Scott Pruitt demands open science at EPA
Michael Bastasch in an exclusive interview documents important changes at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to increase transparency. 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.”
Pruitt is well known locally and well respected nationally for his previous work as Oklahoma's Attorney General. During the interview Pruitt declares his dedication to return reason, demonstrable and transparent science to an agency previously driven by hysteric worship of unfounded, but trendy new age mysticism.
Specifically, Pruitt will reverse long-standing EPA policy allowing regulators to rely on non-public scientific data in crafting rules. Such studies have been used to justify tens of billions of dollars worth of regulations.
EPA regulators would only be allowed to consider scientific studies that make their data available for public scrutiny under Pruitt’s new policy. Also, EPA-funded studies would need to make all their data public.
Conservatives have long criticized EPA for relying on scientific studies that published their findings but not the underlying data. However, Democrats and environmental activists have challenged past attempts to bring transparency to studies used in rule making.
“If we use a third party to engage in scientific review or inquiry, and that’s the basis of rule-making, 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.
Democrats and environmentalists have largely opposed attempts to require EPA rely on transparent scientific data.