Hi Folks,
This heads-up from Nina Collins: The EPA’s awful “Secret Science” rule was finalized last Wednesday. The New York Times has a piece about it at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/climate/trump-epa-science.html. The final rule is here:
The hope now is that the incoming Biden Administration will nullify this rule and then work quickly to retract it. OSI’s letter of opposition to it is here: On the EPA’s proposed rule to strengthen transparency in science | OSI Global
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
Quite the opposite actually. Rulemaking is steeped in science---it used to be the epitome of open science. What this new rule is saying, David, is that there are certain kinds of science that the EPA will now want to independently verify, particularly the kind that does things like limit car emissions. The EPA will label this kind of science “pivotal” and insist that it be able to independently verify findings before accepting the science, as if they actually have the requisite in-house expertise (think labs, statisticians, etc.) to do something like this at scale across potentially hundreds of studies per year. The immediate impact will be to “disqualify” research like the Six-Cities study, which established a clear link between air pollution and mortality.
As for rollbacks, this National Law Review article does a nice job of explaining the options (for this and other Trump Administration policies): http://bit.ly/3ieJo5b. According to this article, since this particular EPA policy was published in the Federal Register on January 6, and since the law requires a 30-60 day period after such publication before a new policy can take effect, then the Biden Administration (if this issue is on its radar) can simply prevent this new policy from taking effect.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/4288246C-73DB-4813-AC2F-7AEEB1D83118%40craigellachie.us.
Hi David,
This isn’t a correct interpretation but I’d rather not litigate this on-list---I’m happy as always to chat off-list. From an open scholarship perspective, there is nothing of value in this EPA policy, nothing that was needed, and nothing that will be improved. For more reading, please see any number of expert analyses:
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)