In a bombshell, Scott Pruitt is expecting scientists to act scientifically.
In the US the EPA has been making rules that cost billions based on studies from groups that refused to publish their data. Regulations like The Clean Power Plan were estimated to cost $8.4 billion and magically return $14 – $34 billion in “health and climate benefits”. Scott Pruitt plans to pop that bubble.
Michael Bastach, Daily Caller:
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt will soon end his agency’s use of “secret science” to craft regulations.
“We need to make sure their data and methodology are published as part of the record,” Pruitt said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Otherwise, it’s not transparent. It’s not objectively measured, and that’s important.”
“If we use a third party to engage in scientific review or inquiry, and that’s the basis of rulemaking, you and every American citizen across the country deserve to know what’s the data, what’s the methodology that was used to reach that conclusion that was the underpinning of what — rules that were adopted by this agency,” Pruitt explained.
My only minor, tiny, complaint is that there is no such thing as “secret science”. If it can’t be replicated, it isn’t science. What Pruitt is stopping is Fake Science.
The Union of Concerned Scientists immediately leapt to defend the right of certified scientists to issue declarations that no one could test or assess.
“A lot of the data that EPA uses to protect public health and ensure that we have clean air and clean water relies on data that cannot be publicly released,” Union of Concerned Scientists representative Yogin Kothari told E&E News.
“It really hamstrings the ability of the EPA to do anything, to fulfill its mission,” Kothari said.
Evidently, the Union of Concerned Scientists aren’t too concerned about whether “scientists” are acting scientifically. Like all unions, what matters is pay, power and working conditions, never mind about the Scientific Method.
In the Australian version, the BoM swamps skeptics with data, but admits it keeps its methodology secret. Only fully trained members of the sacred guild can play data games and issue prophesies.
Tellingly, environmentalists and democrats oppose the idea of transparent data.
UPDATE: As Joe Bast says — Congratulations to Steve Milloy, Jim Enstrom, Stan Young, Robert Phalen, Willie Soon, and Lamar Smith for leading a years’ long effort to restore sound science to EPA.
h/t Robert, Scott of the Pacific, Pat, Jim S.