The Bipartisan Policy Center yesterday released a report that recommends ways federal agencies can ensure the integrity of regulatory science and improve the quality of regulations, especially those regulations informed by science.

The report calls on policymakers to clearly identify, and keep separate, questions related to science and questions related to policy. Too often, science and policy are conflated. The report states:

Policy makers often claim that particular regulatory decisions have been driven by, or even required by science; their critics, in turn, have attacked the quality or the interpretation of that science. Such conflict has left the U.S. with a system that is plagued by charges that science is being “politicized” and that regulation lacks a solid scientific basis. As a result, needed regulation may be stymied, dubious regulations may be adopted, issues can drag on without conclusion and policy debate is degraded. 

The report also has some useful recommendations on ways to improve federal advisory committees. In order to ensure integrity on advisory panels that cover scientific issues, agencies should toughen conflict of interest rules and make the process for selecting committee members more transparent and inclusive of the public.

The report is written by a broad range of experts, from John Graham, one of the Bush administration’s regulatory czars, to Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a public interest advocacy group.

The report is available here: www.bipartisanpolicy.org.