Survey: Many federal researchers say politics trump science and are afraid to speak up

Ledyard King | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption What pulling out of the Paris climate agreement means for jobs President Donald Trump announced the United States' withdrawal from the Paris climate accord in June 2017.

WASHINGTON – Scores of scientists working for the federal government say that under the Trump administration, political concerns outweigh scientific rigor and budget cuts hamper their mission, a new survey shows.

Scientists also said they censor their own work to avoid getting in trouble, according to the survey released Tuesday. Sponsored by the liberal-leaning Union of Concerned Scientists and conducted by Iowa State University, the survey concludes that scientists fear speaking up – particularly about climate change, which President Donald Trump has dismissed as a "hoax" created by China to gain a competitive edge.

It's the first major survey of federal scientists and researchers since Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.

"Scientists report widespread political interference in the science policy process," a report accompanying the survey said. "At some federal agencies, the situation for scientists is worse than it was during the Bush or Obama administrations."

UCS, which has often sparred with the administration over policy, conducted the survey jointly with the Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology at Iowa State University.

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Their findings are based on responses from 3,266 scientists working at 16 federal agencies, including the EPA, the Department of Interior, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Geological Survey.

According to the survey:

One fifth of respondents said influence of political appointees in their agencies or at the White House posed "a top barrier to scientific decision making." That sentiment was highest at the EPA (32 percent) and the National Park Service (25 percent).

Nearly nine of 10 respondents said workforce reductions in the past year have made it more difficult for their agencies to fulfill their science-based mission.

About one in five reported they had avoided working on climate change or using the phrase “climate change” without explicit orders to do so. The percentage of those reporting such self-censorship was highest at USGS (32 percent) followed by the EPA (30 percent).

Other agencies included in the survey were the Agricultural Research Services, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the Economic Research Service, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Overall concern was highest at the EPA, where Trump-appointed leadership has been spearheading the president's deregulation agenda. But few of those surveyed said they feel comfortable in airing their grievances or being identified when they do.

When a group of outraged climate scientists last year issued an independent study publicly refuting then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's assertion the planet had stopped warming, they decided to use the same satellite data he referenced. Rather than face possible repercussions, the study's lone federal researcher removed his name.

Pruitt is gone, submerged by a wave of personal scandals. But there's little evidence the angst felt by hundreds of federal scientists associated with climate change research has dissipated.

That's largely because plenty of people who have disputed that human activity is the leading cause of climate change remain in key positions, said Benjamin D. Santer, an atmospheric research and climate expert at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The laboratory is not part of the federal government but does work for it.

Trump's claim that global warming is "a hoax" set the tone. But Energy Secretary Rick Perry's declaration in 2016 that climate change is a "contrived phony mess" also sent a deflating message to federal scientists, said Santer, a National Academy of Sciences member who was the lead researcher on last year's paper refuting Pruitt.

"This sort of ignorant language starts at the top and it trickles down," he said. "And that makes it more difficult to have a public discussion on how best to address the very serious problem of human-caused climate change."

Pruitt was replaced by Andrew Wheeler, a former energy lobbyist who has taken pains on several occasions to emphasize his support for agency employees.

"I believe in this agency. I believe in its mission. And I believe in its personnel," the acting administrator told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this month. "My instinct will be to defend their work, and I will seek the facts from them before drawing conclusions."

One survey respondent from the USGS said an Interior Department directive requiring that a political appointee review research grants of $50,000 or more to make sure they align with Secretary Ryan Zinke's priorities "impedes new and ongoing research."

Faith Vander Voort, a spokeswoman for Zinke said "asking to ensure that discretionary grants aren’t used for frivolous purposes is sound management, not politics."

One agency stood out for praise among its employees: the FDA and its chief, Scott Gottlieb.

"The current administration has overall enforced certain science policies which harm the public in general," according to the anonymous agency employee cited in the survey. "However, the current commissioner is fantastic and committed to the FDA's mission. He is consistently involved in policy development which allows the protection and promotion of public health.”

The problems of scientific integrity have existed long before Trump, said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit alliance that advocates on behalf of environmental researchers in local, state and federal agencies.

President Barack Obama created "scientific integrity policies" designed to protect federal scientists in response to censorship issues under the George W. Bush administration.

But they were written without teeth and not vigorously implemented, rendering them "worse than useless," Ruch said, citing the example of an Agriculture entomologist in the Obama administration who was unfairly unpunished when he shined unfavorable light on an agency priority.

"The executive branch can't be relied upon to police scientific integrity," he said. "They'll never let information out that is at odds with their agenda. And that's the essential problem."