Spring 2009
Activist Diary
A Vocal Presence during the Transition
How we’re making scientific integrity a political priority
At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in early 2008, UCS convened a symposium on the need to restore scientific integrity to federal policy making. I stood in front of a standing-room-only crowd of more than 400 scientists and described how the next president would name hundreds of political appointees—the same type of appointees who had already done so much damage to government science.
As I would do again and again over the course of the year, I made our case for reforms needed under the new administration—regardless of party—by starting with the wealth of documentation UCS has compiled on past abuses. From our analysis of the ways science has been politicized, I moved on to our research on how to prevent such politicization in the future (which formed the basis for our 2008 report Federal Science and the Public Good).
Persistence Pays Off
My colleagues and I went on to repeat these recommendations in hundreds of talks, presentations, conference calls, coalition meetings, action alerts, scientific society annual meetings, member gatherings, and media interviews, testing our assumptions, modifying them, and adding details along the way. The major candidates’ staffs all told us that they wanted to stop the war on science, but it was impossible to know just how far each candidate was actually willing to go.
Although the primaries seemed to go on forever, the general election came and went in a flash. Transition teams representing key federal agencies invited us to meet with them, and we could tell our message—short yet full of detailed strategies specific to each agency—had resonance.
The Environmental Protection Agency had detailed questions about policies governing scientists’ access to the media, the Food and Drug Administration was interested in how to stop retaliation against whistle-blowers, and the Department of the Interior queried us on how to ensure that no one could ever repeat the previous administration’s abuses of endangered species science. Our meetings with the Office of Management and Budget included lively debates on cost-benefit analysis and the role of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs—a source of much political interference over the last eight years. And the Office of Science and Technology Policy was interested in how the president’s science advisor could prevent future abuses.
Our Work Is Not Done
Confirmation hearings for department and agency heads and senior staff have given our allies in the Senate additional opportunities to ask appointees how they would restore scientific integrity. Though the early signals suggest we are on the right trajectory, the last president concentrated an enormous amount of power in the White House and no chief executive rushes to give up power.
We will therefore remind the Obama administration that even if we put well-intentioned political appointees in place now, someday there will be another shift in the nation’s capital. If our work over the next several years is successful, we will be able to face such a shift with a sense of security that we will never again see abuses that have serious consequences for our health, safety, and environment.
—Francesca Grifo, director, Scientific Integrity Program
