ubiquitous cluelessness pervasive on comment posts.
If this is not intended to be ironic: that's ironic. Because, in fact, America did not speak with a single unified voice.
and declared that we are sick of all the burdensome environmental regulations destroying our lives and careers and they need some one to rain them in.
If this is intended as ironic: ROFL on the phrase "rain them in."
If it's not intended as ironic: that's ironic.
Before adding, "apart from that one, obviously."
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Actually, this isn't inserting politics into science as stated, it's more like a continuation of the removal of science and all its annoying reliance on real facts from politics/governance.
Other sources reporting the story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
http://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2017/05/08/epa-michigan-state-professor/101429388/
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/epa-boots-at-least-5-scientists-off-board-may-favor-replacements-from-industry/
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/08/politics/epa-scott-pruitt-board/
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-epa-just-got-rid-of-a-bunch-of-scientists-on-its-top-review-board-vgtrn
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/05/08/EPA-dismisses-five-members-of-scientific-review-board/6031494254095/
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
nt
From looking at the other stories, apparently the number of scientist dismissed (in the story here listed as "at least five") is nine.
From http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/08/... :
"An EPA spokesman told CNN there are a total of 18 positions on this particular advisory board, and nine of those scientists were not renewed following the end of their three-year term."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
50% reduction in size of government? I'M IN. We have to stop spending so much money as a country, and this sort of thing is exactly what needs to happen. Cut government in half.
The scientists may be smart. but as a agency, the EPA is faking research to justify regulations.
Actually, there is no evidence of faking research. There is the accusation of using "secret science". The accusation as it stands is just this: an accusation.
Well played Putin.
You could not better the USA, so what you have chosen is to ruin the USA.
Now all you need is to get Monkey Boy involved in another expensive war with someone like ....oh North Korea and you can break out the popcorn and watch.
America, too arrogant and too stupid to see they are being played.
Not really. Give it a rest, msmash. For goodness sake.
"There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts."
When "alternative facts" are said to be true because they're declared to be true, when vaccines are once again said to cause autism, when the settled science of climate change is used as the reason to build a sea wall around a golf course while at the same time declared to be fiction concocted by a foreign government, it is quite clear the manipulation of the uneducated is the end goal.
This whole debacle of declaring untrue what is patently true is a page taken right out of Putin's playbook. Lie, lie, deny and make the other person appear to be the one who has to prove anything despite the overwhelming evidence already presented.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
What's the problem here? The winner of the election gets to fill appointed positions in his branch of government. Film at 11
Something here doesn't pass the sniff test. I mean, articles are often biased but the headline says "dismissed" while the text states that the expired three-year terms weren't renewed. Goldman says "what's the scientific reason for removing...", thereby both indicating that this is anti-science, and they they are being forcibly removed. Then she says that it's the other people inserting politics into science.
I don't know the whole story but just offhand this sounds incredibly one-sided. The EPA spokesman said there are hundreds of applicants, yet another individual stated that he has never known someone on the board to not be reinstated at the end of their term. So there's basically been the same 18 people for years and years? How open-minded and non-political is that? Sounds like the three-year term has been merely formal. Is there anything "scientific" about that?
You quote The Federalist? The site that is one of the most jubilant supporters of Trump - er GropenFuehrer ? Really? That is like expecting RT to say anything critical of Putin (the real US president)
Um, hasn't one specific scientific controversy been bandied about by one side of the political spectrum and used to beat the other side over the head? Hasn't science been used as a political wedge issue for over a decade? I believe it has, in which case this whole thing becomes political, right or wrong, like it or not.....
Which leads me to say the following: "Elections have consequences."
Where we would like to think that *somehow* facts will win the argument, there are way to many alternate realities floating around with their on version of facts and truth these days. The EPA has been awash in political power and has participated in it's own demise by allowing its regulatory power to be used for furthering a political ideology, even when the facts and environmental benefits may be in dispute.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It's OK everyone; dimissing half of them just means they're running a controlled experiment about scientists
"America spoke with a single unified voice.." Trumpcakes won by 80,000 votes. That's it.
LOL!
This is the only thing that I can tell you, that you will know is true by hearing it.
Either I have lied in the past, and am currently telling the truth, or I have just told my first lie.
and that he was President. Everybody should read "Surely You're Joking, Mr Fenman".
In this month's EPA report, Why We Should All Be Consuming More High Fructose Corn Syrup, brought to you in association with Lardass Industries.
No, it is better. He is quoting the Federalist who quoted a R representative from Texas. Unimpeachable sources I'm sure. I bet that rep even passed high school after daddy greased enough palms.
There is the accusation of using "secret science".
So they actually accuse the EPA as being a heretical Gnostic cult. Didn't Rome do their job already before the Middle Ages to their satisfaction? Trump clearly needs to reconstruct the gladiator arenas with lions to help the administrations science purge.
If the committee always agrees and is unanimous removing half of them won't make any difference; they could whittle the committee to three or five members.
It sounds like this committee has become a resume filler.
Science is about theories - not facts. If you "peel the onion" on most theories, you find out just how few "facts" there actually are! For an interesting read on this subject, check out the book "Doubt and Certainty", by Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan (the famous physicists).
Name one person whose doctor Obama took away from them.
"The EPA is treating this scientific advisory board like its members are political appointees when these committees are not political positions. The individuals on these boards are appointed based on scientific expertise not politics. "
Wrong, nowadays believing in facts is having a political position.
Elections have consequences. In this case, America spoke with a single unified voice
Is that intended to be ironic?
No, it is intended to be sarcastic, or maybe just trolling and testing the limits of Poe's Law, but definitely not irony.
irony (rn/): noun
the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
For the Other Half.
Dem making comments like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7XXVLKWd3Q It don't mater what party you are for. The US is in trouble.
"The individuals on these boards are appointed based on scientific expertise not politics."
No matter what your scientific position may be, few if any individuals on such a board are not political animals. Anyone in academia who *tries* to get onto university boards, etc. is more interested in the power (or perception of power) of such a position than in the science purportedly being done. They get there by virtue of knowing and kowtowing to someone else in political power.
Seems like the prominent anti-vaccination folks are in that same group.
Even the left-leaning "fact-checkers" marked him with multiple lies, even at least one "Lie of the Year"
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
Was to make himself a liar...
Obama promised that he "will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days."
One of President Obama's major campaign planks was making government more open and accountable. It's a reaction to a habit in Congress of rushing bills through the House and Senate without giving people much opportunity to know what the bills would do. Indeed, sometimes members of Congress don't even know what's in the bills.
So Obama pledged during the campaign to institute "sunlight before signing."
"Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them," Obama's campaign Web site states . "As president, Obama will not sign any nonemergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House Web site for five days."
But the first bill Obama signed into law as president — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — got no such vetting.
In fact, the Congressional Record shows that the law was passed in the Senate on Jan. 22, 2009, passed in the House on Jan. 27, and signed by the president on Jan. 29. So only two days passed between the bill's final passage and the signing.
The legislation was not posted to the White House Web site for comment in any way that we could find.
We see no way the bill could be deemed emergency legislation, even taking the broadest view. The bill overturns the effects of a Supreme Court decision that limited when workers could sue for pay discrimination. Most pertinently, the bill is retroactive to the time of the court decision — May 28, 2007. Obama earned a Promise Kept from us for signing the law. But it would have the same effect if had been signed a few days later, so it's clearly not an emergency.
We asked the White House about this and if they planned to begin posting laws to the Web site for comment soon, but we got no response.
Obama signed the measure at 10:20 a.m. About two hours later, the White House posted the bill on its Web site with a link that asks people to submit comments . But the bill was already signed at that point.
We recognize that Obama has been in office just a week, but he was very clear about his plan for a five-day comment period, and we can't see why this one needed to be rushed. It is somewhat ironic that with the same action, Obama both keeps and breaks a campaign promise. But there it is — his first one. Promise Broken.
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
In the Georgia 6th District race--and this data is from *before* the jungle primary held a few weeks ago...
"Jon Ossoff on Wednesday announced record haul in the race for Georgia’s 6th congressional district, a stunning figure for the previously unknown Democrat.
"Ossoff’s raised more than $8.3 million in advance of April 18’s special election, a number 17 times greater than his nearest competitors in the multi-party election and an apparent record for a congressional candidate in a single quarter.
"For context, that’s more than former 6th District Congressman Tom Price raised in his last three campaigns spanning six years.
"But nearly all of that money has come thanks to a progressive non-profit named ActBlue. They offer “simple, intuitive tools” to help “Democratic campaigns get more donations”. The left-leaning web site Daily Kos has set up an online ActBlue portal to donate to Ossoff.
[Daily Kos is a for-profit media conglomerate, clearly engaging in open a flagrant campaigning and finance spending].
"So far, of Ossoff’s $8.3 million raised, ActBlue donations make up $7.7 million.
"just 6 percent of Ossoff’s donors live in Georgia. He had more donations from California, New York, and Massachusetts than from Georgia.
If Ossoff win's I will be shocked if I hear a single word about the disparities in money, even from all the people at Public Citizen who cry every day about corporations and big money corrupting elections (and especially cry about Citizen's United).
After all, the optics would really look bad if they had fired all of the scientists the same day. Chances are they will wait a few weeks, then slowly get rid of the rest.
According to the Washington Post/ABC News survey...nearly 100 percent of voters who backed Trump and voted for him in last year’s presidential election say they do not regret their vote. Of those reached by the polling agency, 96 percent said they don’t regret their vote, while only 2 percent said they do.
On the other hand, only 85 percent said the same of Clinton. Of those who regret their vote, very few say they would switch their vote to the other candidate. Instead, they would vote for a third party candidate or not vote at all.
It was created by a POLITICIAN named Richard Nixon. It is a part of the executive branch of GOVERNMENT, and funded and overseen by the POLITICIANS in the congress. The EPA does NOT follow the whims of science, it focuses on the issues a president and members of congress point it at. Since the Clinto Gore years, it has been aimed at anything related to Al Gore's pet project of global warming since Bush43 was too uninterested to do anything about it.
The EPA has over the decades been stuffed full of very partisan Democrats because left wing politicans care deeply about it and see it as a powerful tool for advancing their agenda, whereas Republicans generally ignore it (thus making it a liberal ratchet wrench that goes further left under Democrats and holds its place under Republicans). After decades of use by the left as a political cudgel, a Republican president with a spine has finally come along and essentially said "I'm facing non-stop political warfare, I'm not going to leave my political enemies in power in places In am now in charge of". There is no surprise here. Democrats never hesitated to get rid of any right wingers either before they got into the EPA or shortly after they were discovered there.
To pretend that ANY of this is truly about SCIENCE when it has long been about politics and whose oxe was being gored, is just plain ignorant and/or dishonest. Same exact thing with the US Attorneys. They are POLITICAL appointees and every president is free to fire the previous ones and insert his own, but it happens with nearly every administration change and thus people are more used to the changes and it's harder to fool people into getting upset about it.
"In the age of Trump there's little need for people who've devoted their lives to studying scientific facts"
Scientific *facts*?
Methinks you do not understand science...
I imagine ridiculing & replacing scholars is how a dark age begins.
I see technology growth in 2017 like US housing & stock markets in 2007... with uneducated experts suggesting: it can only get better, regardless how we abuse the system... after all everyone knows expanding knowledge is just a pretext for making money... you would abuse your position if you had the change like GOP leaders are doing, quit being jealous...
That will never happen. The Trumps will kill all the lions and post selfies. The gladiators will just have to kill each other.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/08/06/the-trump-sons-go-hunting-again-will-more-trophy-photos-follow/?utm_term=.480588b20ddc
... when the settled science of climate change ...
"settled science" is an oxymoron.
If you're using it, you already drank the kool aid.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Every US Administration and new Department have the authority to replace members of standing committees.
It is especially needed this time to get rid of Obama Viet Cong and those with a "death wish" to become Anthropogenic Global Warming IEDs who in groups can become Improvised Weapons of Mass Destruction (D.C. marchers).
Jajajajajajajajajajajaj
If the data is not available for every scientific decision, using "secret science" is not an accusation, it's a fact.
Without data freely available, decisions are not scientific, they are gospel.
"Trust me, I am a scientist" should worry you just as much as "Trust me, I'm from the government and am here to help."
... nowadays believing in facts is having a political position.
You need to capitalize the "f": "... believing in Facts is ..." The discussion has been religion-ized - not just politicized - for decades.
Each of the major sides of the discussion believes the other has faked data and promulgated falsehoods disguised as science. People convinced on either side are now beyond sceptical that any alleged scientific results that disagrees with their own paradigm is not more of the same.
It's now going to take decades of actual, OPEN, REPRODUCIBLE research for climate scientists to reestablish enough credibility to convince any significant number of people to substantially change their views. By that time, if those claiming imminent doom are correct, it will be too late for convincing scientific results supporting their side to do any good.
Meanwhile, this process can't even START until "burn the heretic" epithets like "denier" have stopped - or been discredited and ridiculed into a toothless background hum.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We (the plurality) voted for Clinton. By almost 3 million votes. Trump lost the vote of the citizens.
A very small group, specifically the electoral college, put Trump in there. The voters didn't. It's a technical win at best. What it isn't is an indication that he actually won the hearts and minds of the US population. He didn't. He still hasn't. There's no sign he ever will.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A Scientist might say that you could get cancer from, you know, carcinogens, so they should be removed from cigarettes, or cigarettes should be not sold to children who are not assumed able to make informed decisions. Or pregnant women. Or stupid people.
An industry expect would say, sure, but we have this cute camel, see, and the kids love it, and besides, no one wants to hear that shit about cancer, so we'll just keep on keeping on, eh? Which is exactly what they did.
THAT is what happens when there is no scientific oversight with punch.
Science brought you everything good you have. Science is the dirt technology grows in. Unscientific hand-waving is the dirt that lung cancer from cigarettes and tailpipes and dirty coal power plants grows in.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Fuck you, that's just stupid.
You ignoramus.
Contractors for the EPA dropped the ball.... Accidents happen, the EPA owned it and worked on fixing it.
If by "owned it" you mean "ignored 1.2 billion in damages", then yes they owned it.
But fuck the wilderness right? Or anyone along the river the EPA poisoned? They should be grateful the government chose to bless them with anything besides the boring old clear natural water they had been getting from the river.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your article shows an accusation. From a Texas senator. lol. I bet you can tell us a whole lot about science.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I have, and still do in my profession. A good percentage of today's career EPA employees have become hidebound technocrats, doing their damndest to force those under their authority to adhere to their arcane interpretations of environmental law.
Rule obsolete or no longer relevant? Enforce it anyway! Rule ignores improvements in technology? Don't change it because that's a lot of hard work! Rule doesn't give you enough authority? Arbitrarily take the authority anyway and dare industry or the states to take you to court!
The true professionals working at EPA who understood how to balance protection of environment with realistic goals for doing so have long since retired. Their replacements don't care about doing the right thing - they've long since dedicated themselves to protecting their fiefdoms at all costs.
As for all of the examples listed here so far, there is plenty of blame to be shared. Lack of funds, guarding your own turf, loose ethics and fear of losing your job if you defy your bosses (pro-environment or pro-industry) shape how things shake out in the long run.
The advisory boards do tend to support their own when filling positions, so adding industry representation isn't necessarily a bad thing. Do remember that what EPA is actually required to do by law is set by Congress in 40 CFR, so that doesn't change if the makeup of the board does.
EPA needs a kick in the pants occasionally to remind it to concentrate on its mandate and not to overreach through inappropriate enforcement of said mandate. Additionally, EPA and the state agencies should be more vigilant in their efforts to prevent things like Flint from happening. Unfortunately, though, it only takes one person not doing their job to give others an excuse not to do theirs. (I guess I've actually been paying attention during all of those mandatory ethics training courses.)
There is plenty of incentive for scientists to present evidence that reinforces their viewpoint (or your superiors' viewpoint).
We see scientific papers - peer-reviewed papers - being withdrawn at an increasing pace because either the science turns out to be faulty or just plain fabricated. Data sets are cherrypicked to reinforce expected outcomes. Historical data is "massaged" to adjust for perceived improper collection techniques of the past.
To think that scientists, especially those that live and die by their grant funding, are above manipulating or outright forging results to suit their masters' needs or their own desire to shape policy is naive.
I know you hypocritical slashdotters just love the idea that Trump "fired" these bastions of scientific truth, but it simply isnt true.
from Reason
"The civil servants at the EPA had apparently assured the members of the BOSC whose three-year terms were ending that they could stay on for another term just as the Obama administration was winding down in January. Since the terms for more than half of the BOSC's members ran out in late April, the agency bureaucrats essentially went to the new EPA leadership with the old list of Obama administration appointees at the last minute and said, "Sign this."
The new team appointed by Trump declined to do so. Scorned bureaucrats then leaked the decision to the media shaping the narrative as a Trumpian anti-science "firing" of brave truth-tellers. The Washington Post and the New York Times duly reported just that story. But is it so? "We're not going to rubber-stamp the last administration's appointees. Instead, they should participate in the same open competitive process as the rest of the applicant pool," EPA spokesperson J.P. Freire told the Post. "This approach is what was always intended for the board, and we're making a clean break with the last administration's approach."
Water would have stayed contained within the mine, naturally filtering through the soil and keeping all the contaminants local, instead of spreading them along hundreds of miles (not an exaggeration) of pristine river.
The EPA turned a very local issue into a multi-state one.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley