Scientific Integrity And The Obama Administration

This isn't going to be what you think it is. There's plenty of junk science being thrown around by the Al Gore wing of the Democratic Party. This is about the "science" of regulation, which does include, but is not limited to the administration policies on science. The President issued a memo on March 9, 2009 to all executive department heads which said "The Director of the Office of Science and Technology is assigned the responsibility for ensuring the highest level of integrity in all aspects of the executive branch's involvement with scientific and technological processes."

The memo goes on to say "and in consultation with other agencies, to develop recommendations for Presidential action designed to guarantee scientific integrity throughout the executive branch within 120 days." The gist of the matter is that the administration has decided that only strictly scientific tests should be used for determining the efficacy of regulations, and the qualifications of regulators.

On April 30, 2009 the House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing on the "the Role of Science in Regulatory Reform." Chairman Brad Miller did not follow the President's agenda. He expressed "serious reservations" about the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs ("OIRA") having any role in rulemaking. The testimony did a rather good job of verifying what he was saying. Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, expected to be a supporter of the administration policy said that applying scientific criteria to a non-scientific matter was unreasonable. She, like most of the witnesses, did not object to scientific methods in applying regulations, but the President was demanding that those methods be used to write the regulations to be enforced. That's a major policy decision, which fits into the President's love for Czars and bureaucrats making the rules, not implementing them.

Cary Oglianese, Professor of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania explained that "Science is about understanding or predicting what is, not about concluding or justifying what a standard should be . . .When regulators purport to rely on science as the sole basis for their policy choices, the real reasons justifying their choices remain hidden from public view." Rick Melberthof of OMB Watch testified that "agencies have the technical, scientific, economic, and social expertise to address the highly complex issues before them. OIRA does not have this range of expertise and should not be approving or rejecting individual rules." DeWaal was even more precise: "As OIRA is staffed by economists, it should avoid a scientific and technical review of regulations."

But Chairman Miller's words were the strongest of all. "The order had the effect of placing in the hands of the President, OIRA, and faceless political operatives in every agency, power over regulatory efforts that was consistent neither with statute nor with the Constitution." Take note, Senator McCain. The Democrats have a few mavericks too.

This is one of the very early indications that Obama's intention of grabbing power from the other branches of government, politicizing civil service, and bringing in the rule of unelected bureaucrats subservient to the administration's agenda is finally beginning to smell bad, even to his fellow Democrats. Whether this is an early rebellion by those who seek power of their own or a matter of genuine philosophical and constitutional objections to Obama's power grab remains to be seen. But it's a darned good start.

The movie Jurassic Park addressed one side of the issue in that science is concerned with what can be done, not what ought to be done. The other side of that issue is that science has no moral component of its own, and therefore is one of the worst possible ways of writing immense regulations which will determine the course of how the American people's lives will be lived for years to come. And it does so without any consideration for how they might choose to live their lives. With this administration's clear love for junk science, do we really want these people writing policy while hidden from the public? If they can muck up global warming, imagine what they can do with the rest of the rules. The last "scientific method" dominated administration to determine public policy and write the regulations ended when Germany surrendered in 1945.