Aren't There Mechanisms in Place to Keep Corporations from Interfering in the Regulation of Their Own Products
Ask a Scientist - November 2010
J. Sanders, from Salt Lake City, UT, asks "I read on your website about how ATV manufacturers pushed the government to keep unsafe vehicles on the market and a bunch of people died. How do things like this keep happening? Aren't there mechanisms in place to keep corporations from interfering in the regulation of their own products?" and is answered by Senior Scientist and Director of the Scientific Integrity Program Francesaca Grifo, PhD
Unfortunately, the story you note is true. A top official at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), who was also a former attorney for the all-terrain vehicle (ATV) industry, delayed a critical report on ATV safety and attempted to reverse the CPSC’s conclusion that ATVs were becoming more dangerous to ride. During the 3 months of delay, nearly 200 people died and 30,000 were injured in ATV accidents, a third of whom were children under the age of 16.
Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. All too often corporate interests pressure government agencies to ignore scientific findings that could protect public health, safety, and our environment. The problem is not tied to a single issue or government agency and the results can be catastrophic.
Stories of the Gulf oil spill, where the former Minerals Management Service was literally and figuratively in bed with the industry it was supposed to be regulating, surely show that corporate interference in science can have deadly and far-reaching repercussions.
While there are controls in place which attempt to prevent this kind of interference, it’s clear that they are neither strong enough nor comprehensive enough to be effective. In looking out for their own wellbeing, corporate and other special interests often inappropriately manipulate, suppress, and otherwise misuse scientific information in order to create government policies in their favor.
One way to tackle this problem is to protect the ability of scientists to report abuses and share their expert analyses. That’s why the Union of Concerned Scientists is pushing for the government to meaningfully protect scientists who report political interference in their work from retaliation. And we’re pushing for policies that allow government scientists to speak freely about their research and to offer their scientific opinions as private citizens in public settings.
The government also needs to be more forthcoming about how it makes decisions and on what basis. Until agencies must reveal all the science consulted when making a regulatory decision at the same time they release a proposal or decision, the science is vulnerable to manipulation and misuse. In addition, federal agencies and departments should disclose meetings with outside entities so we know who is influencing policy decisions.
How can we make smart decisions without robust, independent science? We can’t. We need these reforms so that policy makers, who depend on impartial research to make informed decisions, are able to fully protect our health, safety, and environment. The people in power will change, but this kind of interference will endure until we set in place comprehensive reforms to prevent them from happening in the future.
Dr. Francesca Grifo is the senior scientist and director of the Scientific Integrity Program at UCS. She has a doctorate in botany from Cornell and a bachelor's degree in biology from Smith College. Before joining UCS she directed Columbia University's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation graduate policy workshop and ran the Science Teachers Environmental Education Program. Prior to that, she was director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation and a curator of the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
