The chickens are coming home to roost for university scientists who are fighting a controversial federal data-disclosure law. The law is the work of Senator Richard Shelby, who as chair of the Intelligence Committee knows the importance of keeping secrets. But he couldn't understand why he got the runaround when he asked the Environmental Protection Agency for the university research data it used to justify its tougher clean-air standards. Senator Shelby was inspired to sponsor a law making federally funded research subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Congress passed the law and President Clinton signed it last year. Senator Shelby feels vindicated since a federal appeals court overturned the EPA's clean air standards last month, in part because of its highly selective use of scientific data.
But that hasn't deterred attempts to weaken the Shelby sunshine law. Even though FOIA has exemptions to prevent the release of trade secrets and confidential medical data, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, fearing a chilling effect on clinical drug trials, recently endorsed repeal of the Shelby law. A bill to delay its implementation by a year will be voted on in the House Appropriations Committee this Tuesday. Sponsors such as GOP Rep. Jim Walsh of New York have cited scientists who express concern that their raw data will be used by advocacy groups or corporations to harass them or distort their work.
But John Deutch, an MIT chemistry professor and former CIA director, says it should be possible to both maintain privacy protections and responsibly share data. He notes that in drafting a rule implementing the law, the Office of Management and Budget is applying it only to published research and data used to actually make federal policy.
We're having a little trouble working up much sympathy for a scientific community that for years seemed to think that once it mailed its work from the ivory tower, it bore no responsibility for how politicized bureaucracies used it. A 1997 survey of 1,600 EPA scientists found that 75% of them believed science was not well integrated into the EPA's mission. In 1992, the EPA's own Science Advisory Board issued a report indicting the agency for its use of science. "Science should never be adjusted to fit policy," the report stated. "Yet a perception exists that EPA lacks adequate safeguards to prevent this from occurring." David Lewis, a scientist who has worked for the EPA for 28 years, says nothing has been done under the Clinton Administration to change that perception.
Where were all these concerned scientists when we needed them years ago to fight junk science in the bureaucracies and junk science in the courtrooms? Many of them either took the federal money and ran, or naively assumed some public good would result no matter how tortured the data, or stood by while their hyper-politicized colleagues drove serious public issues over the cliff.
Federal support of science has produced great benefits, but it's had costs, too, not least the intimidation into silence of funded scientists. If scientists want to take taxpayer money to conduct research, they should know that one of their main obligations is to make certain the public has full confidence in the way those results are used. The Shelby law is a reasonable compromise that will help ensure just that.
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