Shortly before the holidays, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a final version of its proposal to establish government-wide requirements for when and how federal agencies use scientific peer review. The "Final Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review" makes modest changes to the revised proposal that OMB published April 28, 2004 with only a 30-day comment period. OMB’s announcement did not explain the seven-month delay until just before the holiday season, when many academics, scientists and public interest groups concerned with the policy were away on vacations.

Last week the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released updated evidence that the Bush administration continues to manipulate and control science for political reasons. UCS has now collected the signatures of more than 4,000 scientists supporting a statement urging the Bush administration to discontinue these troubling practices, and to restore scientific integrity in federal policymaking. The prestigious list of scientists taking this unprecedented stand includes 48 Nobel laureates, 62 national medal of science recipients, and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) appears unwilling to allow a sober and unhurried review of their revised proposal for government-wide peer review requirements. The revised proposal was published in the Federal Register April 28 with only a 30-day public comment period that is scheduled to end May 28. OMB rejected a request from various public interest groups for a 60-day extension to the public review period.

Many recent news stories and editorial pieces from around the country are critical of the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) draft bulletin on peer review, thereby maintaining pressure on the agency to either drastically alter the policy proposal or withdraw it entirely. OMB’s Data Quality Guidelines, the information policies that the peer review bulletin builds upon, received little media criticism or even attention during development. However, the peer review bulletin seems to be garnering much more interest, in part because so many scientists are rejecting this “scientific” policy.