Chemistry World – 25 April 2008
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Environmental scientists report political interference)
Hundreds of the US Environmental Protection Agency's scientific staff have experienced political interference in their work, a survey has revealed. Most worryingly, 224 scientists - 17 per cent of those who responded to the survey - said that they had been 'directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information' from EPA's scientific documents in the last five years.
The survey, conducted by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based lobby group Union of Concerned Scientists, also found that 492 scientists (31 per cent of survey respondents) felt they could not even express concerns about the EPA's work to colleagues without fear of retaliation. A total of 889 scientists (60 per cent of respondents) reported personal experience of political interference.
The proportion of EPA scientists reporting interference was highest in the agency's offices with regulatory duties and at its headquarters, while it was lowest in the Office of Research and Development, the EPA's main research arm. ‘This shows that risk assessments at EPA are really where the rubber meets the road in terms of political interference,' says UCS's Tim Donaghy, one of the survey report's co-authors. 'Manipulating the risk assessment makes regulation much more difficult.'
Examples of manipulation cited by the survey's responders include: changes in scientific reviews that alter the meaning of data; efforts to pressure agency scientists to ignore the impacts of a regulation on sensitive populations; and statements by EPA officials that misrepresent scientific findings. Roughly 10 per cent of the survey's respondents are chemists and 5 per cent are toxicologists.