Smoke ahead (Image: Specialist 2nd Class Justin Stumberg-US Navy/Handout/REUTERS)

Secret science sounds like an overwrought geeky website. But it’s actually a bill passed in the House of Representatives in Washington DC last week that will – depending on your view – bust open the cosy cartel of science policy-makers at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), or hobble government efforts to keep us safe from polluters.

The Secret Science Reform Act, pushed through the House by Republicans and supported by industry groups such as the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, would prevent the EPA from issuing regulations on the basis of data that have not been made public.

What’s to object to? Shouldn’t we all get a chance to pick over the data? The devil is in the detail, according to a letter sent to the House last week by major science institutions headed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.


The unintended consequences of this bill, they wrote, would include preventing the EPA from acting on the basis of findings that are not “reproducible” – for instance, one-off research following a major environmental disaster such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Opponents say the bill would also effectively veto EPA reliance on studies using confidential health records that cannot currently be disclosed under federal law. As the American Lung Association, an advocacy group, put it, the bill is “just another effort by polluters and their allies in Congress to undermine the EPA’s ability to protect the air we breathe”.

Dual bills

The secret-science bill was passed at the same time as the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, which would change how EPA receives its science advice, imposing quotas on who sits on the advisory board based on who employs them rather than on scientific expertise alone.

Backers say the two bills would make the process of EPA regulations more transparent, allowing independent scientists to analyse the data used to make them.

But critics say that the bills would stifle science rather than opening it up to scrutiny.

“The US Congress is carrying out a sneak attack on science,” says Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “The science community should be up in arms about these actions – but so should anyone who cares about using the best science to make good public policy.”

Will the bills become law? They may now get a hearing from the Republican-dominated Senate and could be passed to the White House for final approval. But President Obama’s office said earlier this month that he would be advised to veto both. It said that the Secret Science Reform Act could “impede EPA’s reliance on the best available science”.

“The bill would impose arbitrary, unnecessary, and expensive requirements that would seriously impede the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) ability to use science to protect public health and the environment, as required under an array of environmental laws,” it said.