Science for Special Interests

It appears that a hitherto unnoticed insertion into the Information Quality Act (a.k.a. Data Quality Act) has the potential to disrupt peer review of government funding. This act was enacted by Republicans, at the behest of industry interests, into an appropriations bill at the end of the Clinton administration, and it was only recently codified by the Office of Management and Budget. An OMB Bulletin on peer review dated Aug. 29, 2003, if adopted, would place the OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in the position of approving the scientific peer review used by all executive branch agencies for "all significant regulatory-science documents."

The gist of the bulletin is that government-funded studies should be peer-reviewed only by independent scientists. This sounds benign -- but the problem is that "independent scientists" are considered to be those who are not funded by the government. Almost by definition, academic scientists can't review government funding proposals, only industry scientists can. Thus for example, only tobacco industry researchers could review research proposals by academic scientists on the effects of tobacco...

The Boston Globe observes: "Hence the goal of the proposed peer review rules is chillingly similar to this administration's earlier efforts to stack Federal Advisory Committees with industry scientists. Where interests of the public and of industry conflict, the scientific advice our government receives will be far more likely to serve the interests of industry than the interests of the whole population."

(Boston Globe, December 7, 2003)

Posted by Tom on December 12, 2003