Center for Progressive Reform :: Rescuing Science from Politics

Rescuing Science from Politics

Putting Science Before Politics

Time and again in recent years, industry and its allies in Washington have distorted science and pressured scientists. The Bush Administration, for example, repeatedly substituted the ideological views of political appointees for the scientific assessments of agency experts, sometimes suppressing research, sometimes rewriting expert analysis.

The purpose of these anti-science efforts is almost always the same: to avoid taking needed steps to protect the environment, public health and safety. By suppressing data and scientific findings documenting the extent of climate change, for example, the Bush Administration hoped to forestall meaningful action on the issue, in an effort to protect its industry allies from the inconvenience and expense of changing their polluting ways. Similarly, by suppressing the results of scientific data about the environmental effects of their pesticides, manufacturers hope to avoid the statutory requirements of the nation’s anti-pollution laws.

In 2008, CPR Member Scholars Rena Steinzor and Wendy Wagner, together with CPR Policy Analyst Matthew Shudtz published Saving Science from Politics: Nine Essential Reforms of the Legal System. As its title suggests, the white paper proposes a series of practical reforms, including requiring that studies submitted to federal agencies be accompanied by disclosure of the amount of control sponsors had over the design and publication of research, ending the current practice of overly broad trade-secret claims intended to prevent disclosure of important research to the public, and strengthening the legal requirement that companies disclose information they have about the risks their products pose to public health and the environment.

Read more about CPR’s work rescuing science from politics:

Nine Reforms White Paper. Read Saving Science from Politics: Nine Essential Reforms of the Legal System, by CPR Member Scholars Rena Steinzor and Wendy Wagner, together with CPR Policy Analyst Matthew Shudtz. (CPR White Paper 805, published July 2008). Read the news release. Read the authors September 26, 2008 blog post on ACSBlog.

Bending Science: The Book. Read about Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research, by Thomas O. McGarity and Wendy Wagner, published by Harvard University Press, 2008.

Toxic Torts. Read about Toxic Torts: Toxic Torts: Science, Law and the Possibility of Justice, by Carl Cranor, published by Cambridge University Press.

Dallas Morning News Op-Ed. Read “Safeguard lawsuits that potentially save lives,” by Thomas McGarity, published in the Dallas Morning News, May 9, 2008.

CPR White Paper. Read Rena Steinzor and Matthew Shudtz's "Sequestered Science: Secrets Threatening Public Health," on why government-sanctioned secrecy in science makes for bad policy, bad science, and bad public health. (CPR White Paper 703, April 2007)

Baltimore Sun Op-Ed. Read "Saving Science from Politicians," an op-ed by Wendy Wagner and Rena Steinzor, published September 5, 2006 in the Baltimore Sun.

Rescuing Science: The Book. In August 2006, Cambridge University Press released Rescuing Science from Politics: Regulation and the Distortion of Scientific Research, a new book edited by Wendy Wagner and Rena Steinzor, featuring chapter contributions from CPR Scholars and others -- David Adelman, John Applegate, Carl Cranor, Holly Doremus, Paul Fischer, Donald Hornstein, Sheldon Krimsky, Thomas McGarity, David Michaels, Sidney Shapiro, Katherine Squibb, and Vern Walker. Rescuing Science from Politics debuts chapters by the nation’s leading academics in law, science, and philosophy, exploring ways that the law can be abused by special interests to intrude on the scientists’ research. The book is available from Cambridge University Press and Amazon.com. Or read a summary of the policy solutions offered in Rescuing Science from Politics: Regulation and the Distortion of Scientific Research, edited by Wendy Wagner and Rena Steinzor, featuring chapter contributions from CPR Scholars and others. (CPR White Paper 604, August 2006)

A CPR Perspective. CPR Member Scholars Rena Steinzor and Wendy Wagner have authored a CPR Perspective: Science.

Center for American Progress Op-Ed. Read Rena Steinzor and Lisa Heinzerling’s op-ed on White House tinkering with science on mercury pollution, published March 16, 2004 on the Center for American Progress website, Political Intervention: The White House Doctors Mercury Conclusions.

The Wagner/Michaels Proposal. Read CPR Member Scholar Wendy Wagner's December 2003 Sound Science proposal, as published in Science Magazine, with co-author David Michaels, research professor in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health and Epidemiology at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.

Conference Transcript. Read an edited transcript of a program held at the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice 2002 Administrative Law Conference, held in Washington, D.C., October 17, 2002, as published in the Environmental Law Review, March 2003. Speakers include CPR's Wendy Wagner and Sidney Shapiro.