Controlling Peer Review?

[Guest guest]

If they control it, it's not peer review any longer but ideology tests.

 

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BUSHGREENWATCH

Tracking the Bush Administration's Environmental Misdeeds

http://www.bushgreenwatch.org

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January 22, 2004

 

WHITE HOUSE SEEKING CONTROL OVER SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEW OF

ENVIRONMENTAL, HEALTH RESEARCH WHICH SHAPES FEDERAL POLICIES

 

****This is the second of two articles on this subject. The

first appeared yesterday.****

 

Environmental and health studies conducted for or used by the

federal government would require White House approval before

their release, under a proposal now under review at the Office

of Management and Budget (OMB). The plan would also give the

White House authority to select which scientists take part in

the system known as peer review -- the process by which fellow

researchers evaluate the validity and reliability of studies

before they are published.

 

Critics fear such a plan would undermine the impartiality of

research that guides government policies and regulations. For

example, it would open the door for the Administration to

hand-select industry-friendly scientists to review studies that

investigate the safety of chemicals in our food and consumer

products, or studies that examine the environmental impact of

energy plant emissions. The White House has frequently expressed

its commitment to easing regulations for American industries.

[1]

 

In a January 9 letter to the OMB, 20 former top federal agency

officials, from both Democratic and Republican administrations,

urged the White House to drop its proposal. The letter -- signed

by former EPA Administrators Carol Browner and Russell Train;

former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich; former Assistant

Secretaries for Occupational Safety and Health Eula Bingham and

Gerard Scannell; and others -- warned that the proposal, " in its

current form, could damage the federal system for protecting

public health and the environment. " [2]

 

Currently, each federal agency controls peer review of its own

projects. The government's rules to ensure research quality are

already less stringent than those used by leading biomedical

journals. For example, these journals require authors to

disclose who paid for the research; and the journals will only

publish studies done under contracts in which the investigators

have the right to publish regardless of the results. Federal

agencies do not have these requirements, nor do they

consistently attempt to find out who paid for the studies. [3]

 

Far from ensuring the validity of the peer review process, the

plan's critics assert that allowing the White House to control

it would only add a layer of politics to what should be a purely

scientific process. [4]

 

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SOURCES:

[1] " White House Seeks Control on Health, Safety, " St. Louis

Post-Dispatch, Jan. 11, 2004, http://ga3.org/ct/T11vWMs1oBX8/

[2] Letter to Joshua B. Bolton, Director of the OMB from 20

former agency officials, Jan 9, 2004,

http://ga3.org/ct/Yd1vWMs1oBXy/

[3] Michaels D, Wagner W. Disclosure in Regulatory Science.

Science. 2003; 302:2073.

[4] " Peer Review Plan Draws Criticism, " Washington Post, Jan.

15, 2004, http://ga3.org/ct/Td1vWMs1oBXi/

 

 

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