Researchers Pressured to Alter Findings
By Kim-Jenna Jurriaans
In another case that casts doubt on the integrity of scientific research, a survey released by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in April states that scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been under external pressure to distort or veil their discoveries. The survey also found that in various instances agency officials have misrepresented scientific research to the media.
“Our investigation found an agency in crisis,” Francesca Grifo, director of UCS’s Scientific Integrity Program, said in a press release. “Nearly nine hundred EPA scientists [of 1,586 who completed the survey] reported political interference in their scientific work. That’s nine hundred too many.”
Employees were asked to answer forty-four questions, including one essay question, in categories ranging from work environment to political interference and the role of science in agency decisions. In addition, UCS investigators interviewed a number of scientists.
Almost 15 percent of those surveyed recalled instances in which they had been inappropriately asked to exclude or alter technical information in EPA scientific documents, and nearly a quarter of the respondents alleged that the EPA routinely fails to provide complete and accurate information to the public.
Most subjected to political interference, according to the report, are offices that produce regulations, as well as the National Center for Environmental Assessment. The most frequently mentioned source of interference was the White House Office of Management and Budget, which some EPA employees described as “holding new regulations hostage” and “weaken[ing] rulemakings and policy decisions to favor industry.”
Close to half of the EPA’s veteran researchers believe that this sort of interference has been more frequent over the last five years, according to the report. Moreover, the majority of all participants consider the effectiveness of their division to have decreased in that same five-year period.
In addition to external pressure on the employees themselves, half of the researchers reported EPA officials misrepresenting their findings in public. Perhaps even more alarming, only 13 percent believe that the EPA allows scientists to communicate freely with the news media about their research findings.
Previously, the UCS reported on scientists in the Food and Drug Administration, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as climate scientists at seven other federal agencies and found similar occurrences of administrative interference and manipulation. In the press release for the organization’s latest investigation, UCS’s Grifo raises the alarm for science at large: “Distorting science to accommodate a narrow political agenda threatens our environment, our health, and our democracy itself.”
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