Now’s the Time to Restore Integrity to EPA Regulatory Science
For decades ..."Secret science” has been especially common as the basis for...regulation related to anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
Last month EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt requested public comment on a new rule, “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” (STRS), designed to solve that problem.
The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation— a network of scientists, economists, and religious leaders dedicated to environmental stewardship and economic development for the poor... calls the proposed rule “badly needed to assure American taxpayers that the EPA is truly acting in their best interests.”
Opponents of STRS raise three common, and at first sight credible, objections.
The first is that peer review ensures the quality of studies published in refereed journals. But there is actually no empirical evidence that peer review works well...
The second common objection is that the rule would prevent the EPA from using studies that involved confidential information...
A third ... is that “many ...studies cannot be replicated,... for example, a study that used tree-rings as proxy temperature measurements and purported to find that neither the Medieval Warm Period nor the Little Ice Age had occurred but that a rapid and historically unprecedented warming had begun in the late 19th century... No one needed to use a time machine to return to the 11th through 20th centuries and regrow trees to recognize that the authors had committed confirmation fallacy by excluding certain data and misused a statistical procedure, resulting in false results.
STRS will improve, not harm, the EPA’s mission to protect Americans from real environmental risks. It will also reduce the risks caused by unjustified but costly regulations. It should be adopted.
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is Founder and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
