A US government report on a pressing environmental issue is edited to falsely imply that scientists had peer-reviewed and supported the central policy recommendation. Almost 1 in 4 government scientists working on food safety say they have been asked by their bosses to exclude or alter technical information in scientific documents during the past year.

These incidents sound as if they come from the dark days of George W. Bush’s presidency, when complaints about political interference in government science reached a crescendo. But in fact, both refer to the behaviour of the current US administration, led by a president who famously promised to “restore science to its rightful place” in his inauguration speech of January 2009.

Two months later, a presidential memo seemed to seal the deal: “The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions,” Obama stated. Scientific information used by the federal government in making policy should be published, he added, and political officials should not suppress or alter scientific findings. John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, was given 120 days to draft a new policy on scientific integrity in government.

We’re still waiting for that policy to see the light of day. The precise reasons for the lengthy delay remain unclear – the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has even sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act, in an attempt to obtain documents that may explain the impasse. But it seems likely that the sticking point has been resistance from government officials who just don’t like the accountability that the new policy is supposed to usher in.


The latest whispers indicate that the policy should appear this month. When it does, scientists must scrutinise it carefully. One of the key things to look out for is a stipulation that the science on which policy decisions are based is made public. If any wriggle room on that point is allowed, it will be impossible in future to prevent abuses like the infamous interference of Julie MacDonald, a senior official in the Bush administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service, who routinely edited scientific documents to influence decisions about listings under the Endangered Species Act.

By comparison, last month’s revelation on Politico.com that Obama’s White House falsely implied that its six-month moratorium on offshore oil drilling, introduced during the Deepwater Horizon spill, had the backing of scientific peer review seems like a relatively minor offence. Reading the official report into the allegation, there is no smoking gun to disprove the administration’s claim that the offending language was merely the result of sloppy editing, with no intent to deceive.

But there is no room for complacency. Francesca Grifo, who heads the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), says that her phone is no longer ringing off the hook like it did during the worst excesses of the Bush administration. But government scientists who are worried about political interference in their work still call Grifo for advice – and the latest survey from the UCS makes disturbing reading.

In March, the UCS sent a questionnaire to scientists involved in food safety at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Department of Agriculture. Of those who replied, 23 per cent said that they had been asked to “inappropriately exclude or alter technical information” from agency scientific documents within the previous year.

The survey offers little evidence that things have improved much under Obama. At the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Nutrition, they may even have got worse. In 2006, during Bush’s second term, a similar UCS survey found that 10 per cent of its scientists they had been asked to inappropriately exclude or alter information in the previous year; the 2010 figure was 16 per cent.

Government scientists also remain nervous about speaking out in public, or to the media, for fear of annoying their superiors. Open discourse is central to scientific progress – which is why clear guidance to government scientists freeing them to express their opinions on scientific matters should be another cornerstone of the delayed policy on scientific integrity.

Helpfully, the UCS had drafted a model media policy for government agencies. It stresses both that scientists have a fundamental right to express their personal views, provided it is made clear that they are not representing an agency position, and also that they have the right to review and approve any publication that significantly relies on their research.

While some other constituencies are deserting him, Obama largely still has the support of the scientific community. He is seen as a friend of science, who with his allies in Congress ensured that a generous dollop of stimulus spending was devoted to research.

But scientists mustn’t allow their fondness for this President to constrain their criticism of his administration, if it is justified. The long delay in the scientific integrity policy is worrying, and when it finally appears it must be scrutinised in detail, and criticised loudly if it fails to deliver the goods.

Obama may be a friend of science, but many of the functionaries in his administration are rather less friendly. And if he fails to institute a sea change on the crucial issue of scientific integrity in government, there will be little to prevent a future President who sees little value in science from taking us back to the bad old days.