EPA Proposes Limits To Science Used In Rulemaking (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule on Tuesday that would limit the kinds of scientific research it can use in crafting regulations, an apparent concession to big business that has long requested such restrictions. Under the new proposals, the EPA will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential medical and industry data. The measure was billed by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt as a way to boost transparency for the benefit of the industries his agency regulates. But scientists and former EPA officials worry it will hamstring the agency's ability to protect public health by putting key data off limits.

The EPA has for decades relied on scientific research that is rooted in confidential medical and industry data as a basis for its air, water and chemicals rules. While it publishes enormous amounts of research and data to the public, the confidential material is held back. Business interests have argued the practice is tantamount to writing laws behind closed doors and unfairly prevents them from vetting the research underpinning the EPA's often costly regulatory requirements. They argue that if the data cannot be published, the rules should not be adopted. But ex-EPA officials say the practice is vital.

Comments

Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[aepervius]

I mean I usually suspect the industry to want to hamstring the EPA, after all it forces them to take into account externalities, which they could otherwise ignore and cut corner. But what sort of research would be private and have an impact ? Before deciding either way I would need example. I am no friend of "trust us we were told that XYZ is bad for you" (The only counter example I can think of is military research, but I guess that would be exempt).

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Medical research.

The participants in a medical study generally are protected from having their medical histories exposed to the world.

I suppose one could argue that knowing someone is 37, a non-smoker, takes over-the-counter asprin, and has high-blood pressure might not be enough to expose who they are. But in more detailed tests knowing someone had cancer in a timeframe or making their DNA public definitely could be invasive.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what sort of research would be private and have an impact ?

Here's some of what the Union for Concerned Scientists had to say about attempted GOP legislation that tried to do the same thing:

Agencies such as the EPA don’t make all this information publicly available for a number of very good reasons. Protecting individuals’ privacy is prime among them. For example, we’re all aware of the laws that protect the privacy of our medical records. The Secret Science bill appears to require the EPA to release such confidential personal health information about the participants in scientific studies if it wants to use health studies to make regulatory decisions—a direct violation of health privacy law. The bill also fails to protect intellectual property rights, another reason data often cannot be publicly released.

Further, the bill would not compel companies and others to make their relevant data publicly available to the agency.

The upshot is, if this bill became law, the EPA would not be able to use public health data protected by confidentiality agreements to enact science-based regulations. The result? The EPA would not be able to carry out its mission of protecting public health and the environment.

What’s Wrong with Expecting the EPA to Make All of Its Data Available—Isn’t Complete Transparency a Good Thing?

Re: Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're compensated. Facebook sells your data for basically giving you a free blog.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Excerpt from a letter signed by 1000 scientists urging Pruitt not to do this:

Proponents for these radical restrictions purport to raise two sets of concerns: reproducibility and
transparency. In reality, these are phony issues that weaponize ‘transparency’ to facilitate political
interference in science-based decisionmaking, rather than genuinely address either. The result will be
policies and practices that will ignore significant risks to the health of every American.

First, many public health studies cannot be replicated, as doing so would require intentionally and
unethically exposing people and the environment to harmful contaminants or recreating one-time events
(such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill).

Second, there are multiple valid reasons why requiring the release of all data does not improve scientific
integrity and could actually compromise research, including intellectual property, proprietary, and
privacy concerns. Further, EPA has historically been transparent in demonstrating the scientific basis of
its decisions, so the public can hold the agency accountable to establish evidence-based safeguards; any
changes should be made with the full consultation with and support of the scientific community.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[omnichad]

But what sort of research would be private and have an impact ?

Cancer clusters vs. HIPAA.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Not everything is about your politics.

If a construction crew drops a girder, what happens if it hits a Trump voter? Is this any different from what happens if it hits a Clinton voter instead?

I expect snark in response, of course, since you're more interested in looking clever than you are in finding truth.

Re: Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Zontar The Mindless]

They're compensated.

Bull-hockey. Having one's entire life laid bare is hardly compensation for a free home page.

Re: Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Calydor]

The general population disagrees or Facebook wouldn't be as successful as they are.

Re: Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The general population have no clue how data can be used.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Humbubba]

A statement is not scientific if it can't conceivably be proven wrong empirically. Testability is why I trust science to be the basis for EPA regulations and environmental laws.

But instead of relying on science, our political system lets companies write the laws and regulations that govern them. As a result, we get abominations like polluted water in Flint MI, West Virginia, and North Carolina.

Before releasing something into the water supply, samples should be tested for contaminants. And if those samples don't make the grade, those responsible need to be held accountable. Making discharge safe typically involves diluting it to approved contaminant levels before releasing it into the water supply. Simple, really. There are labs that can and do test discharge samples for a plethora of contaminants, acidity, color, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, etc. But they don't test for everything that might be dangerous - prescription drugs for example. These sort of things need to be put right before they are put in our water. But it won't happen if science doesn't make the rules and regulators don't enforce those rules.

Because science and technology can verifiably be used to clean up the environment, whereas politics demonstratively won't, I propose replacing Scott Pruitt with AI. If AI is good enough for the CIA, it's gotta be better for the environment than a corrupt political lackey.

--

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/videos/what-lies-upstream/

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[tomhath]

if this bill became law, the EPA would not be able to use public health data protected by confidentiality agreements

Almost all public health data can be used once it's de-identified. There will be some examples where an unusual combination of timing and medical conditions would mean it has to be kept confidential, but that's the exception and the number of cases will be small.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proponents for these radical restrictions purport to raise two sets of concerns: reproducibility and
transparency. In reality, these are phony issues that weaponize ‘transparency’ to facilitate political
interference in science-based decisionmaking, rather than genuinely address either.

It is the same as pretty much everything else with them.

1. Establish the desired outcome. Eliminate abortions, get more republicans elected, more tax cuts for high earners, etc.
2. Determine what paths get that outcome ignoring ethics entirely or to a great degree.
3. If necessary come up with "reasons" why you had to take those actions.
4. Take those actions.

With abortions, you have such things as requiring a 6 foot wide hallway. There have been no rational basis for why that is required beyond they wanted to shutdown more abortion clinics, but the stated reason was for the health of the people involved. In other words, they lied.

In voting, you have protecting against fake voting as the stated reason. In practice their voting role purges, voter id requirements, etc, etc raise barriers to voting that tend to favour their side. In short, they lied again.

With this you have the stated reason of protecting us from non verified info and such, but the outcome of gutting more of the EPA and making the planet dirtier. In short, they lied again.

They elected someone known for lying and have established a pattern of lying continuously to get their way. None of this is new..

Hell Trump just called the leader of North Korea "Very Honourable."

Truth means nothing to these people. Only outcomes matter. It is all a means to the end.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Talderas]

Potentially, there's very little that is impacted when it comes to the ability of the EPA to make sound and rational regulation decisions. The main reason that scientists and researchers are complaining about the rule change is because it shoulders them with the cost of first deanonymizing medical data in order to be able to present it for consideration in EPA rulemaking. They were not previously required to do this in which case they present research which the government in turn kept secret and consequently that research is unable to be vetted or checked by the public or direct subjects of EPA rulemaking.

If this were the only class of data that was being kept secret then it's fairly obvious that this is an issue with HIPAA laws and the law should be amended so that researchers and scientists do not count as covered entities. Much like how medical malpractice lawyers are not covered entities and can distribute your personal medical information as scrap paper to elementary schools without violating HIPAA. That would solve the problem and eliminate any need for the EPA keeping research used in rulemaking secret. Unfortunately, there are other classes of data which are likely used and have to be kept secret for other reasons.

If the goes is to have transparent discourse in rulemaking then the data used to make rulemaking needs to be available for parties in favor of and opposed to proposed rules. You can go about that via two approaches.

1. Prevent considering of data which cannot be made public.
2. Amend laws which require data considered to be kept secret rather than public.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[kenh]

You're talking about HIPPA regulations - have you ever read the HIPPA regulations? Ever worked in a HIPPA regulated field?

HIPPA regulations require that patient identity be protected - I used to work in the clinical drug trial industry and we used six-digit patient numbers and three letter initials to identify patients in our studies, and the client research companies protected the key that mapped the six-digit IDs and initials to the actual consent forms and other personally-identifiable documents.

Take your example:

someone is 37, a non-smoker, takes over-the-counter asprin, and has high-blood pressure

None of that information tells you who the patient is, it does not reveal their identity... Adding that the same person "had cancer in a time frame" does not revel their identity - to use that information to arrive at an identity would require you to already know the person and know they had cancer "in a certain time period" before you could identify who the patient is - the only problem is you haven't revealed anything, you already knew the identity of the patient that had cancer.
 

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[aquacrayfish]

If the goal was to look clever then I'm a bit disturbed by the resulting sentence.

(Excellent post, btw).

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The explanation by the scientists is clear enough to answer this troll's question, but that "full disclosure" is not the troll's purpose.

Remember how some trollers are actually dishonest disruptors of useful, open discourse - perhaps paid by those who want to stop open discussion? They use various trolling techniques, like this one. I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of those disrupters.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[paradigmsareconstruc]

Re: "Proponents for these radical restrictions purport to raise two sets of concerns: reproducibility and transparency. In reality, these are phony issues that weaponize ‘transparency’ to facilitate political interference in science-based decisionmaking, rather than genuinely address either."

Centralized "big science" communities more likely generate non-replicable results

"Abstract: Growing concern that most published results, including those widely agreed upon, may be false are rarely examined against rapidly expanding research production. Replications have only occurred on small scales due to prohibitive expense and limited professional incentive. We introduce a novel, high-throughput replication strategy aligning 51,292 published claims about drug-gene interactions with high-throughput experiments performed through the NIH LINCS L1000 program. We show (1) that unique claims replicate 19% more frequently than at random, while those widely agreed upon replicate 45% more frequently, manifesting collective correction mechanisms in science; but (2) centralized scientific communities perpetuate claims that are less likely to replicate even if widely agreed upon, demonstrating how centralized, overlapping collaborations weaken collective understanding. Decentralized research communities involve more independent teams and use more diverse methodologies, generating the most robust, replicable results. Our findings highlight the importance of science policies that foster decentralized collaboration to promote robust scientific advance."

Introduction:

Concern over reliability (1) and reproducibility (2, 3) in science calls into question the cumulative process of building on prior results published by others. In a publication environment that rewards novel findings over verifications (4, 5), scientists remain uncertain about the published claims they assemble into new research designs and discoveries. In this paper, we demonstrate a claim replication strategy that repurposes high-throughput experiments to evaluate the replication likelihood for tens of thousands of scientific claims curated from a wide range of research articles.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[DCFusor]

Wrong agency. FDA does medical, not EPA. Way to toss in a specious bunch of crap.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Rhipf]

But it that identity is kept confidential at all the study couldn't be used by the EPA if this proposed rule is passed.

the EPA will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential medical and industry data

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, when you say the risks of people living near this factory having cancer are 20% higher, so that plant must be closed, is it fair to see the research that demonstrates it? Could be that only chain-smokers live by the factory, and it's chain smoking, not the factory that's the problem. That's the point of requiring some level of transparency. Hell, there's plenty of "manipulated" research being published in refereed journals, and that's smaller than the p-value hunting that's endemic. The research needs transparency too.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Straif]

No it does not. Studies must still follow HIPPA regulations and mask identifying data. Anonymized data doesn't prevent a study from being public.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[kelemvor4]

But it that identity is kept confidential at all the study couldn't be used by the EPA if this proposed rule is passed.

the EPA will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential medical and industry data

I've never seen a medical study based on a person's name or social security number.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Rhipf]

So none of those studies (i.e. no studies) would be use under this ruling. :-)

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[mrclevesque]

"... politicians chose to provide poisonous dirty Flint Mi. water, because the nibberized neighborhoods they served could not afford to pay for clean water. Most industry had moved to Mexico or China; nobody produced a thing of value to exchange for clean water. What is your issue? Nothing is free ... nobody has a right to anything they cannot buy at market price. Poor people = poor water; productive people = yummy clean water."

Nope. It starts with reckless polluting, which results in an artificial scarcity of clean water, which results in profits for the few at the expense of the rest, especially the poor.

Where capital goes, playing a captive labor force against another captive labor force, is secondary.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[rgbatduke]

I hear you and agree, but I doubt very much that you'll get any traction on /. with this observation, in spite of the fact that it actually has its own wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Note that this is a crisis already in the realm of openly published research results and conclusions. There isn't any good reason to think that the numbers cited in the Nature study are going to be any smaller for studies conducted by parties with even stronger (monetary or sociopolitical) vested interests, who don't even expose their results to the greater scientific community for checking and replication. And the numbers are terrible.

Look, it is only six or seven years now that we finally learned that dietary cholesterol and fat are almost completely irrelevant to heart disease, after being told nothing but the opposite for some fifty years, all of it stamped with "proven by real science":

https://academic.oup.com/advan...

Now imagine that a Dietary Protection Agency (DPA) had been created to deal with the "public health crisis" caused by high levels of fat and cholesterol in the US diet, and that they crafted regulations banning things like the open sale of cooking fats, the production of bacon, the sale of cheese and eggs. Suppose further that the "evidence" they cited to defend these draconian measures was -- precisely what was, in fact, used to support the argument that high fat = high cholesterol -- but that this data, instead of even being available to support the epidemiological study I just cited, was hidden behind a shroud of "patient confidentiality". BLTs would be a thing of the past, the sugar and carb industry and PETA would be crowing and slipping the DPA large sums under the table to ensure that the basis for its rules was never overly scrutinized to protect the meat animals that are the primary sources of dietary cholesterol, and the public would not be well served. At least with bacon and eggs, smothered in cheese sauce.

Finally, the joker who invoked "HIPPA" above as if he knew what he was talking about -- for starters, it is HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, whose purpose was to protect people from being denied insurance (for which it proved remarkably ineffectual) or employment (slightly better) on the basis of prior health history -- clearly missed the point that all published medical research is HIPAA compliant. HIPAA compliance isn't that difficult to arrange or manage in a study, and publishing methodology and results from such studies is the basis for every single published work in the field of evidence-based medicine, and even with open publication, there is a ton of non-reproducible crap that makes it out into the wild (like the cholesterol gaff, like the sugar/carb gaff) and stays there for years or even decades before independent work finally corrects it. No sane physician is going to base treatments on results from completely hidden work -- no methods, no data, just somebody saying "trust us, we've seen the methods and data and we totally believe them". That's not science, and it isn't evidence-based reasoning, it is just a glaring opportunity for confirmation bias, political bias, social bias, or plain old money to influence what should be an open process that makes mistakes all the time as it is, even when fully open.

To conclude, I honestly think the EPA doesn't get a bye on the open participation in Real Science, which involves things like peer review, reproducibility, double blind placebo controlled studies as opposed to stupid epidemiological correlations with unknown confounding variables, the open analysis of the statistical basis of claims, avoidance of data dredging, cherrypicking, and all of the other myriad aspects of Bad Science, science we don't get to see and criticize. I am quite certain

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[rgbatduke]

...or else there would be no medical journals, would there?

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[tonglebeak]

It's HIPAA, NOT HIPPA. Stop spreading the incorrect acronym around and further fueling the mass confusion that already exiss.

Re: Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[sexconker]

Actually they were asked, and agreed.

The strongest argument could be that agreements isn't valid because they didn't understand it. However if contracts can be thrown out because one party didn't understand, we have trouble.

What trouble, exactly? Trouble for corporations, insurers, employers, etc. who write one-sided, non-negotiable contracts that shit all over the slaves?
If a party enters into a contract without understanding it, then there's no meeting of the minds. If the other party was the one who wrote it, and you can show they knew or should have known that the first party didn't understand it, they fucking lose.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[sexconker]

You're modded -1: Absolutely Correct.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[sexconker]

No it doesn't.

Please cite the text that you think forbids basic anonymization.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

There is a special place in hell for those who downmod humor.

See, in Chicago, there's a running joke that the dead continue to vote. So if one was killed by a girder in Chicago, Republican or Democrat, as a dead person they'd continue voting for the DNC for the next few decades.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Obfuscant]

But it that identity is kept confidential at all the study couldn't be used by the EPA if this proposed rule is passed.

That is not true.

the EPA will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential medical and industry data

This is not a quote from the EPA, Scott Pruitt, or anyone involved in the process. It's a statement BY A NEWSPAPER that relies on click-through advertising to make a profit. It's hoopla and fearmongering.

First of all, screw "confidential industry data". If it's going to be the basis for a law, it needs to be public, and science needs to be reproducable. If you can't see what it is, you can't even begin to try to reproduce it, and it isn't science.

As for medical data, "confidential medical data" is called PII. Nothing requires that PII be released to make a medical study reproducable.

If you go back to the laws that are behind this, which the newspapers are calling a pet project of Lamar Smith, they don't require "confidential medical data" to be made public. They require the data behind the results of the study to be made public. That does NOT include PII. PII was exempted from the bills the house passed about this. "Joe Smith, aged 34, living at 123 Main Street, who has Type II diabetes was given ..." is NOT part of the results, and it is not data that is relevant to the results. "A study of 384 people aged 30 to 40 with T2DM were given ..." IS the data that is reportable. This should not be able to be hidden under the guise of "confidential data". There should be enough data so that the study can be reproduced -- and that doesn't require using exactly the same people again, it requires knowing what criteria were used to select them and how many, and what the results were.

The concept is pretty simple. If THE GOVERNMENT, which is supposed to be by, of and for the PEOPLE, is going to LIMIT what people can do based on SCIENCE, then that SCIENCE needs to be reviewable by the PUBLIC from whom the government gets its power. By fiat rule based on secrets is not how government should work.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[mrclevesque]

"No, the acid came from leaves. It was tannic acid,"

Supposing it was, what's your point?

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Straif]

No one seems to have the actual text of the rules change but the proposed legislation it was based off of (the HONEST act) is available and states very clearly:

"Personally identifiable information, trade secrets, or commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential must be redacted prior to public availability."

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Straif]

The rules change is supposed to be based on the HONEST act which specifically states that while the details and methods of the study must be public for review/reproducability:

"Personally identifiable information, trade secrets, or commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential must be redacted prior to public availability."

If Pruitt changed the wording of his rule even after meeting with Smith, the author of the HONEST act, no one has shown so.

As for the EPA's current procedures, nothing requires them to disclose any of the details to the studies used for their decision making. They routinely use data from studies they do not make public which allows them to pick and choose which pieces of data they like with no means of an outside source to verify their claims. That doesn't mean that there is some nefarious plan for them to control the US through over-regulation but when some of their rules can have billion dollar impacts it is important for people to be able to double check their work.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Obfuscant]

This attack on the EPA is perpetuated by supporters of fracking mostly and the science behinds adding lubricants under high pressure causing slippage underground creating earthquakes is pretty well established at this point.

Then there is no reason for this "well established" data to be considered "confidential" or "proprietary", is there? If it is well established and public then this new rule will change nothing at all.

If you look at all the regulations they are repealing right now you'll see it only helps companies pollute more

It's creating scientifically supportable regulation, not overzealous "no pollution is the only acceptable pollution". If you cannot scientifically support a public harm at X ppm of something, then the legal limit should not be 10% of X or lower. And trying to claim that "OMG, some awful corporation is killing us by emitting 1% of X of something into the water" is just dishonest.

You say "pollute more" to pollute the discussion with scare tactics, when the fact is that setting the limits so far below any provable harm levels IS more expensive than performing no cleanup. "Zero" is a lovely but unachievable goal, and casting anything but "zero" as "pollute more" is fear mongering.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[DamnOregonian]

Why the hell are you gaslighting so hard?
There is absolutely a reason for "well established" data to be considered "confidential"
Many medical studies' underlying data is confidential. It is not publicly available. It is available, though. You're implying that not-publicly-available means not-available. Like it's made up numbers. It isn't.
The fact that the public cannot verify the data doesn't mean the data is not peer reviewed (and reviewed by EPA scientists themselves)

You're spreading a whole bunch of bullshit to spin a blatant attempt at discounting the majority of medical studies from regulation consideration. Shame on you, shithead.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[Obfuscant]

There is absolutely a reason for "well established" data to be considered "confidential"

I hope you can provide an example.

Many medical studies' underlying data is confidential.

That example has already been discussed and shown to be incorrect. The PII that you think is being required as supporting medical data is not required. While PII is confidential, the data FROM the study is NOT. Data that says "395 individuals with T2DM participated in a study of ... and X had side-effect Y..." is simply not confidential medical data that needs to be kept secret. Now, if they said "DamnOregonian exhibited fainting spells...", that would be, but the fact that "DamnOregonian" was a test subject is completely irrelevant and NOT part of the data necessary to regulate anything, and is NOT part of the "underlying data" that needs to be reviewable.

If you have a study that you don't want to release the data from because it is "confidential" or "proprietary", that's fine. Don't expect it to be considered when making PUBLIC law. If you don't want people to know that 25% of your test subjects had horrendous side effects from testing with your drug, then keep that data secret -- and don't expect the FDA to approve your drug when you won't tell them that. But don't cry that you have to release data that you don't have to release or pretend that you can't release anything because PII is protected.

You're spreading a whole bunch of bullshit to spin a blatant attempt at discounting the majority of medical studies from regulation consideration.

That claim is bullshit, and you know it. Medical study data is easily reviewable without releasing confidential information. The FDA REQUIRES it, and it is part of many product data sheets. Not only the FDA, but many journals require open access to data used in scientific articles. I have read countless papers that discuss your alleged "confidential medical data" used in numerous studies of various drugs. In fact, there are many papers that do "medical studies" that don't actually collect any data of their own, they use published, public data from other studies (this is called a "meta-study"). None of that data is truly confidential after all. There is no reason for it to be unless you are trying to keep trade secrets, and trade secrets are bad bases for public law.

Lots of people have pointed this fact out, in this and previous discussions on this topic. Ignore it at your peril.

Shame on you, shithead.

I'm sorry, is ad hominem supposed to be acceptable for supporting scientific arguments these days? Shame on you. But, if you can't do more than parrot the nonsense about "confidential medical data" being necessary for regulation, then ad hominem it must be.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[DamnOregonian]

I hope you can provide an example.

I literally did that in the next line you responded to.

That example has already been discussed and shown to be incorrect. The PII that you think is being required as supporting medical data is not required. While PII is confidential, the data FROM the study is NOT. Data that says "395 individuals with T2DM participated in a study of ... and X had side-effect Y..." is simply not confidential medical data that needs to be kept secret. Now, if they said "DamnOregonian exhibited fainting spells...", that would be, but the fact that "DamnOregonian" was a test subject is completely irrelevant and NOT part of the data necessary to regulate anything, and is NOT part of the "underlying data" that needs to be reviewable.

This entire ball of fuckery stems from a fight over chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate pesticide that has been show to not have *any* safe dose.
The EPA has been trying to get the *raw* (see: specifically- non-anonymized) data from the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (the folks who ran the study largely responsible for the banning of chlorpyrifos from home use.
The CCCEH has refused, saying it would offer them anonymized data. This was unacceptable to the EPA. Finally, the EPA agreed to anonymized data.
The intent of this rule is to prevent annoyances like this in the future. To prevent bans of things like organophosphates and to smear the science linking them to bad outcomes. It isn't even clear that the wording of this proposal allows for anonymized data. Given the fact that the EPA would only accept non-anonymized data for half a decade, it's fair to assume anonymization of raw data sources isn't even acceptable after this rule.

That claim is bullshit, and you know it. Medical study data is easily reviewable without releasing confidential information. The FDA REQUIRES it, and it is part of many product data sheets. Not only the FDA, but many journals require open access to data used in scientific articles. I have read countless papers that discuss your alleged "confidential medical data" used in numerous studies of various drugs. In fact, there are many papers that do "medical studies" that don't actually collect any data of their own, they use published, public data from other studies (this is called a "meta-study"). None of that data is truly confidential after all. There is no reason for it to be unless you are trying to keep trade secrets, and trade secrets are bad bases for public law.

Are you trying to argue that since meta-studies exist, studies with raw datasets that have PII in them do not? I'm beginning to think you're just a really dim-witted human. What's the point of providing examples when that logic is so glaringly bad?

I'm sorry, is ad hominem supposed to be acceptable for supporting scientific arguments these days? Shame on you. But, if you can't do more than parrot the nonsense about "confidential medical data" being necessary for regulation, then ad hominem it must be.

No, that ad hominem wasn't to support my argument. I was just pointing out that you are a spin-doctor shithead. Feed your own fucking children organophosphates.

Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ?

[jenningsthecat]

You're talking about HIPPA regulations...

"HIPPA"? It's HIPAA, dammit! As in Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Do you want to end up watering crops with Brawndo?

[Jeremi]

Because this is how you end up watering your crops with Brawndo.

Re:Yes!

[bobbuck]

Yep. Secret science means the EPA can target anyone they don't like, regardless of legitimate environmental issues.

I'd prefer limiting laws to scientific ones.

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean: All laws must be based on solid research. Period.
Everything else is considered dictatorship and treason, and its creators given the choice beween losing citizenship and be expelled for e^(n+1) years, or go to prison for the same time. (And if they try to get back into the country earlier, shot. Plus, of they try to manipulate the country from the outside, we will come after them.)

Re:I'd prefer limiting laws to scientific ones.

[hey!]

"Solid research" means meeting the normal standards for research in that field.

I've actually worked with public health data, and the standard for exchanging data is to aggregate that data in such a way that personally identifiable information is not recoverable. For example when you report an HIV case, you know the person lives at 123 Maple Street, but you instead report it as occurring within a geographic area that contains enough people that it's not feasible to work out who that person is, even if you combine it with other data.

That's the usual standard. If you ask for surveillance data, you get sanitized data, never raw data. It may limit the kinds of conclusions you draw, but it doesn't undermine the validity of the conclusion you *do* draw.

Re: I'd prefer limiting laws to scientific ones.

[mapkinase]

I worked with such sanitized data. Geography is reduced to a state and time reduced to a year. That was definitely not enough to do science.

Re: I'd prefer limiting laws to scientific ones.

[aquacrayfish]

I'm pretty sure a patient's privacy is more important than a third party wanting their information for a study or experiment. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Re: I'd prefer limiting laws to scientific ones.

[hey!]

That's less precise than is usual. Week/county is more typical in infectious disease surveillance. But in any case, it's not the case that even that's "not enough to do science". It's not enough to do a lot of things you might want, but I've seen results with not much more than that precision that were useful (e.g. the spread of the Asian Tiger Mosquito from its introduction through California plant nurseries).

Re: I'd prefer limiting laws to scientific ones.

[sexconker]

The fact that you said "do science" makes me think you don't actually "do science".

I bet you think the Mythbusters were great scientists! Sure, maybe their shitty explosions and lack of science were bad, but they got people INTERESTED in shitty explosions and lack of science!!

Literally textbook psychopathy:

[Anonymous Coward]

> externalities, which they could otherwise ignore and cut corner.

That is literally textbook psychopath behavior. Healthy humans don't murder because empaty and being social tells them that that's pretty much always bad for the social group, including oneself. Psychopaths don't murder because they might be punished. Otherwise they'd do it for a fistful of profit^Wpeanuts.

Re:Literally textbook psychopathy:

[vtcodger]

"That is literally textbook psychopath behavior."

Well, sure. But remember that we're largely talking about corporations and their data. AFAICS, corporations are basically sociopathic so a bit of psychopathy in the interest of the shareholders is probably to be expected.

Re: Literally textbook psychopathy:

[Anonymous Coward]

1. I close the door when I poop, even though I'm not ashamed that I poop. Stop trying to get me to open it, you weirdo.

2. Nobody doubts the existence of sociopaths. Nobody doubts that they sometimes gain power. But you're assuming everyone is shitty based on the fact that history books are full of people being shitty.

This is because history books do not contain the details of the 20 billion lives that were lived with nearly no violence, just groups of people living in tribes and selling each other things, because it would be pretty boring if you included that stuff.

Oh grow up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you even think beyond the pre-programmed rigid static one-dimensional binary extremes, of which not one, but *both* are distorted strawmen?

Seriously, you are a full human being, .. sitting there ... shouting phrases that would make an IS member tell you to take it down a notch and start pondering.

What happened to your life, man?
Seriously, I mean this with the best possible intentions. Not taking any "sides".

Go outside! Leave the country! Find a beautiful spot, where the people are nice and the drinks too.

Do you really want *this* to be your life? ... what you are?

Can you even feel me? :-/

Fracking recipes, too?

[ediron2]

Is this end-to-unattributed data going to have a fat, juicy exception written for fracking compounds? Asking for my grandkids.

Ask yourself

[Kohath]

Do you want the Trump Administration to make new environmental rules based on secret science?

Re:Ask yourself

[bankman]

Do you want the Trump Administration to make new environmental rules based on secret science?

I don't want the Trump Administration to make any new environmental rules because they can be trusted to protect anything and anyone but the environment and the public.

Re:Ask yourself

[Zontar The Mindless]

It's OK, folks--Kohath's merely asking a question.

Scott Pruitt just announced more transparency

[rsilvergun]

in his administration. No joke, he didn't invite the press...

Empirical Analysis

[KidSock]

Sounds like they need to further develop their hypothesis, conduct trials to collect data, establish a control group, analyze the data and present their findings for peer review to determine precisely how much Science should be permitted at the EPA.

Re:Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fucking moron.

There's actually another, unintended effect.

[hey!]

The intent may be to hobble the use of public health data, but it will may also force pesticide companies to publish trade secrets in order to have their products registered for legal use. At present this data is treated as confidential by the EPA.

This will not only affect new pesticides, it could also affect already registered pesticides, even if you grandfathered in the original registration. That's because a new registration number needs to be issued whenever the manufacturer changes any of the inert ingredients in the formulation, or even makes changes to the the production processes.

Re:There's actually another, unintended effect.

[whoever57]

but it will may also force pesticide companies to publish trade secrets in order to have their products registered for legal use. At present this data is treated as confidential by the EPA.

Very funny!

No. Your prediction is wrong. Approvals for pesticides are not "rulemaking".

Here is a hint: if you think that a change that the administration is making isn't intended to benefit large companies, you are almost certainly wrong.

Re:There's actually another, unintended effect.

[rhazz]

may also force pesticide companies to publish trade secrets in order to have their products registered for legal use

I'm pretty sure all necessary lobbyers had their chance to review and revise the regulations before their sock-puppet pushed them.

Re:Real Science is Reproducible

[hey!]

Not disclosing public health data does not make a result non-reproducible. It just makes it less convenient to reproduce.

In your conception of "reproducible", gravity wave detection is not science, because you can't reproduce the detection of any specific event.

+5 good explanation

[aepervius]

I was thinking of the result, but if the bill also require patient confidentiality to be broken then it is definitively intentional shenanigan from the industry parts. The points taken up by the UCS are very valid.

Re:+5 good explanation

[Derekloffin]

It's not necessarily shenanigan's even then, just a conflict of rules and goals, a very common thing in governing. It is actually quite rare when pushing one principle does not force compromises in others. Something always has to give. Here the conflict seems to be between making the rule making process transparent verses the privacy of the individuals in the studies. Both a things to strive for, but they are directly at odds here.

Re:+5 good explanation

[aquacrayfish]

For an obscure law or regulation, sure, I'm willing to cut some slack. Patient confidentiality is a known entity, however. It's one of the most sacrosanct laws we have, imo. To claim it is unintentional to have these two potential laws at odds is... nonsense. Lawmakers are on a long trend of trying to use the law as a weapon instead of shield, especially when it comes to political hot buttons like EPA and abortion. Don't be naive.

Re:+5 good explanation

[fish_in_the_c]

So right and that is something just as much on the left as on the right. However, that doesn't mean any given policy when evaluated on it's own merits should be opposed simply because it comes from the side of the isle you don't stand on. To me if your data-sets aren't available for peer review, then basically no on can tell if you actually did science or just cooked the books and applied a convenient method. I don't see where 'confidentiality' should be a problem. It is easy enough to clean data and divorce it from specific individuals. The point is the data you claim to be using and the methods you claim to apply should be freely available for scrutiny by others. Including, not being combined by 'proprietary' processes that no one else can attempt to reproduce, or you aren't actually doing science. Nothing can be considered proved 'scientifically' without significant predictability. If you are choosing between doing science and making a profit. Your choice. You can't pervert the scientific method simply because it is convenient without expect to equally pervert the scientific credibility of your conclusions. Which is basically what this policy is attempting to address.

Re:+5 good explanation

[aquacrayfish]

If the concern is that confidential health information needs to become public in order to confirm studies under this bill is accurate, then it's a law written in bad faith. That's the point. If you can reproduce findings in a study without the part of a record that ties an identity to the relevant medical data then there is no issue with the scientific method.

Now, maybe, that's not what this bill is attempting to do, but I have yet to read anything on this that doesn't make me suspicious. And the historic trend of this current EPA tenure on removing scientists from decision making I am not confident that there's a sudden honest desire to protect the scientific method.

Re:+5 good explanation

[sexconker]

Patient confidentiality has little to do with the "confidential data" referred to. They're referring to data that is kept from other researchers not for patient confidentiality, but for trade secret, fuck you I'm not sharing my research, etc. type bullshit. They may claim patient confidentiality as the reason, but it's trivial to anonymize data or allow an audit or even just give them all of the data as long as they say they'll protect it.

Here's how you comply with HIPAA:

1) Get the other party to say they're HIPAA compliant. You can then give them everything.

-OR-

1) Take your relevant data and cut out the patient's name, address, ID number, etc.
2) Assign new, random IDs to your anonymized dataset.
3) Optional - give a 3rd party a map that includes the new random IDs and the original unique identifier(s), but no medical data.

The anonymized dataset from step 2 can be shared and used by all researchers. If you keep this confidential and don't let other researchers see it to reproduce / question your results, you're a piece of shit.

The optional step 3 is useful in case you find something of note in your research and want to further explore it using something that potentially partially deanonymizes patients. Address, age, race, sex, etc.
For example, maybe your first anonymized set included State, but you then want to narrow by zip code. Or maybe your first set included age ranges of 0-25, 26-50, 51-75, 75+ and you want to explore an anomaly you found in the 0-25 group, so you further break it down. You could create a new set with ranges of 0-4, 5-9, etc, perhaps without other information your first pass deemed to be uncorrelated (such as sex or weight) to offset the deanonymization caused by the refinement of age.

Creating a mapping is also useful if you later increase the size of your dataset but you want to specifically exclude (or include) people you've already selected and studied, or if you get a separate dataset and you want to prevent duplicates/overlaps. You'd get your new / combined dataset, give only the unique identifiers to the third party, have them use your previous map and kick you back a new list of those unique identifiers with whatever criteria you want (people excluded/included/deduped). You then take their set and inner join it to your full set and create a new anonymized set. Again, you have the option of giving them a new mapping for this new set.

Skeptical Science

[AlanObject]

I am skeptical of any Trump associate (or even any guy Trump likes) proclaiming they are trying to make a government agency more transparent. Remember this is the guy who insisted on a bug sweep of his government office and also installed an expensive privacy phone booth, and insists on a security detail greater than that of most 3rd world dictators. He gets favors like cheap rent from industry lobbyists and then tries to lie about it.

And, for good measure, freely uses taxpayer money for luxury travel so lavish that even Trump has to notice.

So spare me protestations that this member of the Trump clown show is going to make anything better at the EPA for anyone except his industry executive friends and that any criticism is just anti-Trump bias. For someone to have faith in him doing the right thing they would have to be delusional, ignorant, partisan or any combination.

Re:Skeptical Science

[Opportunist]

Why single out Trump, you really think there is a single politician left who isn't just interested in lining his own pockets and would harvest and sell your organs if he thought he'd get away with it?

Re: Skeptical Science

[Opportunist]

There has, and the older ones among us might even remember such a time.

Re: Skeptical Science

[kenh]

Trump admin called for it, so it must be bad - don't bother with details of facts!

Re:Skeptical Science

[AlanObject]

Why single out Trump, you really think there is a single politician left who isn't just interested in lining his own pockets and would harvest and sell your organs if he thought he'd get away with it?

#1: The article was about a a Trump appointee and crony.

#2: There are many politicians and even more career bureaucrats who are community minded, idealistic, and work hard from the common good. I am not going to name names here because I don't want to get into a shitstorm of denials and misinformation.

#3: I will, however, point out that every time I see a statement like this, I remember there is one woman who has been investigated pretty much constantly for over a quarter of a century by the most nasty and mean legislators and political operatives using over $100M of taxpayer money to do so. A media network including Fox News, all right wing radio, and several print publications are fully dedicated to to defaming her. There has been no such thing as a crackpot theory or accusation that was too extreme to investigate. After all this she has not been indicted or convicted of one single crime.

Re:Skeptical Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of the data is health data, which is HIPPA controlled, thus the purpose of this law is to prevent most data from being admissible when making regulations, thus preventing regulation, by the regulator.

Yes, it sounds well and good, but the purpose is to keep science out rather than make it better.

Re:Skeptical Science

[Green Mountain Bot]

This isn't requiring researchers open their data. This is banning the agency from using existing data. It's not the same thing, it won't have the same result, and it isn't intended to.

Re: Skeptical Science

[Green Mountain Bot]

It's called a track record.

Re:Skeptical Science

[HeckRuler]

We actually kinda WANT people to investigate this stuff. 4th estate and all that jazz. If it's crackpots... they'll hopefully say as much (rather than giving them their own talk show...).

And... technically... for all the taxpayer money put into the Mueller investigation, all the investigation and commentary from (nearly all) news organizations, heads of states, the pope... Trump also hasn't been indicted or convicted of one single crime. ...yet.

He probably should be. I kinda wish they'd pull that trigger already. Then again, given what I read about how she handled classified information, Hilary should probably also have been charged. She would have been had she been "one of the little people". But law and order apparently works differently for the upper chaste.

Re:Skeptical Science

[AlanObject]

Then again, given what I read about how she handled classified information, Hilary should probably also have been charged. She would have been had she been "one of the little people".

Exactly what do you think she should have been charged with? None of the congressional investigations nor the FBI ever came up with something that could be referred for an indictment. Do you think they were covering for her because she was not one of the "little people"?

I'll grant you that many people want her charged. (lock her up!). But their desire (for whatever reason) is not a legal justification and it sure isn't due process.

Re:Skeptical Science

[strikethree]

I will, however, point out that every time I see a statement like this, I remember there is one woman who has been investigated pretty much constantly for over a quarter of a century by the most nasty and mean legislators and political operatives using over $100M of taxpayer money to do so. A media network including Fox News, all right wing radio, and several print publications are fully dedicated to to defaming her. There has been no such thing as a crackpot theory or accusation that was too extreme to investigate. After all this she has not been indicted or convicted of one single crime.

It is amazing at what being a wealthy insider can do for investigations.

Re:Skeptical Science

[HeckRuler]

Probably "Mishandling Classified Material". She used a personal email server for business. That wasn't illegal at the time she did it. But sending classified information to it would get a normal person charged.

Classified information in emails
In various interviews, Clinton has said that "I did not send classified material, and I did not receive any material that was marked or designated classified."[97] However, in June and July 2016, a number of news outlets reported that Clinton's emails did include messages with classification "portion markings".[98][99] The FBI investigation found that 110 messages contained information that was classified at the time it was sent. Sixty-five of those emails were found to contain information classified as "Secret"; more than 20 contained "Top-Secret" information.[100][101] Three emails, out of 30,000, were found to be marked as classified, although they lacked classified headers and were only marked with a small "c" in parentheses, described as "portion markings" by Comey. He added it was possible Clinton was not "technically sophisticated" enough to understand what the three classified markings meant.[102][103][104]

Clinton personally wrote 104 of the 2,093 emails that were retroactively[105][106][107] found to contain information classified as "confidential." "[53][108] Of the remaining emails that were classified after they were sent, Clinton aide Jake Sullivan wrote the most, at 215.[105]

Do you think the FBI director would give two shits if you pleaded that you didn't know it was classified?

None of the congressional investigations nor the FBI ever came up with something that could be referred for an indictment. Do you think they were covering for her because she was not one of the "little people"?

Yes.

I’m with the Evil Death Industries on this o

[Applehu Akbar]

Environmental regulations should be strictly based on science, but it should be on published research with publicly available, peer reviewable data.

Reproducibility?

[mveloso]

Without data and methods, the study can't be reproduced, so the conclusions can't be challenged.

That's not science.

Anonymize the data. That's what everyone else does. Or compel data from the entities in question. Compelling data is only a rule change away.

Re:Reproducibility?

[omnichad]

Anonymize the data. That's what everyone else does.

That's specifically what this rule is proposed to prevent. That constitutes the confidential data that is not being disclosed, and thereby the entire research is excluded from EPA consideration. And due to HIPAA and the unlikelihood that patients will all sign a release for their medical information, that's exactly what would happen.

Re:Reproducibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what the rule says. It bans research which is underpinned by confidential data. Now, nobody ever releases _all_ data regarding a research, any research. The question is whether _relevant_ data is held back. We don't need to know personal identification for a medical research to have validity (see: current standards in medical research), ergo this data is not underpinning an anonymized research and it can be consulted under the new rule while being HIPAA compatible.

Re:Reproducibility?

[mvdwege]

Or, maybe, just let the corps negotiate for that data themselves for their counterstudies?

Re:Reproducibility?

[omnichad]

You seem to know a lot about the wording of this rule. Did you find a source for the full text? Until then, I remain very skeptical - as my interpretation lines up with the current administrations goals very well.

Re:Reproducibility?

[HeckRuler]

Typically you wouldn't use other people's insightfulness into the issue as a means to question them.

my interpretation lines up with the current administrations goals very well.

Yeeeeaaaaahhhh, that certainly isn't earning you any points either considering the current administration's goals are to dismantle the EPA. You're lined up with pretty blatant bullshit.

Re:Reproducibility?

[omnichad]

You're lined up with pretty blatant bullshit.

I'm not lined up with it you illiterate. My interpretation of this new EPA rule matches perfectly, though. Why would they go and try to embrace valid scientific research that would disagree with their conclusions?

Re:Do you want to end up watering crops with Brawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, any study involving patient data has confidential medical data, because it's against the law to release personally identifiable health information. Therefore, the EPA will no longer be able to incorporate any medical science of any kind in its decisions. Brand new industrial process releases poison gasses that would sterilize whole regions? Too bad the EPA can't rely on studies saying it kills people, because the study was a medical study.

That's just an extreme example, but this is a pretty sweeping, extreme change.

Re:I’m with the Evil Death Industries on thi

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fine. Please release the results of your latest colonoscopy to the public domain so we can use it to help formulate public policy.

Re:Yes!

[omnichad]

Yeah, let's get a test environment set up, stat. And by environment, I guess I mean a duplicate Earth? That doesn't sound all that practical, you know.

Re:Ummm... did the Trump administration just do go

[omnichad]

But requiring all the science data to be available is a GOOD thing.

Unless the science data can't be made available, thereby invalidating all research that involves medical side effects. This is just a way to prevent science from being used because it proves too much.

Pot, Kettle, Bang

[Anonymous Coward]

"weaponize transparency". Where on Earth do you shills^Wpeople think this shit up. Or is truth no longer acceptable when it doesn't fit your narrative?

Hello anonymous! By your own logic, we should not take into account your criticisms because you have not been fully transparent yourself.

Re:Yes!

[Zontar The Mindless]

Cite some of them. Please, go right ahead.

Re:I’m with the Evil Death Industries on thi

[bankman]

Environmental regulations should be strictly based on science, but it should be on published research with publicly available, peer reviewable data.

Absolutely! I would in fact propose a law that requires any company that challenges EPA regulation based on this argument to open all their own books and research in the interest of transparency.
 

Re:Ummm... did the Trump administration just do go

[Zontar The Mindless]

No, it did not. This is merely a trick to make it feasible to discount public health data in making public health decisions that might put a damper on profit.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What else do you expect from the...

[Anonymous Coward]

Environmental Pollution Agency?

Re: Yes!

[Reverend Green]

Secret laws, secret courts, tyranny.

Secret data, secret science, charlatanism.

Re: I’m with the Evil Death Industries on th

[Reverend Green]

Absolutely! Partisan humbug and rancor aside, transparency is a good thing. If it's not transparent and reproducible, it's NOT science.

Re: Do you want to end up watering crops with Braw

[prefec2]

Are we not already watering oyr plants with it? In other areas this is already the case. People are drinking raw water, we produce CO2 as if there is no tomorrow, we use plastics as if this is not an issue, people start believing in a flat earth.

the Enterprise Protection Agency ?

[bill.pev]

What's worse for human beings.. No Regulation -OR- Biased crappy enforcement of industry-friendly regulations that institutionalize the ability to rape the environment without regards to its effect on people? What Protection does the EPA actually provide? None to people.

Re:the Enterprise Protection Agency ?

[Green Mountain Bot]

The EPA enforces the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Both have been enormous successes, and have been a boon to communities and individuals throughout the nation. You might not think the huge reductions of smog in major cities, or rivers that can now be home to fish that feed wildlife, or toxic sites that have been cleaned up and repurposed don't benefit people. I strongly disagree, and I think you'll find most people do as well.

Re:I’m with the Evil Death Industries on thi

[mvdwege]

What, exactly, is stopping these corps to cough up the dough themselves for this data and do their replication? Oh yes. Fucking greed.

Re:Do you want to end up watering crops with Brawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that isn't what this about.. at all. There's nothing preventing those patients being identified as John Doe nor by some random ID. It's literally the EPA will be required to base their decisions on Science and Slashdot is ripping them apart because Trump??

No one has even brought up national security or other sensitive information that may still need to be redacted. Anything involving nuclear radiation or biological weapons for example.

Getting the feeling this entire "story" was crated by bots.

Re:US on their way back

[DNS-and-BIND]

Donald Trump is such a terrifying fascist dictator that literally nobody fears speaking about him on any platform.

THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM-BENITO MUSSOLINI (1932)
Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State.

Now of all the players in American politics today, which group does this best describe?

Re:Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not citing papers whose results cannot be reproduced, but this is nothing new: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778. The term even has its own Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

Bad science is bad, and if you craft a regulation it should ideally be done on good grounds. I might stretch that something that we strongly suspect is really bad should be temporarily topped until we can investigate if it is safe to continue.

But I am not so sure that the basis for these new EPA rules are to craft *better* regulations, with the current climate in politics it is to craft *fewer* regulations.

Re:I wonder how /. would feel

[Opportunist]

If the data shows that we need more CO2, more NOx and more SO2 in our atmosphere, by all means do it!

Re:US on their way back

[Opportunist]

The difference is that by now our leaders found out that it means jack shit if people talk. If anything, it keeps them from revolting because they think they still have freedom.

Re:US on their way back

[prefec2]

First of all I did not say that Trump is fascist dictator. I also did not say that the US is a fascist state. My point is that the Us is moving towards conditions which resemble a totalitarian police state including white chauvinism (that is the declaration of race the the claim of superiority of the white race). And that is pretty much what fascism is built on. If you look at your Mussolini quote, you can see that the collectivism excludes Mussolini himself. And if you look at historical fascistic regimes, like in Nazi Germany, you can see that the collectivism was limited to the ordinary people, which are of course above the Jews and other. Also disabled people are less worthy then healthy people. This implies a strong hierarchy of value for each individual. You can see the same tendency in the US, where black people are considered and treated as if they where of lower quality, then there are Hispanics, and the crown are white people. And inside these white people there are Liberals (which nowadays has the same undertone as Communist under McCarthy) and the right minded Republicans.

So instead of citing Mussolini, you should look at how it actually worked because claims and actions are not always the same.

Also I want to remind you that I referred to fascist and fundamentalist tendencies. There are also traits present of feudalistic systems. As the US has a disconnected upper class where Trump belongs to.

Another dolt

[BadTuna]

So the self-proclaim 'leading advocate against the EPA' who somehow managed to become its' administrator is already dumbing it down. Soooo much winning.

Re:Another dolt

[kenh]

You prefer environmental regulations based on secret data?

I have a report right here that says smoking two packs of cigarettes a day has absolutely no negative health effects. What was that, you want to see the data, sorry, HIPPA regulations prevent me from releasing it - trust me.

or

I've got a report right here that details the positive health effects increased greenhouse gases have on children under 3 years old. What was that, you want to see the data, sorry, the data is proprietary so I can't release it - trust me.

Hockey sticks

[tomhath]

This is about someone publishing a graph that looks like a hockey stick and proclaiming global warming is real, but refusing to publish the original data to support that claim.

In other words...

[kenh]

This change will require environmental regulation decisions to be based on publicly-available data, rather than secret datasets - and the problem is what, exactly? Critics of this rule change apparently are forcing themselves to pretend medical data can't be annonimized and made public...

What is fascinating is that the critics are ignoring how this regulation would protect their interests of a business-favoring administration tried to ram thru a regulation rolling back a clean water regulation ("I have secret medical data that shows humans have an incredible tolerance for less in their drinking water, we we are rolling back safe water regulations").

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are conflating secret and confidential. Just because something can't be dropped into pastebin doesn't mean its secret, it means there are rules for how it can be accessed. Those rules are probably the only way the data could be collected in the first place (e.g. medical privacy laws).

Re:In other words...

[Vitriol Angst]

I'm going to go with "bullshit reason protecting us from stuff that never happens so that it's harder for the EPA to regulate" for $800.

It's been a few months for Trump cronies so they have to work hard to rush out good ways to make the EPA toothless.

Re: I wonder how /. would feel

[kenh]

Requiring publicly-accessible for all environmental decisions, either increasing or rolling back regulations is a good thing, and the technology needed to minimize medical data to confirm with hills is trivial - unless the Trump administration calls for it, then his critics insist that true science requires decisions based on secret datasets!

fn

[harvey the nerd]

more likely you're a f'g Maoist or Stalinist or other authoritarian ecoterrorist

And the problem is...

[kenh]

Under the new proposals, the EPA will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential medical and industry data.

So the EPA proposes that the science used to determine public policy and environmental regulations be held to the same rigorous standard as your average sixth-grade science fair submission, and critics attack the proposal because... decisions based on secret data is the only way to protect the environment?

Re:And the problem is...

[JoshuaZ]

Confidential medical data is a standard thing. Under this rule, all sorts of data that would be normally confidential (especially identifying information of patients or subjects in studies) would need to be public for it to be used. This cannot for a whole host of reasons occur.

Re:And the problem is...

[kenh]

You seem to think there is some HIPPA requirement that prevents publishing medical data for research purposes - take a look here:

The HIPAA Privacy Rule establishes the conditions under which protected health information may be used or disclosed by covered entities for research purposes. Research is defined in the Privacy Rule as, “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing, and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.” See 45 CFR 164.501. A covered entity may always use or disclose for research purposes health information which has been de-identified (in accordance with 45 CFR 164.502(d), and 164.514(a)-(c) of the Rule)

De-identifying health information is as simple as removing patient name, birth date, and any other non-medically relevant identifier before publishing the data.

Re:And the problem is...

[rhazz]

You seem to think that making the de-identified information public is enough to satisfy the new rules. Given all the scientists decrying this change, do you think they didn't consider this?

Re:And the problem is...

[kenh]

No. They think it's a tool to limit their ability to push through changes they want, rather than a common-sense approach to base regulation on provable standards based on publicly-available information.

They see the words Trump administration, science, and limit and argue it's bad because, well, because the Trump administration said it.

Why should scientists, whose positions are based on facts, evidence and logic demand that their findings be accepted and acted on without challenge or evidence?

Tit for Tat

[oh_my_080980980]

As long as Corporations have full transparency, I'm game. No hiding behind, trade secrets.

Understanding HIPPA regulations

[kenh]

The HIPAA Privacy Rule establishes the conditions under which protected health information may be used or disclosed by covered entities for research purposes. Research is defined in the Privacy Rule as, “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing, and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.” See 45 CFR 164.501. A covered entity may always use or disclose for research purposes health information which has been de-identified (in accordance with 45 CFR 164.502(d), and 164.514(a)-(c) of the Rule)

Source: Health Information Privacy

Ignorance of the HIPPA regulations is fueling much of the backlash this proposed federal regulation change is attracting.

Once the data is "de-identified" it can be published, and removing identifying elements is trivial.

Re:Understanding HIPPA regulations

[HeckRuler]

and removing identifying elements is trivial.

Whoa there. That little tidbit of "de-identifying" people isn't as easy as you think.

Just stripping their name and soc is good. But how many black ethnic Han Chinese are living in Montana? If there's just the one, it's pretty trivial to use that sort of "de-identified" information to identify individuals. If there's information about someone, there's a chance it could be used to identify them. Not even easy things like a picture of their face, or rare things like uncommon ancestry. If you get enough mundane details about someone you can carve the list of suspects down to a single person. And what if these sort of details are pertinent to the study? Like it's an interplay between (That skin-pigment chemical) and alcohol allergy? (Or whatever common heritable trait).

So... you know... this part can be hard.

But I have to agree with that coward. This reeks of bullshit excuse business and the current administrative goons are using to hamstring and shut down the EPA from protecting citizens and costing business money. If it's ignorance, it's WILLFUL ignorance, but it's more likely to be a convenient lie. You can bet your ass the lawyer lobbyists pushing for it know full well the HIPPA law they're trying to stand on.

Don't Get Played

[Anonymous Coward]

Science has a reproducibility problem and someone raises that concern is now radical. Wow.

Science does have a reproducibility problem. But Pruitt does not care about that, its just a flimsy pretext for him to reduce any fact-based opposition to his plutocratic agenda.

If you care about reproducibility then you should oppose his attempt to co-opt your concerns for his own purposes because in the long run his abuse of your concerns will serve to discredit them by associating them with corporate corruption.

Re:Don't Get Played

[Anonymous Coward]

If the basis of your complaint about this rule change is "Pruitt is a poopy face!"

Its not. Pay attention. Pruitt isn't trying to increase transparency, he's using it as a pretext to reduce the application of science in government policy making. That's why he's demanding the medical data be de-anonymized in order to use it for policy purposes. He knows that would be illegal and thus will get all the science based on that medical data excluded.

Re:Don't Get Played

[paradigmsareconstruc]

When one considers that science owes its success to this concept of reproducibility, it is alarming that anybody would consider reproducibility to be some sort of a partisan issue.

Science is Not What You Think: How It Has Changed, Why We Can't Trust It, How It Can Be Fixed
Henry H. Bauer

Why Has Science Been Successful?

"What explains the enormous successes of science?

... All this knowledge and understanding came from studying phenomena that are regular, where observations can be repeated, and where the basic bits of matter involved are essentially identical and with inherent properties that do not change over time. Astronomy was able to gain understanding that could be expressed mathematically, quantitatively, because heavenly movements repeat themselves with great regularity. Physics and chemistry yielded general laws because atoms and molecules of a particular species (elements or compounds) are all identical within their given species: all atoms of carbon react in the same way, all molecules of water are the same, all electrons are identical, as are all protons and neutrons and other fundamental particles. Such regular behavior, together with being able to group objects into categories within which all the individual objects are identical, is what makes it possible to discover general laws of nature and universal constants. Laws and constants can only exist when phenomena are regular and occur invariably in the same manner ...

Popular views about science as a whole were derived largely from the stunning successes of the natural sciences, without explicit recognition that those successes flowed from the study of relatively simple systems of inanimate matter composed of collections of individual bits."

This is truthfully an insanely simple issue: if climate change advocates are suggesting that we need to make fundamental changes to our system of government and economy to save the planet, then the data must be made publicly available.

Re:Don't Get Played

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh puhlease. You cited an AIDS-denying, Loch-Ness Monster believing conspiracy theorist who hasn't done actual science since the 1960s.
You aren't a serious person.

Re:Don't Get Played

[HornWumpus]

That's your claim. Not supported by _anything_.

The rules say nothing about anonymized data, only a moron or a troll would jump on that conclusion. Because they already have a predicided conclusion.

Re:Don't Get Played

[paradigmsareconstruc]

The pattern is pretty clear: Actual attempts to reproduce research tend to produce shockingly low reproducibility rates. For those who have been paying attention to the situation, this is not actually news. It seems to only be news for those who refuse to track these types of problems.

Nature article from May 2016

More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments. Those are some of the telling figures that emerged from Nature's survey of 1,576 researchers who took a brief online questionnaire on reproducibility in research ...

Data on how much of the scientific literature is reproducible are rare and generally bleak. The best-known analyses, from psychology and cancer biology, found rates of around 40% and 10%, respectively. Our survey respondents were more optimistic: 73% said that they think that at least half of the papers in their field can be trusted, with physicists and chemists generally showing the most confidence.

Re:Don't Get Played

[HornWumpus]

Sorry no, each of those scientists needs their publication history reviewed.

For example: I'll bet their are sociologists in the group, those typically only know how to practice science WRONG.

Re:Don't Get Played

[paradigmsareconstruc]

The threat from within
February 21, 2017

Former Provost John Etchemendy, in a recent speech before the Stanford Board of Trustees, outlined challenges higher education is facing in the coming years. Following is an excerpt from that talk.

"Over the years, I have watched a growing intolerance at universities in this country – not intolerance along racial or ethnic or gender lines – there, we have made laudable progress. Rather, a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we've built around ourselves.

This results in a kind of intellectual blindness that will, in the long run, be more damaging to universities than cuts in federal funding or ill-conceived constraints on immigration. It will be more damaging because we won't even see it: We will write off those with opposing views as evil or ignorant or stupid, rather than as interlocutors worthy of consideration. We succumb to the all-purpose ad hominem because it is easier and more comforting than rational argument. But when we do, we abandon what is great about this institution we serve. It will not be easy to resist this current. As an institution, we are continually pressed by faculty and students to take political stands, and any failure to do so is perceived as a lack of courage. But at universities today, the easiest thing to do is to succumb to that pressure. What requires real courage is to resist it. Yet when those making the demands can only imagine ignorance and stupidity on the other side, any resistance will be similarly impugned.

The university is not a megaphone to amplify this or that political view, and when it does it violates a core mission. Universities must remain open forums for contentious debate, and they cannot do so while officially espousing one side of that debate. But we must do more. We need to encourage real diversity of thought in the professoriate, and that will be even harder to achieve. It is hard for anyone to acknowledge high-quality work when that work is at odds, perhaps opposed, to one's own deeply held beliefs. But we all need worthy opponents to challenge us in our search for truth. It is absolutely essential to the quality of our enterprise.

I fear that the next few years will be difficult to navigate. We need to resist the external threats to our mission, but in this, we have many friends outside the university willing and able to help. But to stem or dial back our academic parochialism, we are pretty much on our own. The first step is to remind our students and colleagues that those who hold views contrary to one’s own are rarely evil or stupid, and may know or understand things that we do not. It is only when we start with this assumption that rational discourse can begin, and that the winds of freedom can blow."

Re:Don't Get Played

[HornWumpus]

I don't need to validate your cite. 1000 scientists is a tiny %, even if they were all capable and practicing rigorous sciences

Anybody who says closed datasets are OK, is shit for a scientist. Look into it, start your search with 'scientific method', pay particular attention to 'reproducing experimental results'.

The correct procedure is 'publish with complete raw, intermediate and final data on a supplied link'. If they're not doing that in the first place, they are not doing science. I can accept that they will hold the raw data back until they have published all their papers on it, but after that, no excuses.

Re:Don't Get Played

[AutodidactLabrat]

... The best-known analyses, from psychology and cancer biology, found rates of around 40% and 10%, respectively.

Surprise. Your "Source" conflates paid drug trials with elemental weather observation and modeling to cast aspersions on climate science. Well, I see that Alex Jones got his money's worth out of the two of you.
Tovaritch, tell me why you think a bug filled, low crop, flooded cities world is good?

Re:Don't Get Played

[paradigmsareconstruc]

The reproducibility crisis is not confined to any particular domain of science, and it should be obvious that reproducibility is a serious concern when modeling climate. There have in fact been critiques that climate models are sometimes parameterized with values which are selected to produce alarming results, so demanding that the results be reproducible could actually act as a check for such fraud. Your eagerness to "defend" climate science leaves the door wide open for bad actors to flood this domain, and the publish-or-perish problem will predictably drive some percentage of these scientists to do just that. Be very careful what you ask for.

Re:Don't Get Played

[AutodidactLabrat]

And yet, your "Source" said nothing at all about any of the hard sciences.
"Been critiques" by the Heartland institute, or did you miss the complete lack of peer reviewed academic journal articles declaring climate science a fraud?
Yes, fraud, you gave yurself away.

Seriously???

[fish_in_the_c]

"The EPA has for decades relied on scientific research that is rooted in confidential medical and industry data "

Am I reading this incorrectly? To me this means the EPA is relying on data that is not publicly available for peer review. How can you even call it science if you data-sets are not available for peer review?

Re: US on their way back

[DNS-and-BIND]

Are you 19 years old or something? We literally have preferences for blacks and Hispanics. I think it might be time for you to leave America, it's stressing you out and you're hallucinating fascists. If you're a leftist, you'll want to go to a country that implements your policies like Bolivia, Venezuela, or Cuba. Good luck and I hope you learn a lot about the world.

Been there, seen that

[thunderclees]

Since when were legislators worried about writing bills behind closed doors?. An example that comes to mind is the NYS SAFE act which was dictated in secret and passed at 2am though to be fair that may say more about corruption in Albany then the law.

That is super scary

[SuperKendall]

The main reason that scientists and researchers are complaining about the rule change is because it shoulders them with the cost of first deanonymizing medical data in order to be able to present it for consideration in EPA rulemaking.

So what you are saying is that before people were sharing de-anonymoized medical data with federal agencies? HOLY SHIT. Why are we not screaming to the skies about that, since government traditionally has the worst security, and no overbite as to what employees are doing with that data.

Re:US on their way back

[Opportunist]

You see what's going on here? We have whole boards where any meaningful conversation ceased long ago because Trump here and Hillary there. Did it do anything? Please.

The reason why things happen in those other places is mostly because people still give a shit. We've gone long beyond that.

Re:Ummm... did the Trump administration just do go

[Green Mountain Bot]

Now, I hate Pruitt and everyone else involved in this shitshow, but ... it looks like they actually did something positive for a change.

That's exactly their intent - to LOOK like they did something positive, when in fact it is a major setback for science-based policy.

Re:I’m with the Evil Death Industries on thi

[Mab_Mass]

Glad to help. Give me your address and I'll be glad to send a stool sample too.

Please mail the stool samples to: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500.

Be sure to include a return address!

Re:I’m with the Evil Death Industries on thi

[Shotgun]

You know that's illegal to send by the US Postal Service don't you? You have to use UPS or Fedex.

Just don't want you to get in trouble, or for the AC to miss out on the specimen.

The problem

[cwsumner]

The problem is that lack of data is not only unscientific, it makes it a whole lot easier to fake the results. Scientists are a lot more reliable than politicians, but even scientists are not -that- reliable.

Basing law on secret data is how dictatorships work. Environmental concerns are just an excuse used by "control freaks" here, real environmentalists have plenty of other ways to get things done...

Re: US on their way back

[DNS-and-BIND]

So, when will you be leaving? Oh, what's that, horrid old America is preferable to a country that implements your left-wing ideas? Oh, my my, what a conundrum.

Re:Do you want to end up watering crops with Brawn

[sexconker]

No, identifying it as "John Doe" does not work since if the EPA doesn't like the political implications of the study, they'll ask how they can verify that "John Doe" did in fact have this problem, given they can't verify the account even took place!

Wrong.

If the EPA were to ask such an asinine thing, the researchers could say "We have the original dataset, and you can audit it if you like. Your auditors need to be HIPAA compliant, though, by signing a document stating they won't spread this information in a way that can identify patients. How's Tuesday at 1 PM?" They don't even need to release the original dataset to the auditors, the auditors can go to them and have controlled, view-only access in a conference room while they check as many records as they want.

Have you never seen an audit in any sort of business capacity?

Sounds bad

[HeckRuler]

Sounds bad, but it's more of a "put up or shut up" sort of affair. If you can't publish, it's not science. ....But what's keeping them from releasing the data in aggregate to protect the privacy of individuals and STILL be published science? And if you assume they're lying, what's to keep an undergrad research assistant from.... simply marking down the results they want to see? The crux of science is NOT trusting the researcher, it's the reproducibility.

secret science

[HermMunster]

The title seems misleading. I read yesterday that it was outlawing secret science. That sort of turn this report on it's head.

Self correcting after next mass horror

[Maxo-Texas]

Seriously, the next thalidimide crisis, or the next mass death from lack of these regulations will restore them.

it's inevitable that thousands or tens of thousands will die or be mutilated and then the laws will be put in place because they were there for a reason in the first place.

You're saying you can't study a natural epidemic?

[raymorris]

> Going by your idiotic ignorance epidemiology is not science.

No, going by what I say, epidemiology is the science that studies epidemics that have happened. Going by THEIR assertion, epidemiology starts by creating an epidemic, in order to study it.

It is the people fighting this who claim you can't do a study without "intentionally and unethically exposing people and the environment to harmful contaminants". I say you can study an epidemic without creating one, and you can document how you did your study.