In Pruitt run EPA, that sounds just about right. Less science in EPA deliberations and policy pronouncements, and more sleaze and corruption in the boss's deeds and also perhaps those by his inner circle of aides from his past.
4
Congress... stop this madness.... finally it will effect you and your wallets if you let this country run down to nothing...you think Putin will take care of you? Think again..... Koch's? they will sail off to their island.... you are heading us into a wasteland this is all on you congress... stop it now
5
and what happened to drain the swamp?....Pruitt is the perfect example of an individual who should be fired. Along with most of the cabinet and appointees. Transparency in a democracy is vital....assuming one supports a democratic and just society for all, not only corporations and the current administration. Folks in these categories have children and grandchildren like the general public....greed gone haywire.
7
Vatican finally woke up after 350 years and pardoned Galileo in 1992 in a nod to science.
How ironic is it that in 2018, country that has thus far lead the world in science now has a head of EPA that is science denier.
8
I saw Rick Santorum on TV last night. He was very up on Pruitt, calling him very effective.
This is what the GOP has come too. An organization that prides itself in underhanded tactics.
10
What astounds me daily is my own local State Senator Terrence Murphy & State Assembly Member Kevin Bryne here in northern Westchester have absolutely no background in science, policy making, or even an interest in environmental issues, and continue to remain silent when it comes why they support this idiot in chief. Calls, emails to their respected offices all ignored. I gather they don't under the science used that created the phone, email and other communication technology either.
4
Recent common use of the word "transparent" treats it as synonymous with "open". In the sciences, "transparent" is used more precisely: an object that is transparent lets light pass through without attenuation -- in other words, one can see through it (like a window pane).
In that sense, EPA Director Pruitt is, as he claims, utterly transparent: We can see through his claims of objectivity and high-mindedness.
7
Transparency and reproducibility are core values of sound scientific research. To argue that such practices are "anti-science" is bizarre -- to put it charitably.
To assert that public policy is the exclusive domain of some specialist priesthood is even more bizarre.
4
The reason why so many people who don't support Pruitt's decision simply because he's a Republican, oppose what he's doing here, has NOTHING to do with rejecting what indeed are "core values of sound scientific research".
The problem is that Pruitt is using the words "transparency" and "reproductibility" to justify a decision that precisely from a scientific point of view does the exact opposite.
By "transparency" he's NOT referring to explicitly describing which scientific method you used to obtain the results described in your scientific paper, and providing the "raw data" of your study.
And by "reproductibility" he's NOT referring to studies describing scientific experiments that can be endlessly reproduced (= basically only experiments made in laboratory conditions, not "on the field").
He uses both terms as synonyms, to refer to ONE thing only: scientific studies proving the link between Americans' diseases/death and a certain toxic substance in their air or water, should from now on provide the names and patient records of those people NOT only to independent experts verifying these studies, but allow them to be made public for any American to see, on government websites. If not, the EPA will consider that toxic substance to be perfectly safe and allow companies to start putting in it our air and water again...
IF you do this, however, it's obvious that no patient will ever agree to have his case investigated. So toxic substances won't be known anymore, you see?
3
So ... after having become the first EPA director who adores transparency so much that he even wanted to spend tons of taxpayer money in order to turn his office into a phone booth ... he now proposes to increase transparency about scientifically proven facts by ... asking patients to make their health records entirely public.
If they refuse, he's threatening to allow companies to once again pollute America's air and water with exactly the same toxic substances that made them ill in the first place.
What will Trump's next move be? Force taxpayers to make their tax returns public if they want to receive the subsidies or tax cuts that the law guarantees them to receive, if not they won't get that tax cut ... ?
No, of course. The GOP won't do that, as only the wealthiest Americans got a tax cut, and Trump is the first president to refuse to release his tax returns ...
4
Good comments on this article; I am surprised that The Times has (so far) picked only one. I agree wholeheartedly with those commenters who argue that the proposed rules are a ploy; the studies are peer-reviewed; the public is not peers in that sense; studies would be very hard to replicate; and confidential data are not necessary to understand a study. It is telling that climate-change deniers favor the proposed rules.
4
Wouldn't this rule, and those rules that "erase" info and even the words "climate change" and "global warming" from government language be in violation of the First Amendment? Hope someone somewhere has the legal power and funds to sue against this assault that is politically (and power/financially) motivated to protect us from industry/corporations from becoming our rulers.
4
To fully understand this story, readers should also turn to NYT's Apr 21 article detailing Pruitt's corrupt past in Oklahoma. He has made a career of bending govt policies to the benefit of petrochemical companies, for which they reward him financially. He is also one of those phony so-called "Christians" who believe you can behave in the most harmful toward the society around you, and it's all OK as long as you make a show of proclaiming Jesus as your savior. It sickens me that people like this are in control of our country.
13
The anti science lot are a group the fictional character Jesus would have abhorred.
7
Air you can't breath!
Water you can't drink or swim in!
Let the people choke and sicken as long as corporations can line their pockets, even more!
6
This is part of the very successful implementation of the the Trump policies that gives Pruitt free reign. Nauseating.
3
People, it does not have to be this hard to undo 40 yrs of statutorily mandated environmental protection in order to fill the pockets of the Kochs, wo bless R campaign coffers with lots and lots of green
Come on! We can do better!
Let's just ask that paragon of honesty and ethics, Miss Kellyanne, to spew out and validate some convenient "alternative science". (Mayeb get a PhD in geo-physics from Trump U to summarize it for her.)
Then have Trump endorse it via CAPITAL LETERS in a tweet to his low information base (sorry to say, but you guys have been so conned), and then Huckabee can repeat and bark it out at one of her press lectures "here ! take it or leave it you ungrateful, biased philistines."
Then we just say simple good-bye to a human health based approach to env. protection.
5
Pruitt forgot to mention that the EPA will accept scientific studies that are not transparent if they have been personally approved by Jesus.
2
The new slogan for the E.P.A.: No facts, all graft.
3
Shame on you, America for allowing this Trump fiasco to continue !
Have you no decent people in congress who will speak out and acknowledge the crass stupidity and corruption of this man and the men like Pruitt that he appoints?
4
The Republicans are literally destroying our country to profit the rich.
6
A PhD scientists earn their PhDs proving to their peer group they have a deep understanding of what they are talking about. It is called credibility.
I think we should have a similar test for the people that set the future direction of this nations policy’s.
9
Scientists and reporters must be clear when communicating the bogus new attempt by the EPA to impose a “transparency” proposal that it has nothing to do with any legitimate disagreement over the science of public health studies. There is no disagreement in the vast arena of public health science on the basic process of study design, analysis and reporting.
Pruitt’s latest and desperate attempt to trash critical environmental regulations is a fraudulent attempt to discredit science for the sole purpose of allowing the chemical and fossil fuel industries to pollute the air and water without any government oversight. This has been high on the list of Koch objectives for a long time.
Reading the FOIA requests from the Union of Concerned Scientists to the EPA and congressional records it is clear this latest bogus move by the puppet Pruitt is directed by Lamar Smith, House Science Committee and chemical industry insiders,including Nancy Beck.
4
It's unfair to call Pruitt a puppet. He surely takes all these wonderful actions on his own initiative.
I highly recommend to everyone the documentary 'What Lies Upstream'. It's about our poisoned water and how the federal and state governments cover up industrial waste being dumped.
It'll really shake you up some and make you reconsider our drinking water everywhere, including bottled waters. Frightening reality.
7
“Supporters of the plan ... say the regulation will ensure that future E.P.A. policies are based on science that can be independently verified.”
OK, then let’s be sure this regulatory change is “based on science that can be independently verified.“ Is there any evidence that the studies being knocked out have proved any less accurate than the studies remaining?
3
That'z not even the criterium, the idea is that studies where patients don't accept to share their health records with the entire American people (but which of course have been many times verified by independent experts), will be rejected as invalid.
In other words, a criterium that has absolutely nothing to do with being scientifically sound or not, will now determine which scientific studies will be taken seriously by the EPA and which not.
2
WW2 was won by STEM. Think radar, dominant aircraft, code breakers and the atomic bomb. If Trump’s base has lost confidence in science, their children will suffer the consequences.
7
You obviously have not seen how many of the Trump supporters treat their children.
2
As a scientist, I appreciate the endorsement of STEM. STEM was an important factor. However, WWII was won on battlefields, in naval engagements, and by aircraft pilots and crews – by brave men and women (aided by technologies).
2
The fact that they used the words type of science indicates how vastly and grossly unqualified they are to run the EPA. There aren’t types of science. There is science. Period. Science is a method of investigation that makes use of rigorous standards to ensure quality of results. What they should have said is that they are not interested in using science to make policy, they are interested in whatever the Koch brothers tell them to do to make policy. How do we dig ourselves back out of this? How do we convince that segment of the population that is so enthralled with our sociopath-in-chief that they will overlook literally anything in the service of making sure that he can do as much damage to our country as humanly possible just so long as he continues to toot his dog whistle to them ?
5
Right. Appeals to transparency from Mr. Cone Of Silence himself. The truly astounding aspect of this is that Pruitt, the polluters' best friend in D.C., can make these claims with a straight face. His loyalty is to the Koch Bros., not to the constitution or the American people. Pruitt is a disgrace.
6
So - the EPA prefers to make policy decisions/regulations that affect all Americans without being bothered to make public the data that led to those decisions/regulations. The progressive “mind” drifts ever farther from Planet Earth.
4
The article is saying that the regulation will not achieve the transparency it claims to promote. It mandates a scientist to do something that is illegal/violation of their ethical duties. The ultimate result will be that the only scientists that perform future studies will be the ones that break the law.
2
Except that this how all over the world all environmental protection agencies are run - whether by conservatives or progressives.
Why?
Because how will YOU know whether a study that analyzed the illness symptoms of person X is scientifically valid or not as soon as the government allows you to know that person X is actually Ms. Jones living in your city ... ?
You won't, of course. The way scientific articles are debated and their results sometimes rejected is by having experts going through the METHODS used, and verifying whether the conclusion can indeed be correctly drawn from the findings or not, all while checking the solidity of those findings.
So it's experts who have access to those persons names and have the right to verify.
And not only are EPA experts constantly doing so, as soon as a company believes that the EPA doesn't base its rules on a full scientific understanding of the situation, the Constitution gives it the right to go to court, and then that company's obtained evidence will be compared with the other studies by a court appointed independent expert.
So Pruitt is simply lying when he suggests that there's no serious independent science for the moment.
And of course starting to declare scientifically solid studies invalid/irrelevant as soon as patients don't want to see their health records made public on a government website, isn't a responsible way of protecting neither the privacy of ordinary citizens, nor their environment.
I’m not shocked. Why not just rename it the Environmental Degradation Agency?
6
Pruitt expects me to believe he cares about protecting the information of study subjects? When pigs fly! This is just another convienent way for Pruitt and this administration to discount factual evidence that rightly discredits their agenda. Study Subjects’ personal identifying data (name, address, etc.) isn’t revealed in peer reviewed research. It isn’t germane.
How does he expect to “reproduce” data? Subject a cohort of unaffected individuals by exposing them to dangerous substances? He could use computer models, but then that wouldn’t fit his narrative. Just another way our tax dollars are working - against - us.
5
Oh yes, the Trump EPA is after nothing but truth; profit has nothing to do with it. Very similar to the days of big tobacco, when the truth was questioned for years under the guise of alternative scientific research.
It will take decades to undo Trump.
15
it is not science if the authors refuse to releasredacted data so others can check their work and attempt to replicate it. many other fields of science like physics create public archive of their raw data and method details when they publish a paper.
EPA funded scientists have never been asked or required to do this, but many used to do it voluntarily up to the late 1980s. No more.
1
People as subjects of science still have the same rights as all others, including anonymity and not being subject to scrutiny by others. Allowing advocates rather than scientists to review raw data pertaining to individuals rather than to the sample populations that are collected would violate the rights of the individuals. Pruitt is simply trying to make it easy for advocates trying to oppose regulation to represent data out of context, to spin it, for the benefit of their clients.
5
That's not the issue. No one denies research be peer reviewed. Publication of peer reviewed data does not necessitate the release of the personal identifiers of study subjects. Most medical and drug research studies are double blind, does that make the published data less reliable, no. What it does do is remove bias or the perception of bias.
Pruitt wants to discredit valid research by applying unrealistic parameters.
4
Congress needs to step in and stop this before it's allowed to go into effect. We cannot have science deniers setting our policies on scientific research.
11
After reading certains comments here, I read the article again, only to notice that the first time I read it, I clearly interpreted it wrong.
I've read quite some science denying stuff, and "reproducible" is a word that often comes back there. Most of the time, it's to try to make the public suspecting that all scientific results that cannot be reproduced actually aren't "real science" so can be ignored. As people often ignore that you need laboratory conditions in order for a scientific experiment to be reproducible, and often ignore that most of the science that is being done happens outside of a laboratory, they tend to believe this kind of articles, because for them, doing experiments is THE perfect example of the job of a scientist.
But that means that all scientific work on one-time events (including most of what happens in medicine, paleontology, etc.) all of a sudden should be discarded as if it isn't science at all, which of course is absurd.
So when Pruitt says he wants only science that is "reproducible", I thought that that's what he's referring to - and it's clearly what he hopes his base will understand.
When you take into consideration what he's actually going to do, though, he's using "reproducible" in a totally different sense: studies must re-produce patient records in public, and if patients refuse to see their health records on EPA websites for all to see, then he'll ignore what toxic substance made them sick, and allow companies to use it again...
9
So ... what's next for this administration?
After patients' records in studies about topics relevant to the EPA have to be made public if "we the people" want the EPA to do its job (preventing industries from causing widespread diseases), will Trump now decide that only Medicare recipients who agree to make their health records publicly available - in the name of "transparency" - will continue to get Medicare ... ?
All while being for "small government", of course ...
4
From the linked article: "...versions of the bill have received support from Exxon Mobil, Peabody Energy, Koch Industries and the American Chemistry Council, which provides policy and research for major chemical companies including Arkema, DuPont and Monsanto."
With backers like these, what's not to trust?
These companies and industries spend a lot of money planting seeds of doubt among the general public. The less evidence they have to deal with, the less money they have to spend lobbying, denying, and creating doubt. This isn't about transparency or the quality of the evidence, it's about getting rid of evidence altogether. Anyone who thinks that these industries would ever put environmental or public health concerns above shareholder profits is sadly mistaken.
5
Being reproductible is only a criterium for "scientificity" in such scientific fields where what is studied CAN be reproduced.
That's the case for much of what is studied in physics and chemistry, but not for many other sciences, including large parts of biology, medicine, etc.
By adding a new regulation that would only consider scientific results that can be reproduced, Pruitt decides to leave much of the EPA relevant science simply aside, even though executing the law correctly, when it comes to clean air and water for instance, of course means taking ALL relevant science into account.
Pruitt (and many science deniers) is acting here as if only "hard science" is science, whereas ALL philosophers of science have for centuries already shown that you cannot possibly define science through the notion of "reproductibility" - and of course being able to reproduce results is NOT a sufficient criterium of scientificity either, as I can decide to open and close the door of my fridge as many times as I want, that obviously doesn't turn such an activity into science.
Pruitt is mainly taking advantage of the fact that many people didn't study science and don't know what it is that makes one study scientifically valid and another one not, in order to do what Mulvaney just admitted too: only talk to your campaign donors, as cabinet member, and then add new regulations that would only benefit them, rather than "we the people".
And yes, that is the very definition of CORRUPTION.
3
The proposal attacks responsible scientific methods in developing public policy. Studies involving human data must pass review boards to protect the privacy of individual participants. Next, the system of review and the curation of data offer both the security of data in its collection to availability of de-identified data for future analysis. Then, the peer review process offers analysis by people expert in the scientific field involved to check for errors or point out faulty conclusions. Finally, when such studies are published, they are never accepted as the final word as scientific discovery is a process and not a destination. There is always more to learn.
Determining scientific evidence takes a long time, a lot of people, and a very public method of examination. Conversely, when human subjects are involved, it requires safeguards to protect personal privacy. Yet the process is open to scrutiny by everyone, not just scientists, while the privacy of participants is protected. It is not a perfect system, but because it works we have effective treatments to address health issues around the globe.
The EPA regulations will thrust us back decades in the application of scientific knowledge for public policy. There are very good, and provable, reasons we don’t use leeches in medicine any more. The same process informed policies that cleared the air over every American city. Pruitt wants to return to the days of killing smog for the sake of a few dollars of profit.
7
One might grudgingly accept that some review of the scientific data behind environmental research could be useful. However given the persistent attack by the fossil fuel industry on environmental regulations, Pruitt's track record of lining his pockets by aligning with those interests, and the serious consequences of climate change which have been documented and reported by the vast majority of the scientific community; any reasonable person should see this for what it is. A profit-driven effort that will funnel massive rewards to the GOP donor class. And it will be taxpayers who bear the burden of paying for climate driven disasters, raising sea walls, and addressing the epidemic of health issues that arise from this delay tactic.
6
Less science...more politics. Less public health and environmental protection...more special interests and unsustainable development. More toxics, less taxes.
More corporate pollution, even more corporate profits.
It's a sickness to look out over a magnificent landscape of verdant forests and wilderness and not see trees but board feet, not a mountain top but easily extracted coal.
Pruitt is the guy former Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland described as knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. Just like his corporate patrons know the price of Pruitt and the value of his corruption.
The future won't be kind to Pruitt. Nor will his grandchildren.
16
The conflict between a no-holds-barred exploitation of the environment, and care and conservation of it is as old as European settlement in the Western hemisphere. Most of the time the exploiters have prevailed. The European ethic in regard to the New World has mostly been founded on the myth, or pious (impious?) hope that its resources are inexhaustible: use it up and throw it away. Are the stakes any higher today than in the past? Maybe, but, if so, only because of population growth.
The EPA rule change, requiring full disclosure of research findings, is defended by the assertion that it aligns with the practice of established scientific journals. That contention is disingenuous and wholly misleading. Reputable scientific journals seek transparency as the research they highlight will be examined and ultimately cited by other professionals working in the same field of study. In order to validate and expand on the work that is published, scientists require all the pertinent facts. The EPA, however, is a regulatory agency tasked to avail itself of the most relevant scientific information, to best devise effective environmental rules, which often has sensitive background detail that should remain non-public as is done in other associated areas of government. The "transparency" Mr. Pruitt is advocates for is really the creation of more opaqueness in order to favor industry over the interests of everyone else.
16
The article counters Pruitt's proposals as violating current laws and regulations, which could and should be contested in court.
Further, Pruitt's actions don't surprise me, in that this thug has flaunted every impropriety possible, for his personal benefit.
Pruitt's actions should be investigated by the appropriate US Attorney's Office in order to ascertain whether he has committed any criminal acts, and not merely non-criminal ethics violations.
16
Reproducibility is an open scandal in the sciences today. Science that is not reproducible is not science, yet it turns out that many experiments in many fields cannot be reproduced. What the EPA is doing must be understood in the context of the self-examination that the sciences are undergoing as they try to come to grips with this crisis.
2
"yet it turns out that many experiments in many fields cannot be reproduced."
And your evidence for this claim is?
9
FYI: when Pruitt uses "reproducible" here, he's not talking about only using scientific studies based on laboratory experiments (= the only type of scientific work where results can be endlessly reproduced, as the lab creates the conditions needed for an experiment to be able to do so - keeping all variables but one unchanged, and then doing the same procedures over and over again to that one variable, in order to see how it reacts).
He's talking about re-producing patient records publicly, in other words "reproducible" here merely refers to making patient information that is only accessible to scientists and independent court experts, now available for no matter what citizen to see and consult.
As to science itself: contrary to what you seem to believe, much of today's science happens outside of laboratories, so is by definition not reproducible. That doesn't mean that it's not science though.
Example: you cannot put the moon into a laboratory, the only way to build a spacecraft that can go there, is ... to go there. But as there are MANY other ways to do scientifically sound work, it has been perfectly possible to build such a spacecraft and get to the moon, even though nobody had done it before, you see?
3
This is complete nonsense. There is no evidence to support the assertion of rampant non-reproducibility in today’s science.
To use this false assertion to try to justify Pruitt’s and Trump’s making policy without regard to science - that is, without regard to reality - is terribly dangerous for everyone now and in many generations to come and grossly irresponsible.
Not to mention it justifies the corruption of decisions made solely to satisfy Pruitt’s and Trump’s supporters, special, GOP interests that profit from science being ignored in policy-making.
It's laughable to claim the studies will be reproducible. Reproducible by whom--the public? Complex public health research is conducted by epidemiologists. It takes years and is expensive. It is unethical for private medical documentation to be available to anyone other than the investigators. Pruitt refuses to accept existing scientific standards and conventions. He is an affront to science and unqualified to lead the EPA.
40
Choosing indifference and ignorance over science is no way to protect our environment. We as citizens need to work on behalf of our children and the natural environment to protect ourselves from these types of officials and their decisions. Science and its applications are a clarity worth achieving for a society whose ambition it is to advance itself.
11
Best. EPA. Head. Ever.
3
Go to the Bronx River near where you live and take a gulp. That’s what Pruitt wants your drinking water to be.
2
Because ... ?
1
This guy makes me sick.... literally.... I have asthma and our “guardian” of air quality is a person in the pocket of those who benefit from disregarding the impact of pollution on people like me. You would think that Trump supporters like to breath, too. Well, at least they are safe from a president who uses private email or a personal device for communication.... oh wait....
9
Thank you NY Times for keeping Scott Pruitt in the news and making sure your readership knows what he is up to. Mr. Pruitt is probably the single most dangerous and disruptive character in that administration. He needs to be removed.
31
For Trump and the Repubs, science is, ipso facto, fake news.
16
The next coal ash levy that lets go, Pruitt's head should be held in the out flow. It will be his and his bosses, MR. Trump, responsibly.
6
Pruitt is the enemy of mankind, of the planet, of life as we know it on Earth. He is hateful beyond comprehension and a clear menace to our home -- the Earth. The Republicans who rally around him are complicit and share full responsibility for these crimes against life as we know it. It's that simple, and that hateful.
31
The media and public are conducting a “peer review” of Pruitt and cronies- and we find them lacking in truth and ethics. Peer review of scienctific, economic, military ... studies means review by people in science, economics, or the military. This “edict” makes Pruitt look pathetic. Facts are facts - pulmonary disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer, antibiotic resistance ... have links to pollution, pesticides, and overuse of antibiotics. The Pruitt’s of the world refuted links to tobacco and lung disease, pesticides and the death of farmer workers, lead and cadmium poisoning, fracking and earthquakes. The American people elected the current administration- remember this fact when you get your family’s next medical report.
16
My congratulations, Mr. Pruitt. After all, what could be more complex, disorienting and terrifying than dealing with actual facts when you can simply, wistfully, pretend?
13
I can understand his ruling. After all facts lean left.
3
Facts are facts, they don’t lean and are not partisan. Smoking kills even if Pence says no, coal pollution kills even if Trump says know, polluted air and water is in no one’s interest - not even evangelical Christians from Arizona - go to Phoenix in a 115 degree polluted day and think it’s cool and crisp outside....
1
Pruitt was born with the frontal lobes that give humans their powers of reason and conscience. He seems to have chosen to not use them. I guess those structures cause him to feel distress so he prefers acting according to what ever chemicals are exciting his limbic system. In common language the man has made himself into a graceless low life.
40
This rule suggests that published health studies must publish essentially “raw data”, which virtually no scientific study does. All valid studies rely on replicating and statistical averages. Does Scott Pruit actually understand how science works? Based on his denialist attitudes he appears to think that everything is simply a matter of opinion.
11
Why should Pruitt understand how science works? He doesn't come from the scientific community, which is where the head of the EPA should come from if you want, you know, a science- based organization to deal with, um, science.
4
Pruitt is playing on the public’s general scientific illiteracy when demands “transparent science”. By Pruitt’s definition of transparency, the CDC or NIH could not use any prior studies due HIPAA violations. Now, I would love for a reporter to ask Pruitt to be so forthcoming about his shell companies, etc. If anything, he should conform to his own rules...
11
Follow the money. It's got to be flowing into someone's pocket.
9
Just what do you expect from an agency led by a Trump appointee?
12
Someone needs to point out that the department is not Justice, where blinders might be appropriate.
Less science and more money profit policymaking...
5
How do thy get around the fact that the planet they are trashing will be left to their children?
Have they studied the stories of children and grandchildren of war criminals?
9
the scientific studies being cut out for "transparency" purposes are independently peer verified. They just don't expose personal information about the subjects. This regulation is a typical Republican ploy to "do good" while doing bad.
6
Republicans poison their own children. That is the headline. Own it. Pollution profiteers.
10
Corrupt and willfully ignorant. Pruitt has to go. But then, everyone in the Trump regime is corrupt and willfully ignorant.
9
This is consistent with Trump's puppet masters' desire to dismantle the government. I remain fascinated by the people who voted for this administration and cannot wait to see them endure the consequences of its actions.
I believe I read recently that the Gulf coastline soon will be radically changed by rising sea levels and that Miami real estate is losing value for the same reason.
This is what happens when you put a "businessman" in the White House.
5
A science organization using less science in policymaking. As Spock would say: "Illogical"
8
Scott Pruitt is just another con artist like every cabinet appointee the boy-king Donny has made. Vetting for qualifications is not necessary Donny. There are only two requirements for working for this White House: a) a committment to undo anything, and everything, President Obama did; and, b) absolute loyalty to Donny by taking the Sycophant's Blood Oath.
We don't know yet how long it will take to undo the damage done by Pruitt, or any of the other cabinet appointees, but it will be years, maybe even generations.
This is simply about how the Trump administration will be reviled in future history books. We know that will be the case. The question for today is, how do we endure the constant pain from virtually everything they do.
9
I am no fan of Trump, but I cannot fathom all the anti-scientific vitriol from readers here. Given that the big EPA rules cost the economy and every single consumer money -- sometimes lots of money -- I want the data that leads to rules to be kicked around by any researcher who wants to. And why not? Is it the view of NYT readers that the experts at the EPA are infallible? Is this a faith-based issue (EPA infallibility) or are we talking about science and its core requirements of replication and challenge?
The allegation that personal information will be shared with the public is ridiculous. Big medical data sets are routinely anonymized. And "arbitrary and capricious?" C'mon, readers, put your politics aside and look up what that means. This ain't it.
6
You want the data because you're so eminently qualified to understand it? You may very well be a scientist, I don't know, but the majority of Americans aren't qualified to understand scientific studies. that's why we have experts.
Also, the environment isn't about money, no matter what you think. Sure, regulation has costs associated with it, but what good does money do in corporations' hands when people can't drink the water or breathe the air?
The fact is we are completely dependent on the environment. And what undermines your entire argument is that our environmental regulations have led to a cleaner environment for all of us, not just for those with money.
2
With all respect, you don't seem to get it.
Of course the EPA should be held accountable by "we the people". Nobody is denying that.
And it's because that's so important that companies who feel incorrectly regulated can sue the government, remember?
And when they do so, they try to come up with scientific studies refuting the results of those studies the EPA had based its rules on. Independent court experts then study all the material provided both by the EPA and by the company that disagrees, and then has to write a scientific report explaining which are the most significant proven studies in this particular case.
So it's precisely BECAUSE no one working for any of the three branches of government is "infallible", that the Constitution includes their separation, which is the most powerful system of checks and balances ever invented on earth.
Secondly, the only way to verify whether a study is serious or not, is to go through the "raw data" too, and as the EPA is supposed to prevent widespread diseases caused by corporations, those raw data are often patient records. In court, independent experts have FULL access to those records.
What Pruitt wants to do here is to ask for those patients to make their own health records PUBLIC, and if they refuse, abandon any rule preventing the disease they have gone through.
That's not only wrong for privacy reasons, it's also very incompetent EPA leadership, you see?
3
Will EPA raw data be anonymized, as MAH says? Will that satisfy all skeptics? Why wouldn't they demand names and identifiers, so they can themselves verify that data were not fabricated? And if they did get names and identifiers, why would they not question the integrity of the raw data?
There is no end point for destructive skepticism.
2
Banning data related to health effects is a brilliant move by Pruitt. With that kind of evidence removal, industries could dump anything into the water and air and state that it’s good for people and no researcher could prove the claim to be false.
On the bright side more human deaths will ease demand for fossil fuel generated energy sources, It’s an ill wind that does not blow someone some good. Pruitt is
1
Members of the Southern Baptist Convention should be mandatorily recused from duties or positions requiring a scientific background. They are, in essence, flat earthers. Global warming, Darwin’s evolution, a 4.5 billion year earth and a 13.8 billion universe are well established scientific facts and scientific theories. In science, a theory is the top rung on the ladder of knowledge. But all theories are subject to new data or new formulations. The Bible is not, nor was it intended to be, a physics handbook. It is intended as a guide to human behavior, and even here, it has serious shortcomings. The evidence for God to Gods, and supernatural events is seriously lacking. Creationism is a fairy tale.
4
As the bumper sticker says, “Science is true whether you believe in it or not.” When governmental departments limit the science that they will consider, they have an ulterior motive that is contrary to what they know is true.
8
wow, a new low. who thought that was possible. Rome wasn't destroyed in a day but we are well on our way to similar ruin.
3
I'm not sure what people are worried about - this rule fosters greater transparency and thus great scientific validity.
NSF, NIH, DOE, NOAA, and now it looks like EPA grants will be joining the list, have been under strictures to make the underlying data available at the conclusion of a study.
Most research universities across the country have been enfranchising Research Data Repository programs to satisfy these burgeoning grant requirements.
The logic being that if the research is paid for by the public, then the underlying data needs to be made available. This doesn't mean people's identities who participated in the studies with the promise of confidentiality will have their identities exposed or that such studies with confidentiality as to the identities of participants would be prevented from being used for rule-making.
What it will do is prevent studies without the underlying data being presented from being used. Currently, a series of EPA rules limiting particulates only have the "results interpreted by the authors" published with the underlying data hidden - release of the underlying data does not imply or require the release of the identities of the subjects in the studies.
The EPA seems to be years behind the rest of the major granting agencies in adopting such rules. That they now require that such studies that are to be used in rule-making follow the new guidelines is very reasonable.
Pruitt's rule makes good scientific sense.
5
Pruitt and Lamar Smith and other oil employees are fighting necessary regulation by pretending that studies that are build on medical studies don't contain private medical information, and that the studies used in rule making aren't often from institutions who had their own legal requirements to maintain levels of confidentiality.
Pruitt's rule makes money for fossil fuel interests, period.
Should we publish your medical information for "transparent" rule making purposes? Because the GOP fossil interests didn't set aside even a tiny fraction of the money needed to properly (and legally) provide data that can be LEGALLY posted online.
6
You're mixing metaphors: NSF, NIH, DOE and NOAA require some form of data transparency on the part of grantees funded by those agencies, but none of those organizations are regulatory, unlike the E.P.A. It is the job of EPA scientists to assess peer-reviewed work done at a variety of institutions, including key public health studies in which subjects were promised confidentiality. This is a naked attempt to ignore those studies. Pruitt's legacy will be worse public health, the undoing of decades of progress in improved air quality, and more corporations polluting the environment he is supposed to protect.
7
It sounds like you are clueless as to what constitutes "de-identified" data. I suggest you Google Safe Harbor 18 and Expert Determination. If a study uses a personal identifier (the county in which one lives is one), the data cannot be made public for all to download. It may be available if a researcher wants to apply to an Institutional Review Board, however. That's public enough for me.
2
"The science we use is going to be transparent..." As transparent as the phone conversations occurring in his in-office phone booth? Or perhaps as transparent as his previous shell corporation funding for his private residences? Let's hope the science he uses is as clearly understood as his connections for a $50 per night sweetheart deal for lodging in Washington.
He should focus on cleaning up his own act with same vigor he dirties up our environment.
32
I'm just a lay person, but can't you make data and results public but still protect the confidentiality of subjects? If not, the article is not clear in explaining why this is the case.
3
The issue is spelled out more clearly in the March article linked in this one. The data that is being demanded are the medical and social records of many thousands of individuals collected over a number of years. To redact the personally identifying information from all those records would be so expensive as to make it unfeasible. The cumulative results correlating disease with pollution exposure were published long ago.
8
Right...because the only real policy for the EPA under Pruitt is how the polluters can make more money and take no responsibility for any mess they leave behind....taxpayers will pay though, either for the toxins they absorb or the cost of cleanup that will invariable fall on them.
17
This is a positive move, as in positively knuckle-dragging, not simply mindless but also openly hostile to knowledge, science, history and scholarly inquiry.
A critical mass of environmental study draws scientific conclusions based on human health data gathered through informed consent and contractual assurances of personal privacy. Incredibly, these studies would now be barred.
If a government agency is barred from basing policy-making on such research, then it divorces itself from scientific evidence, public health be damned.
The Environmental Protection Agency should re-name itself to the Environmental Subversion Agency. What's proposed is more than obtuse; it is downright evil.
50
Oh please it’s quite simple to deitentify study subjects and make the data public. This is a solid move that’s replacing the Obama administration’s advocacy with sound science.
1
Pruitt can get away with redefining the meaning of "peer review", because our language has become so debased and diluted, words and concepts sucked dry of their meaning. The American public has been prepped for acceptance of oxymorons such as "alternative facts, "fake news", and "public peer review" through decades of language debasement, disingenuous claims, and electronic snake oil. In my lifetime I trace it back to 1969, when the still-called 2 x 4 became 1½" x 3 ½", followed by the anti-abortion movement successfully branding itself as the Right To Life movement, as NPR, PBS, the Times and others fell meekly in line, that leading to, among other things, torture packaged as "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Meanwhile, our senses have been flooded with appearances that seem real but are not. It is now often impossible to know with any significant degree of confidence whether the words, pictures, or sounds one engages with online are what they appear or claim to be.
President Trump gets to say one thing one day and deny that he said it the next day despite clear evidence to the contrary, because people now largely believe that reality is what they want, expect, or fear. Evidence, rational judgement, and complexity have given way to the security of certainty provided by living in the echo chamber of 500 channel TV and the internet, where 24/7 you can be reassured that your assumptions, beliefs, fears, and expectations all conform with the way the world actually is.
33
Right here in River City. Trouble with a capital "T"
And that rhymes with P and that stands for Pruitt!
6
This Pruitt is an arrogant selfish man who doesn’t care about his job but who enjoys the prestige and perks the American people are buying for him. He should be fired and we should keeping pushing for it because he is stupid and expensive for us to maintain.
20
The sheer stupidity of our government would be shocking if not for the fact that we, the people, elected it. We chose this madness. We deserve it.
12
A majority of the people voted for someone else
2
I didn't vote for it and I don't deserve it.
2
The glee with which this administration takes aim at science, bans reason and circles the wagons to advance into the past is beyond appalling -- about as inviting as bathing in raw sewage.
19
Scott Pruitt really, really, REALLY hates science.
8
Any study that doesn’t make its data and methodology public isn’t science. It’s advocacy.
5
Yes and no. Epidemiology must protect privacy. Beyond that, sure, good science is replicable, methodology should be part of the report and is as I understand it.
Also what should be made clear is funding sources and institutional bias.
Additionally what should be made clear by industry is ALL it's externalities and the cost benefits of those when it complains of regulation reducing profit. Since that is what this is really about. Transparency.
6
As I read this, he's asking that researchers violate confidentiality agreements, which is a crucial part of informed consent. It's quite possible to make one's methods and data public and most published studies in peer-reviewed journals do just that. How many people participated in the study, basic demographic information but nothing that identifies them personally.
4
ALL science makes it's data and methodology public, it's the fundamental basis of scientific publishing. Since 2009 the NIH has required all of it's research publications to be freely available to the public. That doesn't mean you get to identify the individuals involved in an epidemiology study. It doesn't mean we can identify the person with lung cancer, the child with leukemia or the miner with black lung. But it does meant you can access the data collected by the epidemiologists in such a study. Intrinsically, that's no different from any other scientific study.
6
This guy is either very stupid or very evil or both. It is a great shame and disgrace that he should be in this position. Why they are not actively trying to remove him is beyond me. Scientists could come together and protest that he is at the head of this most important agency, maybe the most important of all in this government.
14
tiggs, you're righton. Somehow this insanity will end with or without humanity.
Pruitt is a huge black eye on the face of public service in general and environmental protection in particular. His greedy, unethical, thieving nature, as OK AG and as EPA Administrator, is unprecedented and beyond shameful. (and more to come I am sure ! )
He is an arrogant, pompous fool, a traitor to taxpayers who want clean air and water, a shill for the Kochs, and a lickspittle for The Don (who could turn on him in a NY minute)
He will not last.
But the stain on his name will be indelible.
9
You couldn't make this up. The country has an agency to monitor and establish policy to make sure that the air and water are clean and support healthy life. Then you send in some dirtbag like Scott Pruitt to run said agency. There used to be a band named Killing Joke. Now I get what their name referred to.
11
This is, of course, very rich coming from the guy who appointed to a high level EPA post his secret sweetheart financier from Oklahoma, a story that was only recently brought into the light of day. Transparency is apparently not a principle applicable uniformly.
But more seriously, the premise of this latest policy directive from our agent of the Dark Ages is designed
to appeal to all those in trumpland who, having never
done very well in high school science classes, nurse grudges and deep psychic wounds from their encounters with principles of evidence based reasoning, of detecting unrealized biases from improperly designed experiments, of invalidating hypotheses because that is what the data demands.
There are lots of such wounded and incapacitated individuals like this in congress, to whom this policy is principally directed.
The notion that there is such a thing as lack of transparency because "all the data" is not published and available to all to look at has been circulating among those in the lamar smith orbit in particular for a long time. How was it possible that it should still
survive in so robust a form today? A question directed at the science community to ponder...
It is a sign of how poorly educated the population is about how the disciplines of science actually work that this idiocy has survived in tact and never became the object of risible general derision, the butt of many a joke about imbecility in DC, that it so richly deserves.
8
what a shock another weasel move at the epa.
4
I must say, they seem intent on Keeping America Greating us all to death.
2
Not to worry. Once all these Trump people are gone from our lives things will return to normal. We will not allow this odious, small group of people upend decades of progress and fundamentally change life in these United States.
Scott, go collect your keep from the Koch's and work your magic in OK. Leave the rest of us alone, thank you very much.
2
So: put on your Science Hat, Mr John Q Public! Scott Pruitt expects you to quickly reproduce and carefully review long term studies conducted by trained professionals using highly technical methodologies. What a Joke! The man is Public Health Enemy Number One. His mugshot should be displayed in Post Office Lobbies.
7
This man has absolutely no shame at all, going after all of our air, land and the seas...with complete lies!!
3
NO, it means less FAKE science in rule making. Only peer reviewed and open source reviews will be used.
Tell me why The Times is against open source review able science?
Because it is FAKE.
2
ALL published science is peer reviewed. ALL NIH funded research since 2009 is open source. HIPPA enforced privacy laws have already greatly restricted public-health research, this rule would basically say any science that conforms to HIPPA is unusable for making public policy. There is such a think as fake science, that is, publications produced using falsified data, but it is a minuscule component of the world's total scientific output. The reason is simple, it's hard to do, fake science is easily refuted and it will destroy a scientist's career. That doesn't mean there is bad or incorrect science, but willful falsification is not the problem Mr Pruitt has with science. It's simply that he doesn't like it's conclusions.
6
you obviously know how scientific data is collected and analysed. Please tell me how the science is fake. Explain how the ypu know the real science othwerwise you have no credability and are fake.
In an interview Sunday on WNYM-AM in New York, Mr. Pruitt said the measure would allow the public to test scientists’ findings for themself =----
Cant believe what Im reading. The public should evaluate scientists findings for themselves - Absolutely riduculous premise.. Why isnt this danger to our enviroment gone by now. The amoutn of degradation to our planet that he is allowing, and replicans are cheering is apalling,
3
Translation: Our policies will all reward people who put money in Pruitt's pocket.
3
Reprehensible villains.
9
By "peers" Pruitt means white rich Christian Republican business executives. Trust them, they know what's good for the economy, er, environment.
2
This column is perfectly timed with Krugman's opinion today: We don't need no education. Make American great again. Ha, ha.
3
Exactly what the Kremlin would do.
Americans need to reject this absurd nonsense.
4
Remember folks, ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
Someone should have told these people:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/many-in-milwaukee-neighborhood-did...
1
Since when has Scott Pruitt ever used science? Never.
2
Why does Pruitt, this thief of taxpayer money and resources still have a job?
2
This should be fun! I look forward to reproducing experiments in my microwave. Maybe treat myself to a new set of measuring spoons? Gives a whole new meaning to "citizen scientist". Luckily, as an English major, I'll have no trouble reading the instructions.
Between reproducing what the EPA now does, and writing frantic emails to the Dept. of the Interior, my retirement years are filling up.
Ya think that this is how Mme. Curie got started?
3
So will science denying Scott Pruitt espouse his hate for science when his grandkids get cancer and need treatment from all the pesticides and foul water he will leave in his wake.
4
Less science? What we need is less Pruitt.
5
Yeah! What has "science" ever done for us?
--a Scientist.
As usual, a previous post of mine never made it since I attributed this article and its slant to the undue influence of the 'deep state' - in this instance the hidebound, climate change-fanatical bureaucrats embedded in the EPA and their various puppet masters in the environmental NGO's (calling out the NRDC!) that are unaccountable to our elected leaders and the general public. These 'elite' are manipulating opaque, junk science data to foist climate change as 100% man made and calling for economy busting measures to reverse said climate change - which, btw, if caused even partially by natural events, we have little to no hope of impacting.
The headline "less science" says it all in exposing the NYT's unabashed slant on the topic. For shame!
2
Solar power employs more people than coal. Think about that for 2 seconds. The future of our economy is in our hands, pretending it's about mountain top removal is akin to sticking one's head in the sand.
1
The only "opaque, junk science data" being foisted on anybody in this context is by the fossil fuel industries, their paid shills, and conspiracy-minded folks like yourself. "Deep state." Give me a break.
SCIENCE?
"We don need no stinkin' SCIENCE..."
1
The GOP's answer to science: thoughts and prayers.
2
Ignorance might be bliss, but not when it helps lead to the destruction of our planet's well being.
The Migratory Bird Act; part of our conservation for so many decades we took it for granted, headed out the door.
Earth Day 'commemorated' by a President who boasts of doing the opposite of what it represents.
Over 50 years of steady advancement in the efforts to save our species and others who share the earth with us, of slowly 'winning' the battle against mankind's rapaciousness and greed, now threatened by these ignorant fools.
Fellow Americans, do you care about the world our grandchildren and future generations will inherit?
3
TH, this too shall pass. These fools will be gone and some semblance of sanity and reason will return. What they do now, will be undone, mostly because the change in how we relate to and care for our world has taken hold and developed an understanding and a purpose and a way. Industries have made enormous investments and transitioned to earth-friendly methods and cannot now simply go back to the old way because a handful of greedy and stupid people will it so. All seems so dark and hopeless but it is not. A calmer reflection is called for these troubled days, and what one discovers is that democracy is indeed alive and robust and it will soon show these
scoundrels the door.
So, let the TH stand for Take Heart. We are going to get through this.
This is very dumb logic and makes no sense. We need good studies not necessarily publicly available studies for policy making. Why mixing up the criteria to serve the polluters in the name of fairness? Lets challenge him in court - EPA should not create loopholes for the industry it is supposed to regulate!
1
The only sense is nonsense!! Let's make as much chaos as we possibly can in order to obscure the truths!!
1
That blue Wave just got alot bigger!
Why are Republicans so anti-science, and when did they become this way? I would really like an explanation along the lines of "I am a Republican, and I don't believe in science because _____". One would logically think that policymaking decisions would be based on evidence and empirical data, but Republicans are adamantly opposed to them. I just don't get it.
Why do Dems and liberals accept wholesale 'facts' about one of the most unpredictable and variable fields of science - the weather. They believe scientist in this field are akin to physicist - that is governed by immutable laws of the cosmos, even those we've yet to fully understand. If Dems had any sense, they would be equating climate change to a field similar to economics, the 'dismal science', that is based on some observable 'facts' any one of or all of which can be upended by some cataclysmic event such as a war in the case of economics or an asteroid hitting the earth in the case of climate change.
As the old adage goes - we can spend a lot of time talking about the weather, but there is very little we can do about it.
And you display your ignorance by conflating "weather" and "climate."
When does Pruitt start mining Yellowstone? Sheesh!
Can the public impeach an EPA Administrator?
1
When all of this silliness is over. The American people should declare Scott Pruitt “King of the trash island of the Pacific” where he can build a a Mansion commensurate with his contribution to the World.
'Deep State' consternation as opaque, junk scientific data is replaced with transparent, verifiable scientific data when making policy. Just because you read it in the NYT's that this is "less science" doesn't make their fake facts correct.
1
Never have I seen such a manipulation of words to try and convince U.S. citizens that the EPA is “protecting human health and the environment.” At least The NY Times is covering the story, which is more than I can say for other news outlets. I see a Supreme Court case regarding this regulation in Scott Pruitt’s future - maybe he will present to the Court while wearing his orange jumpsuit and serving time for all the creepy crimes he has committed.
2
I would like to buy Mr. Pruitt an all-expense paid trip to India for one month. That might change his view of what the EPA is about.
2
This seeming agent of private industry is the most illegitimate actor in the so-called 45th administration.
2
Science schmeience! Just let misguided interpretations of religion prevail and drive public policy. This is working so well elsewhere!
2
Corporate money, corporate power, corporate profits .....this is the ONLY reason why a pathetic and destructive "rule" against science based data and responsible decision making has been muted. Corporate dominance is completely destroying all that matters for life and sustainability on this planet.
2
It seems Pruitt suffers from failed scientist complex. What a shame that a nation of most advanced technology, best scientists and the best institution has an EPA administration so ignorant and a total sell out.
1
I reckon if Pruitt wants "the underlying scientific information ... available to the public" then he could volunteer to have coal dust and chlorpyrifos piped into his office's sound-proof chamber while he's there, and then let the public know its effects on him, if any.
Just a thought...
2
Since when did these people care about the public?
Rather than cynical spin, I truly believe that Pruitt truly does not understand was "peer review" means. God help us.
Let's see. . .Whom do I want to "peer review" a scientific study? A typical Trump voter? Perhaps a white, middle-aged guy with a high-school diploma who maybe worked on a assembly line until Trump's crony shipped his job to Mexico. Or, a PhD in Math/Physics/Chemistry/Biology, like we used to use in the Obama Admin. Tough choice.
3
Of course Pruitt doesn't subscribe to the idea that environmental protection is related to health.
1
Clearly Mr. Pruitt seeks only to weaken environmental law and destroy the health of our country. He is also morally incompetent to serve as a senior executive of such an important agency.
2
Less science in policy-making? Are we going to try magic runes? Or voodoo. Or thoughts and prayers. All about as effective when it comes to protecting your drinking water, your air quality, your life.
1
And I thought the George W. Bush administration's War on Science was bad. While we're at it Scott, maybe the FDA and NIH should limit the amount of science used in medicine, to allow for some blood-letting and witch doctoring? Or the amount of science allowed by the FAA, to see if gravity is actually real or whether we can rely on miracles? Pruitt's hubris and Republic complicity have set a new standard. This country is such a joke.
Thank God!
Science is so, well, so frightening!
I prefer magical thinking when the literal future of the planet is at stake.
One problem: Federal courts do not agree with the no science approach, so the GOP policies will be delayed, and will fail. Ain't checks and balances a drag?
2
Thankfully there's still Freedom of the Press & we do still have the liberty to read it.
The NYT should be commended on its recent work regarding Scott Pruitt.
Those interested in the inscrutable antics of Scott Pruitt might also keep an eye on recent work by journalist Rebecca Leber of Mother Jones.
My apologies if linking to another publication is not the best form for this forum, but in this urgent circumstance it's important that the public be informed:
https://www.motherjones.com/author/rebecca-leber/
https://twitter.com/rebleber?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctw...
Perhaps pressure on Pruitt from even a recent fox editorial may eventually result in his 'deciding to pursue other opportunities' away from EPA.
But immense damage is already done & his replacement will likely be yet worse.
4
We don't need no stinkn' science, Trump and his appointees are geniuses in all fields of knowledge. They will solve the Middle East peace quagmire and bring back coal mining jobs in this country .
1
Let us begin by punishing the ‘chemical’ and ‘fossil fuel’ industries who are supporting pruitt and the trump administration.
Go solar if you can afford it, drive a hybrid and buy organic, non-gmo foods. Reduce your carbon footprint by eating less meat and rejecting products packed in excess plastic packaging. These industries use lots of fossil fuels and lots of chemicals. As consumers, we have power. Use it!
3
You cannot breathe dollars or drink dollars Mr. Pruitt. You can afford fancy filters but even that won't help if you let the coal and oil companies do what they will. Is there no way to make money and simultaneously preserve the planet sir? Can you see no compromise? Do you yourself not breathe air and drink water? Don't you prefer it clean? Isn't a bit less profit worth air we can breathe, water that won't make us ill, the sustainability of the planet? If not for ourselves, then for our children?
2
“The science that we use is going to be transparent, it’s going to be reproducible.”
Says the guy with a tax-payer funded, soundproof phone booth in his office.
4
Key word here is "proposed". Hopefully this terrible proposal will be quashed following public review.
2
Public scrutiny offered by a guy who operates secretively in a sound-proof office doesn't add up.
Politicians should let the scientists do their own research design and manage the data they collect. What politicians need to do is to pay more attention to the details of what the data are telling us instead of trying to reduce science to soundbites.
6
Who does the EPA serve? Us or the fossil fuel industry and other businesses that pollute? Oh, I forgot, our need for clean water to drink, clean air to breathe, clean land to live on, and other small things like safe workplaces count for nothing when we aren't the ones contributing to campaigns. it's much more important that industries be allowed to ruin our environment and dump the responsibility for cleaning it up and knowing about it on us.
Once again the GOP validates itself as the party of know nothings or want to know nothings. I've done research. I've seen results that don't match expectations. You don't ignore results that don't match and you don't throw out data you don't like. You look at it and try to see what it's telling you. But the GOP doesn't want to do that. They want to cherry pick the data in order to spare businesses the cost of being clean.
Now we'll have voodoo science, voodoo justice, and voodoo economics as policies in America. What a trifecta to win! Stupidity is winning the day instead of rational thought. When do we return to witchcraft and dowsing?
6
In a real world example -- would this proposed change in rule and policy making have prevented the elimination of lead from paint and automotive fuels? While this is a single example, the significant reduction of lead from the environment was one of the greatest public health actions ever taken.
How would other past and current rules be effected by the proposed rule changes?
3
Opening up research to public scrutiny is a codeword for allowing right wing talk radio show hosts and psuedo-scientists to launch an attack on established science. There will be massive public campaigns launched by fossil fuel interests to convince people that coal soot is good for your health, global warming doesnt exist, and that petroleum drilling in ecologically sensitive public lands, to enable a few individuals in petro companies to make a bundle by selling the extracted products to China, while leaving behind a toxic wasteland, and contaminated drinking water, is in the best interest of the American public.
7
Precisely. This is a calculated tactic designed to further weaken the EPA in favor of corporate, fossil-fuel interests. You hit the nail on the head, Ted.
The public doesn't need to review the science; as many commenters have noted, the public usually lacks the scientific credentials. The public does have a right to comment on proposed regulations, and they already have that - the EPA seems to be (or at least, has been in the past) quite active in listening to public opinion on proposed regulations. Not sure Pruitt can say the same thing - how much attention is he paying to public comments on his rolling back regulations that protect our health? And how transparent is he being about who he is talking to before he rolls those regs back?
2
If the EPA is adopting this new 'standard' then the FDA and CDC should too. If this is the administrations stance on the role of science in public policy then it should apply to ALL agencies. Then the absurdity of this rule will be obvious.
13
In fact, the data from all publicly funded research should be publicly available (individual identifying information having been removed, of course). That is the only way in which the soundness of scientific results and conclusions can be tested. And "peer review" is not enough; reviewers customarily do not have the time to inspect the original data and abuses have occurred.
Whether the public can carry out "peer review" is a red herring. The question is whether other qualified researchers are given access to the data in order to check results. If not, one must suspect the motives of the original researchers.
The fact that the proposal comes from Pruitt triggers a knee-jerk reaction, of course, but many others have made similar recommendations. It should not have to be identified with him.
4
No. This is about condidentiality for citizens. You wouldn’t want to share your data with drug companies, your golf buddies or the general public. Citizens in health studies deserve privacy. Data can be shared between researchers but not with Joe the Plumber.
2
" That would sharply limit the number of studies available for consideration because much research relies on confidential health data from study subjects."
I guess that I do not buy that this is a problem. Essentially all journals require data to be available for review, which means that 'confidential health data' must be suitably anonymized just to get published in the first place.
4
Scott Pruitt's pronouncements today have elevated the EPA's fear of 'inconvenient truths' to willful ignorance. While he and his cohorts may be able to stand on contrived doubt concerning climate change (in opposition to nearly the entire community of environmental scientists), Mr. Pruitt's plan to gut the role of peer-reviewed science in other areas of environmental policy reeks of naked bias towards polluting industries. Toxic water (see Flint, MI), air (much of the American southwest), and food will affect everyone. Our EPA administrator must be planning to move into a hermetically sealed bubble outside our borders once his plan is implemented.
7
If this issue is so important for EPA policy making, presumably they should apply the same requirements to policy making in all other areas too, eg. Health, the FDA?
1
So, people are only willing to answer the questions if they are anonymous?
LOL. This scare is much adu about nothing. The studies will still be done. And it will be easier to verify the studies, because many studies come out skewed. And without having the data source, you have to take a potential liar's word for it. We have seen false studies several times. If anything, this will lead to more accurate scientific facts being used.
2
I'm not sure anything you wrote makes much sense. How can a fact be more accurate? Anyway...science isn't about facts, it is about creating knowledge. The current admin doesn't care much for science or knowledge.
1
O lets apply it to every corporate trade secret study used to justify regulatory approval? Right
"...would allow the public to test scientists’ findings for themselves."
Great, because the average citizen is just as well equipped to do peer review as actual credentialed scientists. Creationist Bob & Flat-Earth Timmy need to be able to make sure dem scientists aren't trying to fool us wit "Fake Facts". We need to stop treating the environment & science as the enemy.
16
Perhaps what Pruitt and the GOP is really saying is that the science is too complicated for their simple minds. They want something a 5 year old (like our President) or even they could understand and potentially rebut. Of course, the world stopped being that simple several millennia ago and our current education setup makes it likely we may need to lower the understanding level to age to 4 pretty soon.
7
“The science that we use is going to be transparent, it’s going to be reproducible.”
As opposed to his agency and his own activities, which is inscrutable to protect his own corrupt practices and his many friends in the fossil fuel industries.
If this were a place that punishes corruption, like China, Pruitt would have gone underground by now.
7
Reproducible is one obstacle because to duplicate a study or improve the methods would be costly. As to transparency, this is a joke coming from the secret phone booth guy, science data is online now. After NASA and EPA was taken over scientists started placing their results online and will continue to do so. Study subjects can continue to be confidential so long as the EPA does not disclose their identities. The study subjects can be designated by numbers rather than names. Not even Pruitt can break the agreement laws.
What old timer Pruitt does not understand is economics. The world is ready for environment friendly products and renewable energy. Our economy must be the driver in leading edge technology to produce these solutions. Pruitt can deal with his emperor like image all he likes, in Nov. 2018 we will vote in a new House and Senate that will pass laws he must obey. Let us see his smile then.
6
What Pruitt is doing is basically the same thing defense lawyers used to do to keep rape and sexual abuse victims from filing charges. Not too many years ago, the names of victims before shield laws would mysteriously show up in newspapers and on the news, and because of that victims were scared to testify in court or file charges. Knowing that scientific studies shield the identities of the people studied, that their individual medical histories are aggragated into the data of the report so no one individually can be identified.With studies, knowing that their privacy will be breached will make it very difficult to get participants in the study and with that, the studies won't happen and Pruitt can say "there is no scientific studies showing that releasing PCB's into a river causes cancer".
Among other things, this is appealing to the Faux News/GOP big lie that jobs left the US because of "EPA regulations", that if we gut the EPA all those coal miners will have jobs, chemical plants will thrive and Trump nation is gonna be okay once again...meanwhile the truth is the jobs won't return, but instead Trump nation is gonna be dumped on (the blue states have protections in state law red states don't), their kids will get sick, they will get sick, and wonder why they are being smitten like that. Almost 2 generations has passed since things like Love Canal, superfund sites, cancer clusters and "Petroleum Alley", and we are bound to repeat that.
6
We can't have science interfering with the EPA's main goal of enriching GOP donor organizations at the expense of the environment and public health.
13
So, what can those of us who care about science, facts and the EPA actually safeguarding our health do?
2
"When E.P.A. develops regulations, including regulations for which the public is likely to bear the cost to comply, using public resources, E.P.A. should require that the underlying scientific information is available to the public"
By this logic, why doesn't the Pentagon release the classified intelligence they use to justify who is an enemy of the state and who is not? Aren't taxpayers entitled to have access to that information if they are responsible for bearing the costs of military spending?
Of course not, because confidentiality protects the innocent. The irony of a man who spent $43,000 of taxpayer money on a privacy booth scolding our government on the importance of transparency in policy-making is the stuff of dystopic fiction.
The lunacy of this head-on assault at the scientific method knows no bounds. Scott Pruitt is a repulsive man; a paranoid, greedy executive who couldn't care less about protecting public health or creating policies to mitigate environmental destruction. Like many people in Trump's circle, he cares only about enjoying the standard of living he is accustomed to, and enriching himself and his friends in the process.
It's time to go Scotty. Leave now before you get indicted.
5
Given Pruitt's activities and now even less science in the mix, EPA is the Environmental Party Agency.
1
It’s so sad to think that shaming science is all about making more money.
I could use more description for NYT on what types of research would be excluded. Aren't many of the health studies large anonymized data sets? So those would be allowed? This news item need more detail for full understanding.
3
This is red meat for the base. Nothing more. There was a time when conservatives actually cared about conservation...now they demonize it as job killing regulation. Tell me, would you rather have a livable habitat or a paycheck? Because we're on pace to get neither.
2
At this point, the only new E.P.A. rule worth unveiling is the one that disposes Scott Pruitt. All else is moot.
6
Who needs science when there are massive profits to be made off of oil and gas/deregulation? Socialize pollution and privatize the profits. Perfect for the Trump/Pruitt crowd.
3
The only saving grace here, per Neil deGgrasse Tyson:
The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.
The inherent beauty of science is that it is free from ideology. The fundamental flaw of Scott Pruitt and DJT is that their ideology prioritizes expedient, short-sighted and ill-conceived economic policies that completely disregard the long-term well-being of society and our planet. Pruitt has been ideologically apposed to the mission of the agency he has been tasked with running for many years. Now, with new found authority as the head of the E.P.A., Pruitt's frightening shift to codifying fact-free decision making should ring the alarm bells for all who care about healthy people and a healthy planet!
2
who believes George Orwell, reaching out from the grave, writes Pruitt's material?
“The science that we use is going to be transparent, it’s going to be reproducible,” Mr. Pruitt said.
“It gives people the opportunity in real time to peer review. It goes to the heart of what we should be about as an agency,” Mr. Pruitt said.
I find it amusing (in a sick way) that Pruitt deliberately co-opts certain words he has come to slowly understand characterize good scientific practice: transparent, reproducible, and peer review. Unfortunately for Pruitt, most scientists recognize that he does not actually support those principles if studies conducted in that manner show results that he does not accept.
As others with actual knowledge (unlike Pruitt) have pointed out, the data sets used in studies that do not identify individuals are invariably available to other researchers who agree to abide by confidentiality agreements. Such privacy policies are common in most medical studies.
So, Mr. Pruitt, why don't you put your policy setting where your mouth is and point out three studies that you believe cannot be reproduced by researchers using the same data sets as used in the original studies? In fact, why don't you, as EPA administrator, put your money where your mouth is and fund such replicate studies and then let them be published in peer-reviewed journals respected in their fields so that all in the scientific community can see how the repeat studies were conducted?
1
"Mr. Pruitt said the measure would allow the public to test scientists’ findings for themselves."
How is it that a public servant can get away with making such transparently disingenuous statements as that?
I find myself thinking, increasingly, that the main problem in America isn't racism, or rampant gun violence, or even soico-economic inequality.
Rather it seems to be lying politicians. Which is tantamount to saying it's politicians, generally.
We all take it on faith that politicians lie to us. In other words, we all take it on faith that politicians deceive us.
What kind of a country is that?
If all the industry groups support this proposal, but none of the scientists, it tells you all you need to know about who it serves. The EPA has ceased to be an agency of the citizens. It's Pruitt's private fiefdom.
5
Only EPA industry. Apply this rule where Industry Want something approved and they would be hysterical
New Middle Ages dawn on the US. Trump's pernicious boorishness is carried into the appointments of high officials, who do everything to distort and conceal the truth, as believed by the majority of the scientists at present.
“The science that we use is going to be transparent, it’s going to be reproducible,” Mr. Pruitt said.
Well that will sink any climate change proposals as Pruitt will say the data from the Climate IPPC is contradicted by the climate deniers as not being reproducable.
As Trump would tweet - "Sad!"
1
Science is connected with facts and the search for truth. The Trumpists have no place for any of this in their universe. Vote them all out while we still can.
1
The Senior staff at the EPA have no interest in protecting the environment, as evidenced by this new policy. Pruitt and his merry men take absurdity to a new level. This agency should be renamed to the EDA -Environmental Destruction Agency.
It should be illegal to have a person heading the EPA who doesn't adhere to the values of the EPA, namely protection of the environment and citizens from pollution.
"Richard Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard said Pruitt would be "walking into a judicial minefield".......".
Let's hope this turns out to be true and Pruitt's proposed regulations will be invalidated.
If the earth is flat, that means pollution runs off the edges and into outer space. No worries!
The irony of a scientific article based on likely confidential health information (that points out the likely impact of climate change on respiratory illness and death due to dust in the Southwest US) and this charlatan and industrial shill's new regulation limiting rules based on confidential clinical data being published on the same day is tragic. The gall of Mr. Pruitt to mention public interest while he makes policy under a $40000 cone of silence boggles my mind.
1
It sounds like a smart Pruitt underling successfully sold this plan to his/her boss. We on the outside, who understand the nefarious nature of the effort, can only hope Pruitt takes the lead and, as has been common, bungles the legal work necessary for enactment.
1
Republicans have long dwelt in a fantasy world as far as the need for any type of regulation. With blind idealism they think corporations will do the right thing and self-regulate if it really was important. When they get those dollar signs in their minds, everything else can be justified and rationalized. Collectively, they are a danger to continued human existence...or maybe one should say a tolerable human existence.
Republicans reject the idea that education matters. High School Joe is just as qualified in their minds as a Ph.D. in the field. So to them, this makes perfect sense. The know-nothings don't want to confused by facts.
1
Pruitt has discovered that a NEGATIVE is actually less than zero. His EPA administration is going to lower the significance of science in policymaking? They are already past the zero mark, destroying advances that our society has taken decades to implement.
Pruitt is a monster and deserves to be held responsible for his maniacal policies. Perhaps we can prosecute him when reason reagins control of the body politic.
1
There is nothing wrong with this transparency plan, and everything right about it: data on which scientific studies are based should be publicly available so they can be subject to expert scrutiny. Anyone who protests this rule is anti-science (not pro-science as they would like to claim). The so-called "confidentiality" issue is a total dodge. It is simple to mask subjects' identities in analyzing their health data. It is done all the time.
2
If transparency was really their motivation then you would be correct, but a consistent pattern of flat-out denial that our environment is in serious danger doesn't lie...transparency is VERY unlikely to be the reason for this.
1
The motivation for proposing the rule is not relevant to its merit. But to protest something that has merit, based on the suspected motivation, is equally dishonest. I am myself a research scientist who has been funded by government grants (NIH), and I know how data in the hands of tendentious scientists gets misused and distorted. A favorite saying among my peers: "We tortured the data until it confessed." So, this new "transparency" rule, which should be applied universally (and in fact is gradually being implemented for federally funded studies) is an important safeguard of scientific integrity.
1
Try applying it to areas where business wants approval e.g. FDA and you will hear the pigs squeal
I try to understand, to empathize, with those who voted for trump and the flock of republicans in congress. However, in light of the repeated attempts of the GOP to eradicate scientific fact from policy decisions, I can't come to any conclusion other than the voters just don't care about the resulting impact on the planet even though the repercussions are already happening in plain view.
6
Everyone knows that this current EPA is just a business oriented gang seeking to reduce environmental protections as much as possible.
3
Never before has an EPA Administrator been so visible and such a significant part of the news cycle. I can only think of one prior EPA Administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, who it turns out is a vocal and unabashed critic of Scott Pruitt, and a stalwart Republican. I only know of her because she was my former governor.
Pruitt is so visible and noteworthy because he is the anti-environment protector, the irony of which comes second to the tragedy of it all. The EPA was created to protect the environment; that's what the "P" stands for. Scott Pruitt is rolling back regulations that were created to curb further pollution and toxic exposure. Granted some regulations might be worth reassessing or modifying, but that is not what's happening here- Pruitt is removing them wholesale where he can. It is clear that for the Trump administration the less regulation, the better; that type of oversimplified thinking will never work in today's world. I see no "protection" happening here.
6
It is a given that the new Pruitt regulation once enacted after the comment period will be multiply challenged in the courts. There is a reasonable chance it will be suspended or better yet stricken down by a federal judge. Appeals will follow all the way up to the SCOTUS. This will take us well past the November elections, as I am sure the courts will find no reason to expedite the process. If the Supremes were to uphold the rule, it would not necessarily apply to states seeking added environmental protection beyond federal law. If challenged by the EPA, a solid number of states on the west and east coasts would challenge the authority of the federal government to force compliance in the light of peer-reviewed evidence that is at odds with EPA reached conclusions. It's going to be massy and time consuming, but I am sure the blue states will prevail. The Oklahomas of this nation may well wallow in their deteriorating polluted environment, but that is their problem.
2
Is there even an E.P.A. left? Scott Pruitt and Donald Trump are not in the least interested in protecting the environment or the general population. They are only interested in protecting the corporations that pollute our environment, manufacture and sell dangerous chemicals, endanger the public health and are irreparably damaging our planet's climate. I am not surprised by this, but I really don't understand how Congress can stand by as the very purpose of the agency is undermined. I don't know how these soul-less individuals sleep at night. I can only hope that state and local governments and industry leaders with a conscience take up the slack and commit to protecting our environment and health despite the Trump administration's efforts to undo any progress our country was making.
11
So we need people with no scientific background whatsoever to be able to review and test the science behind various studies to make sure they are done properly? Right.
The proposed regulation should change the name of the agency as well. It can be re-christened the Environmental Destruction Agency. If Pruitt is really for "transparency" then he should go all the way and be honest about the mandate of the agency under his watch.
10
Want ad excerpt
Qualified candidates needed. No prior experience or credible qualifications in any field related to Environmental Controls, Policy Management or Common Sense. Must be able to bluff, wrangle, coerce, fabricate reality, and say yes to lobbyists. Leave ethics, morals and conscience at home.
9
Federal administrative law forbids agencies from modifying or adopting rules if doing so is "arbitrary and capricious." Here, EPA wants to deliberately ignore reputable and reliable science because it prefers to favor the ideology of regulated industries. That cannot possibly be anything other than "arbitrary and capricious," particularly given that the relevant environmental laws do not command this new rule and because decades of practice with no successful Congressional effort to reverse existing administrative practice has occurred.
I predict that this rule, if it is finalized, will be quickly and bluntly rejected by federal courts.
36
"Supporters of the plan, which include the chemical and fossil-fuel industries and prominent climate change denialists....."
I have no further questions, your Honor.
Just change the name of the agency to the Environmental Pollution Agency in the interest of transparency.
America has been hijacked by right-wing psychopaths, fake Christians and Republican Robber Barons hellbent on raping Mother Earth, the national treasury and the national IQ.
Nice GOPeople.
Vote on November 6 2018
162
The rest of that quote says "the regulation will ensure that future E.P.A. policies are based on science that can be independently verified."
Peer review and reproducible results are already part of science.
Trump is dangerous.
14
We don't have to wait for Nov 6th, Socrates. Early voting is open for primaries. Know your candidates. Use your voice, your pen, resist and vote....and help and encourage others to do the same. The lifeblood of our democracy is being attacked. WE, the voters, are the militia of the 21st century, and can be armed by fact, science and reason.
5
I am puzzled by this. I work in drug development and we conduct clinical trials where personal patient information is sensitive and anonymous. We still use the data we gather to approve drugs without knowing all the details of the patients. In fact knowing some of the sensitive personal information is a violation. So what exactly is Pruitt asking to see or asking to be made available? People addresses and medical histories? One has to write protocols under Good Clinical Practice that protect patients identity and safety in order to mask this sort of detail specifically, why would the data being used by the EPA be subject to anything different than used under GCP? I'm genuinely curious about this. Will the FDA start demanding similar transparency soon?
14
He knows that researchers can't divulge the data.
It's a way to not include research that he does't like. If he doesn't like what he is hearing from scientists, change the rules so he no longer hears it.
This way he will only get 'studies' that affirm what he believes.
5
No at FDA the Donors who buy Republicans want approval so secrecy will be maintained. At EPA the Donors who buy Republicans want to prevent regulation and this is a tool. The GOP is for sale and the bidders are bidding. Has nothing to do with science . It's simply corruption
1
-- from the article: "“The science that we use is going to be transparent, it’s going to be reproducible,” Mr. Pruitt said. ... Supporters of the plan ... say the regulation will ensure that future E.P.A. policies are based on science that can be independently verified."
These assertions show that Pruitt and the plan supporters don't understand how peer review science works - or they do and they're just lying. The current system already is transparent, reproducible and independently verifiable.
Solid, verifiable, published, peer-reviewed studies do not make public any data that can personally personally identify medical patients in order to protect patient privacy. But, any science researcher can gain access to that same data by entering into a confidentiality agreement with the data provider and repeat the analytics to verify the study. The EPA itself could contact (for example) Blue Cross Blue Shield and get access to the exact same treatment data that was used in a published study and verify the study results. But the EPA, like the original researcher, could not make the individual medical patient data public.
This well-known structure is how epidemiological studies are done. It protects the privacy of medical patients, while facilitating robust scientific investigation. Anyone who says the current system of peer-review publishing isn't independently verifiable or repeatable is either lying or ignorant (and therefore unqualified to have an opinion), take your pick.
67
Without having the data source, you can't verify the studies. They can say anything they want, and without the data source you have no choice but to believe them. And often we have seen false studies come out.
Apparently you don't know much about how it works either, LOL. Or maybe you do and are one of those putting out false studies and you feel your job is threatened now.
1
The government can and does get any data it wants to check the science . The issue is the public. do you think the Republican donors who need drug approval ant to release it to the public? this has Nothing to do with good science.
Of course. Because if Pruitt and company have actual facts regarding the health, economic, infrastructure and environmental impacts of not safe guarding our water, air or land, it would undermine their profit driven self-interested pro-pollution policies. Companies may be required to cover the externalities of their business practices rather than passing those along to tax payers on the local, state and federal level.
6
I would be the last to defend anything this administration does. However, I do think that information used to set policy should be based on published, peer-reviewed data. That also means that the actual scientific articles relied upon need to be available to the public, not behind a publisher's very expensive paywall. Right now, even published data is not available unless you can pay several hundred or thousands of dollars a year for a single journal subscription, or have access to a college or university library. And this is for taxpayer funded research. Confidentiality agreements among test subjects restricting release of data (as noted as a reason this is an issue) is a red herring as this information can always be anonymized.
So, correct decision, but most likely for the wrong reason in this case.
1
Desire Trails, the information used to set up policy IS based on published, peer-reviewed data. Consult the public docket for all of the studies supporting regulations under the Clean Water Act. EPA only uses top-tier, extensively reviewed and validated dose-response relationships to support estimates of the benefits of pollution reduction. This rule would make it so that EPA could not use peer-reviewed studies unless the underlying data (including private medical information) were released to the public.
76
All the science is peer reviewed. But peer review does not mean released the data to the public. Scientist have to sign confidential agreements not to make public the names and info of participants. So other scientists can do their own study as long as the data remains private.
Would you consent to a study if your data was going to be revealed to the public? Most people would say no and thus the study would never be done. The private info has to be protected.
This is just an attempt to smother science so he gets nothing that upsets his agenda of destroying the EPA's work. This man is on record as saying he wanted the EPA destroyed. Now he has the chance to do precisely that.
9
You can BUY published studies from the authors. They're sold for about $200. You can read them in their entirety if you pay for them. Or do you just want everything you learn to be free?
Trumps EPA ignores ALL science when it makes decisions, so what difference does it make which sources are accepted?
23
Sure, "transparency" sounds good coming from this administration, but the word does not actually mean transparency. It's more like ignoring evidence. With the measures being implemented across so many federal agencies, eventually there won't be enough far-right religious zealots, living in a polluted and regulation-free wasteland of an undereducated America, to support the extravagant lifestyles of the billionaire class. Perhaps then it will be mission accomplished, the unintended end-game.
23
Why does the science need to be publicly available?
The 'public' these days couldn't understand it anyway.
The subliminal inference is that the EPA (and government) are not to be trusted to interpret the science. Which is only true while the agency is run by Republicans.
51
So your argument is that "the public" and Republicans would not understand the science, but that Democratic Party politicians will.
I see. Of course.
The deplorables think they are peers of actual, educated scientists and want in on peer review!
6
Well, there hasn't been much real science involved in policy making thus far, so it doesn't bode well if we're now going to have even less!
10
re reproducible, how many of Trump's claims have been based on reproducible evidence? I can think of a few thousand that weren't. (List would be MUCH longer if not limited to his presidency.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?...
11
Mr. Pruitts plans to to restrict studies to those that are open to public review will prevent the Agency from using health studies that are the cornerstone of many EPA regulations. This would also cause a conflict with HIPPA regulations that protect medical information of individuals. I do not think that an abundance of the population would agree to be part of human health studies if their medical information were to be made public. Yet another Trump attack on science.
43
Every time I read of Pruitt and other cabinet members (Zinke, et. al) denying scientific research on a multitude of subjects, I can hear the 80's Thomas Dolby song 'She Blinded Me with Science" in my head.
12
Pruitt justifies this change saying that it will give the public time to "peer review" the studies being used. that is just about the most stupid statement I have heard from this administration's appointees. The vast, vast majority of the "public" has no idea how scientific studies are conducted, the parameters of the studies, or the science behind the studies. How are they then supposed to "peer review" the findings of any scientific study. It is crazy thinking. It is why our universities and colleges develop high level research programs to investigate esoteric fields of study. The public needs to get there information from the scientific community, not the reverse. Many in our current population believe in witches and the flat earth. Do we want them "peer reviewing" scientific studies?
135
Repubs are known for their skepticism. Just look how they peer-reviewed all Trump's lies during his campaign and voted for him anyway.
6
To Patrick Stevens...until we democratically drain the swamp, nothing will change. No, we don't want peer reviewing. But this administration has demonstrated through inappropriate appointees to head the agencies that being qualified or having knowledge about anything doesn't factor into making decisions. We shouldn't be surprised. And the GOP doesn't care, as long as they can privatize the government, retain power, spend our taxes on their pecadillos and line their pockets in support of industry. Thank you SCOTUS, for making corporations into people...defying science!
2
Just one problem with the public performing peer reviews: they're not peers!!!
185
Difficult to imagine less science for decisions than has already been shown by the last 10 years or so.
Bruce
2
Science? Who needs science? After all, this is the Trump administration.
18
Secretary Pruitt seeks transparency? Let's start with the President's tax returns, the White House visitor logs, "dark money" political contributions, ...
Oh, and I forgot, Pruitt's expense reports.
151
the visitors at the WH surely are on video .... can someone broadcast that out to us? it would be lovely to view
3
It would seem that Pruitt and the Trump administration wants to totally destroy the E.P.A.'s mission, as we have always know it, for two reasons: One is to be as anti-Obama as they can make themselves and two is to open up and give ALL the power and advantage to big business, no matter the cost to the planet and human lives. I just don't get it.
26
The new idiocracy digs in. Let's install lead pipes for Pruitt's main office drinking supply - what could go wrong? As long as everything is bullet proof - of course.....
46
Legal issues aside, this move will translate to "EPA is no longer considering your health in its decision-making". Even GOP hardliners won't like trying to sell that.
42
"Enacting the policy as a regulation, as the E.P.A. intends to do, will involve accepting comments from the public and going through a lengthy bureaucratic process. But, if finalized, the measure would be difficult for a future administration to unravel."
I look forward each and every day to the end of Trump. Can you explain why it would be any harder to roll back any idiotic rule this administration enacts than it would be for them to adopt it in the first place?
7
I've worked on administrative rules before. They have the force of law, which is why there's a lengthy comment and examination period by all parties that would be affected. That includes every major business that wants to attend, as well as politicians from the states where these firms are located.
Its a huge undertaking even when everyone agrees on what should be done; repealing this policy means changing the rule itself, so everyone has to go through the same process again, except this time it only takes a few people to stop it.
4
And yet, there will surely be millions of comments not in favor of this proposed rule. And they will be comprehensively ignored by the EPA, just like the Dept. of Interior ignored the 95% of comments that were in favor of not shrinking our national monuments. So what is the point of this "lengthy process", and why can't we just repeat it when we have a sane administration, and ignore the "few" who want to stop the rule rollback?
Incredible! Vote the silent GOP out in the mid-terms.
19
Every time I read about Scott Pruitt's plans, I can't help but wonder what kind of air he thinks he and his family will breathe, what kind of water they will drink, and what kind of food they will eat once his withdrawal of environmental protections. Ditto for Trump, who has children and grandchildren of his own that he must _sometimes_ think about.
I can't imagine how Pruitt and Trump propose to protect themselves and their families from the long-term damage they propose to do to the planet that we all must share, rich and poor alike.
Money alone can't save them.
15
The EPA has surely become Crazyland under the direction of Scott Pruitt.
Furthermore, after stealing public funds to enable his nuttier habits, why on earth is he still employed?
25
Better science that is more thoroughly supported is what we need
5
And you are an expert on all the science that is out there...? And the science that remains confidential? Please.
1
"The science" is not confidential. The personal data of the subjects of scientific studies is what remains confidential. Since most people won't participate if their data is exposed, most large studies protect the confidentiality of their subjects' personal data. It's how science works. The whole "public access to data" red herring is ridiculous.
Why doesn't Pruitt stop wasting time with these intermediate steps and cut straight to his end game:
All scientific studies used by the EPA must be based solely on one or more approved authoritative sources:
1. Biblical passages (Old and New Testament; English editions only)
2. Industry supplied marketing materials
3. Lord Trump's tweets
219
Hi LT,
Pruitt would be forced to exclude the Bible as it directly contradicts his behavior. The website Patheos has a succinct analysis copied below.
Genesis 2:15 “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
God gave mankind a command and told him that he must tend or keep the garden. The Hebrew word for “tend” or some translations say “keep” it is “shamar” and it means more than just keep it neat and tidy. The Hebrew word means “to guard” or “to watch and protect.”
The other Hebrew word in this verse that’s very important is the word “work” or as some translations more accurately say “to cultivate” and is from the Hebrew word “`abad” meaning “to serve.”
So Genesis 2:15 would better read as: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to serve it and to guard and protect it.”
That means that we are stewards of the earth and the Master will require of us an account on how we’ve been stewards of what He has given us.
So far, it’s not been good stewardship to say the least.
3
In the meantime, let's drop the pretense and the words "environmental" and "protection" from the agency's title.
39
Does Stephen J. Malloy know what science is? Solid methodology is the very definition of "scrutiny."
5
Pruitt may get away with this assault on science and on the environment because Congress and the American people don't understand science and are not ashamed to admit it. They don't value science and have funded scientific research less and less for 50 years.
9
Mr. Pruitt and his fellows in the administration clearly do not care to protect natural resources or people's health. Instead, for them, the earth and its inhabitants exist to plunder as they see fit.
6
This is a terrible, terrible policy. Confidentiality is at the heart of ethical health research. Moreover, the general public does not have the ability to analyze and evaluate complex environmental research. Generally, people are far less literate in statistics than we would like. This is an unfortunate situation all around.
19
What Mr. Pruitt implies with this proposal is that his own scientists cannot be trusted to produce unbiased research, in spite of the procedures already in place to ensure exactly that (e.g., public comment periods, peer review, publication of research, etc.). But does he have any evidence that the EPA is generating bogus research and using data confidentiality for cover? That researchers are using confidentiality like he uses shell companies to paper over his corruption?
Perhaps Mr. Pruitt assumes most people, including EPA scientists, operate in as self-interested a manner and with as little integrity as he does.
39
We know that Pruitt is destroying the EPA so his already wealthy friends, lobbyists, and corporations can make more money and give him more perks like luxury housing and vacations. But when the air is totally unsuitable to breathe, will his friends' money buy their way out of foul air? You can buy clean water but you can't go outside and buy yourself some clean air.
4
Soon there won't be any water to buy or drink either. Not for the animals, plants, and not for humans. Death.
Richard J. Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard, said Mr. Pruitt would be “walking into a judicial minefield” if he told the E.P.A. to no longer consider certain studies during agency rule-making.
That, Mr. Lazarus said, would be considered an arbitrary and capricious decision under the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs agency rule-making, and would “subject any agency regulation issued based on such a defective record to ready judicial invalidation.”
Within these sentences is the real problem this country faces because Trump and the GOP are currently filling the courts with biased judges who are unlikely to find any (conservative) regulation as arbitrary and capricious; out of deference to the executive branch, of course. Thus, if the executive branch wants to rewrite the rules for what types of science are acceptable in rule making, so be it, even if the intent of the rules is to block most science from being considered. The Luddites have gained control folks and will wreak as much havoc as possible until removed.
11
This is monumentally foolish as well as evil.
13
make that colossally evil and inherently corrupt
2
“It gives people the opportunity in real time to peer review."
Peer review means that scientific studies are reviewed by scientists (i.e., peers), not the public.
8
Congress should rename Pruitt's politicized agency to the FFPA: Fossil Fuel Protection Agency. Then a future, more enlightened congress and president can create an apolitical environmental protection agency comprised of and led by scientific professionals.
10
These pronouncements are so full of doublespeak that it is hard to understand them. Some critics (like myself) will look at the roster of those pushing these new regulations and conclude that this cannot be entirely good if the proponents are industries that will directly benefit from reduced regulation. What is the purpose of the entirely misleading claims made for the new regulations. Is there anyone who really believes that Scott Pruitt is doing this to "strengthen the transparency and validity of E.P.A. regulatory science". I also really liked the one about how this would allow the public to "test scientists’ findings for themselves". How exactly would I do that in evaluating the consequences of toxicant exposure on cancer risk? I am a scientist, but I do not have access to the analytical capabilities or epidemiological data to check these things for myself. Curiously we cannot get rid of this guy on the merits of his embarrassing ignorance or complete lack of interest in protecting those he loves (does he love anyone) from the chemical soup. Maybe he will go on the basis of his imperial personal style.
6
Seeking conclusions which support preconceived ideas and discarding the data which does not is Mr. Pruitt's idea of science. We would still be in the dark ages using this approach. Science is not political and the truth will always be discovered. The science, the measurements, the study design, and the statistical analysis are all difficult and I doubt most will understand the subtleties. Certainly, congress will not understand the science since they are not even reading the bills they pass. I have not doubt that Mr. Pruitt does not.
12
Pruitt: First eliminate the scientists and now eliminate the science.
The number of people that will consider this new EPA policy as good news will sadly be way too many. The idea of using less science to protect the environment should never be proposed or be dismissed at first glance. By using the red herring that the data must be open to the public is just the type of misdirection that the GOP is really good at. In this case, it will eliminate the need to actually perform any type of environmental protection.
“Mr. Pruitt said the measure would allow the public to test scientists’ findings for themselves.”
The public can analyze years of data from multiple studies and multiple scientists on any subject on some casual day and determine what should be done to protect the environment. I don’t really think that is plausible. Sound bites are now considered as policy.
All a company needs to do now is declare any type of data or analysis as proprietary, and the EPA can’t even use it no matter how damaging it may be to people and the planet.
33
Right, get out your Mr. Wizard kits to test Pruitt's non-science.
4
This is a shameful attack on the environment and on research that uses human subjects. What Pruitt is asking is impossible, which gives him one more opportunity to destroy air and water. He's pathologically destructive.
Republicans sit back and let this man do their bidding. They are defined by greed and intentional lack of knowledge. It's indefensible.
86
I wish there was a way to hold him personally responsible for the destruction he is wreaking. You know, if people die because of his actions, shouldn't he be brought up on murder charges or at least manslaughter charges? He is certainly driving in a very reckless way!
11
this is part of 45's plan with the worst swamp dwellers selected by bannon. this is the most corrupt, anti democracy administration in America's s history.
11
“It gives people the opportunity in real time to peer review. It goes to the heart of what we should be about as an agency,” Mr. Pruitt said.
I don't think he understands what "peer" means. Peers are experts in their fields, something that the public by definition is not, and therefore cannot do "peer" review. I love my oncology friends, and they are all very smart, but i doubt any one of them could peer review and astrophysics paper
224
It's clear he doesn't know what it means, or he knows that the vast majority of Americans are too stupid/ignorant to know what peer review is.
Moreover, all the sudden peer review means something, hmm? I guess we'll be seeing Pruitt accept climate science now, right?
10
Given recent revelations about Mr. Pruitt's motivations and long held m.o., it wouldn't seem that transparency is a concept that he's all that familiar with, or that his policies are so we 'little people' can be part of the decision process.
He's he has no scientific qualifications for his role and I suspect most of Jane and John Q. public don't have the qualifications required to understand, analyze and opine on scientific study data.
50
pruitt is a life long fossil fuel lobbyist and miinion for the Koch's. He doesn't know anything science other than to deny it . a crook like the one in the WH.
8