Proposed Interior Policy Inadequate to Protect Scientific Integrity

Today, OMB Watch joined comments filed by the Union of Concerned Scientists and other public interest and environmental groups on the Interior Department's proposed scientific integrity policy. Unfortunately, the policy fails to address the full range of threats to scientific integrity at DOI, such as those evidenced by abuses at the former Minerals Management Service.

Seal of the U.S. Department of the Interior

The proposed policy does take steps to prevent misconduct by scientists. However, the proposal fails to protect scientist whistleblowers. Moreover, it does little to improve either the transparency of scientific activities or the ways that scientific information is used in decision making. Perhaps most importantly, the policy would do nothing to prevent political interference with science, a leading cause of abuses.

The comments outline needed reforms in three areas:

Protecting Government Scientists — The proposed DOI policy does not protect government scientists who report political interference in their work. Reforms are needed to strengthen whistleblower protection and ensure that scientists who expose waste, fraud, or abuse may do so without fear of retaliation.

Making Government More Transparent — The proposed DOI policy does not outline clear guidelines for scientist communications with the media or open up federal science and decision making to scrutiny from Congress and the public. Transparency is an important and inexpensive means of revealing and ending political interference in science.

Scientific Information and Advice — While the proposed DOI policy does outline scientist misconduct, it fails to address restoring regulatory integrity, the scientific advisory committee system and ethics rules governing federal decision makers.

(Read the full comments here.)

DOI's proposed policy comes in the context of the Obama administration's limping efforts toward scientific integrity. In March 2009, President Obama issued a memo establishing six principles for scientific integrity and directing the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to issue recommendations within 120 days. Those recommendations are now more than a year overdue. (In June 2010, OSTP said the recommendations would be released "in the next few weeks".)

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