News & Views item - December 2010

 

 

 Reactions to OSTP's 4-Page Set of Guidelines for Scientific Integrity Policy.

On December 17, the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) promulgated a four page memorandum1, 2 which "describes the minimum standards expected as departments and agencies craft scientific integrity rules appropriate for their particular missions and cultures, including a clear prohibition on political interference in scientific processes and expanded assurances of transparency."

 

From the time President Obama directed the OSTP in March 2009 to create guidelines for the administration's agencies until OSTP's director John Holdren released the four-page memo, 648 days (by NatureNews' Eugenie Samuel Reich's count) elapsed rather than the 90 days stipulated by the US President.

 

Overall the comments it engendered appear to fall between Polonius' observation that "brevity is the soul of wit" to Horace's "Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus", often translated as: "The mountains went into labour but an absurd mouse was born."

 

Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists told Ms Reich: "We will just have to wait and see what the agencies do with it... The jury is still out."

 

Roger Pielke, Jr of the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies the intersection of public policy with science notes the memo: "sets forth discussion questions about scientific integrity in government, but I don't think it resolves them."

 

 Jeff Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER): "We feel frustrated that this process is horribly off schedule." And he is disturbed by what PEER sees may have the potential  to make things worse, rather than better, for government scientists, e.g. as Ms Reich reports researchers can speak to the media, provided there has been "appropriate coordination" with public-affairs offices, but they fail to define what is appropriate. They also allow scientists to speak publicly about their "official work" but fail to offer protection for scientists who are judged to have spoken up in their private capacity. "Scientists are free to speak, except when they're not," says Ruch.

 

But Francesca Grifo says the UCS less critical than PEER: "She points to sections that unambiguously allow government scientists to serve on the boards of scientific societies and journals, to present findings at scientific conferences and to accept awards and honours for the science they do. These are major issues, she adds, because the UCS has heard from government scientists who have been prevented from doing these things in the past because of a perceived conflict of interest." However, she is concerned as to the lack of specificity in the document and the lack of strong regulation regarding financial conflicts of interest by advisors to the government.

 

Finally, Ms Reich spoke with James Hanson  head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies who early in 2007 railed against political interference by the Bush administration regarding his scientific reports. In his view: "the new policy does not change either of what he sees as two central problems; the use of political appointees to run public-affairs offices, and the requirement that the White House screen testimonies that scientists make to Congress. "A democracy cannot function well with the present approach."

 

So far there has been no public statement by Professor Holdren or a spokesperson for the OSTP regarding the reception of the memorandum.

 

It'll be interesting to see whether or not the memorandum and the reactions to it are discussed at the January 7, 2011 meeting of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).