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The EPA's Anti-Science 'Transparency' Rule Has a Long History

Sometimes a bad piece of legislation doesn't die, it just returns in another form—call it a zombie bill. In this case, the zombie is a bill that morphed into a proposed rule that would upend how the federal government uses science in its decisionmaking. It would allow the US Environmental Protection Agency to pick and choose what science it uses to write legislation on air, water, and toxic pollution that affects human health and the environment.

Republicans tried to pass this type of legislation from 2014 to 2017, with titles such as the Secret Science Reform Act, followed the next year by the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act. The idea, which on the surface seems like a good one, was to force the EPA to use only research that is publicly accessible, reproducible, and independently verified.

Critics, including much of the US scientific community, complained it would throw out nearly all epidemiological studies in which patients give consent to use their medical information but not their names, to protect their privacy. That would mean limiting studies on the effects of air pollution on lung disease or toxic chemicals' effects on Parkinson's disease and cancer, for example. Scientists also argued that some data, by its nature, can never be reproduced. That would include, for example, the collected particles spewed out by erupting volcanoes, or oil-stained creatures from the Deepwater Horizon spill, or tissue samples taken from soldiers exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

[...] "This is not being driven by scientists at the agency, it's being driven by political staff who have spent their careers trying to reduce the authority that the EPA has," says Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Center for Science and Democracy. Halpern noted the proposal has been championed by chemical and tobacco industry groups that have for years sought to reduce the EPA's regulatory powers.

The Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science rule would require that scientists disclose all of their raw data, including confidential medical records, before the agency could consider an academic study's conclusions, according to a draft copy obtained this week by The New York Times.

At a hearing of the House Science Committee on Wednesday entitled Strengthening Science or Strengthening Silence?, EPA science adviser Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta was put in the difficult position of defending a regulation she either wasn't able to discuss or didn't seem to know about. Although Orme-Zavaleta has spent 38 years at the agency and is its top scientist, she isn't reviewing the new rule and couldn't answer many questions from the congressional panel.

[...] Sean Casten (D-Illinois) pleaded with Orme-Zavalata to join the ranks of the anonymous Ukraine whistle-blower and go against the Trump administration by publicly refuting the EPA science rule. "Look, this is painful," Casten said. "We are sitting here in a moment where none of this assault on science happens if people in your shoes stand up. If and when you stand up, we have got your back. But please stand up."

Orme-Zavalata did not respond to Casten's statement.

A panel of experts including a toxicologist, a pulmonary epidemiologist, a neurologist, and a psychologist all testified about the importance of transparency and reproducibility in science. None of the experts—including the one expert invited by the Republican side—said they supported the new EPA rule. The proposal was recently submitted to the Office of Management and Budget and will be made public sometime next year for a final round of comments before going into effect.

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