How Hillary Would Restore Scientific Integrity to U.S. Policymaking
Category: Politics and Science
Posted on: October 9, 2007 2:00 PM, by Chris C. Mooney
Disclaimer: This series of posts is not an endorsement of Hillary Clinton's
presidential campaign. Rather, we are paying attention to Hillary because
she has gone farther than any other candidate thus far in injecting science
policy issues into the presidential race--and promising, if elected, to
address the kinds of problems highlighted in The Republican War on Science
and by The Union of Concerned Scientists and other organizations. We
sincerely hope other candidates of both parties will follow Hillary's lead.
And we already know, thanks to Bora's intrepid reporting, that John Edwards
shares many of her sentiments....

Last week, Hillary Clinton unveiled a detailed list of policy proposals for
restoring the integrity of science to the federal government. Among other
things, she promises to lift Bush's stem cell "ban" (her word, not ours),
restore the position of presidential science adviser to its former glory,
and encourage Congress to reinstall something like the Office of Technology
Assessment.

These are all good ideas--though the term "ban" is problematic--and in fact,
probably deserve their own posts. For now, though, let's consider some of
the less high-profile policies that Hillary is endorsing as a group.

What's actually most heartening to me is a rather bureaucratic-sounding
proposal: Hillary says that if she's president, all agency and department
heads will have to file yearly reports detailing what they've done to ensure
scientific integrity in their various fiefdoms. This might sound like just
more paperwork, but actually, it's a true sea change from what we saw under
the Bush administration. First and most importantly, it acknowledges up
front that there is a problem here (something that so far as I know, the
current government has never admitted). Moreover, once such a mechanism has
been set in place, scientific integrity will have to be on everybody's
radar, in every part of the federal government.

As an addition, and as I suggested in Harper's a while back, I think it
would be helpful to specifically name the presidential science adviser as
point person for organizing this reporting process. It's one thing to have
all the agencies conducting their own investigations; it's another to have
someone in the White House culling it all together and laying, on the
president's desk, a kind of annual "scientific integrity" summary.

As additional policies, Hillary says she would ban--by executive
order--political appointees from "altering or removing scientific
conclusions in government publications without any legitimate basis for
doing so." Further, she would "prohibit unwarranted suppression of public
statements by government scientists." Both of which are fine and good; but
on that latter point, it seems to me the real issue is the media policies
that some agencies, like NOAA, have in place--media policies that might
bring about tacit rather than overt suppression, discouraging government
scientists from being entirely forthright with the media either because the
policies are insidious or simply because they're Byzantine and borderline
impossible to understand. So on this point, I would hope that Hillary--or
whoever turns out to be our president--would go further and look
specifically into media policies at agencies.

Hillary also wants to protect the integrity of federal advisory committees,
reverse Bush's directive giving political appointees unprecedented control
over the regulatory process (a big deal, as this would essentially be a
ceding of power on the White House's part back to the expert agencies), and
strengthen whistleblower protections for government scientists. All to the
good. Finally, she wants to ramp up the National Assessment process for
studying climate change impacts to the United States, with a particular
emphasis on how to mitigate them and adapt to them--an area where the Bush
administration has almost maliciously dropped the ball.

All of these are great proposals--though I think they could benefit by some
of the small additions listed above. Most important, I'm anxious to see the
presidential science adviser brought in to administrate on some of this
stuff and make sure that it really happens. If our next president has a
trusted and excellent science adviser charged with these crucial tasks, we
might really wind up with the best possible outcome: Well informed
policymaking going forward again, and a federal government that talented
young scientists actually want to come and work for.

Rayilyn Brown
Board Member AZNPF
Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation
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