WIKIMEDIA, DAVE_7Advisors to President Obama this week (March 3) argued in favor of vetoing two bills, backed primarily by Republicans, which are aimed at changing practices at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). One of the bills would require that any actions by the agency be supported by publicly available data, while the other would overhaul its scientific advisory board.
According to a statement about the evidence transparency bill, Obama’s advisors said: “The bill would impose arbitrary, unnecessary, and expensive requirements that would seriously impede the [EPA’s] ability to use science to protect public health and the environment. . . . For example, the data underlying some scientifically-important studies is not made broadly available in order to protect the privacy of test subjects, and modeling that EPA uses for a variety of purposes are not EPA property and therefore cannot be publicly released.”
Bill supporter Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said there are ways around privacy issues, ScienceInsider reported: study participants could agree to have their data public, and those who don’t agree could decline to join. “Their specific participation isn’t necessary to have a successful research ...
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