Panel to target science, politics

Restoring public trust its aim

FILE - In this March 2, 2010, file photo, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, chief, Jane Lubchenco looks out from the waterfront as she speaks to fisherman in Gloucester, Mass. A new 46-person federal scientific integrity task force with members from dozens of government agencies will meet for the first time Friday, May 14, 2021. “We want people to be able to trust what the federal government is telling you, whether it’s a weather forecast or information about vaccine safety or whatever,” said Lubchenco, the deputy director for climate and environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. (AP Photo/Mary Schwalm, File)
FILE - In this March 2, 2010, file photo, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, chief, Jane Lubchenco looks out from the waterfront as she speaks to fisherman in Gloucester, Mass. A new 46-person federal scientific integrity task force with members from dozens of government agencies will meet for the first time Friday, May 14, 2021. “We want people to be able to trust what the federal government is telling you, whether it’s a weather forecast or information about vaccine safety or whatever,” said Lubchenco, the deputy director for climate and environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. (AP Photo/Mary Schwalm, File)

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden's administration is launching an effort to unearth past problems with the politicization of science within government and to tighten scientific integrity rules for the future.

A new 46-person federal scientific integrity task force with members from more than two dozen government agencies will meet for the first time on Friday. Its mission is to look back through 2009 for areas where partisanship interfered with what were supposed to be decisions based on evidence and research and to come up with ways to keep politics out of government science in the future.

The effort was spurred by concerns that the Trump administration had politicized science in ways that put lives at risk, eroded public trust and worsened climate change.

"We want people to be able to trust what the federal government is telling you, whether it's a weather forecast or information about vaccine safety or whatever," said Jane Lubchenco, the deputy director for climate and environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

People need to know "it's not by fiat, somebody's sort of knee-jerk opinion about something," added Alondra Nelson, the science office's deputy director for science and society. Nelson and Lubchenco spoke to The Associated Press ahead of a Monday announcement about the task force's first meeting and part of its composition. It stems from a Jan. 27 presidential memo requiring "evidence-based policy-making."

Scientists and others have accused the Trump administration of setting aside scientific evidence and injecting politics into issues including the coronavirus, climate change and even whether Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama in 2019.

Lubchenco, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Obama administration, pointed to an incident during the Trump administration that became known as "Sharpiegate" as a clear example of "political interference with scientific information that was potentially extraordinarily dangerous."

During "Sharpiegate," the NOAA reprimanded some meteorologists for tweeting that Alabama was not threatened by the hurricane, contradicting President Donald Trump, who said Alabama was in danger. The matter became known as "Sharpiegate" after someone in the White House used a black Sharpie to alter the official National Hurricane Center warning map to indicate Alabama could be in the path of the storm. A 2020 inspector general report found the administration had violated scientific integrity rules.

Lubchenco also said a reluctance to fight climate change in the last four years has delayed progress in cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases. "That will inevitably result in the problem being worse than it needed to be," she said.

"What we have seen in the last administration is that the suppression of science, the reassignment of scientists, the distortion of scientific information around climate change was not only destructive but counterproductive and really problematic," Lubchenco said.

Kelvin Droegemeier, who served as Trump's science adviser, in an email repeated what he told Congress in his confirmation hearing: "Integrity in science is everything," and science should be allowed to be done "in an honest way, full of integrity without being encumbered by political influence."

Droegemeier said the White House science office, where Nelson and Lubchenco now work and where he used to be, is more about policy and does not have the authority to investigate or enforce rules.

One of the four task force co-chairs is Francesca Grifo, scientific integrity officer for the Environmental Protection Agency since 2013. She clashed with the Trump EPA, which would not allow her to testify at a 2019 congressional hearing about scientific integrity.

The others are Anne Ricciuti, deputy director for science at the Education Department's Institute of Education Sciences; Craig Robinson, director of the Office of Science Quality and Integrity at the U.S. Geological Survey; and Jerry Sheehan, deputy director of the National Library of Medicine.

FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019, file photo, President Donald Trump talks with reporters after receiving a briefing on Hurricane Dorian in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington. A new 46-person federal scientific integrity task force with members from dozens of government agencies will meet for the first time Friday, May 14, 2021. During Sharpiegate, NOAA reprimanded some meteorologists for tweeting that Alabama was not threatened by the hurricane, contradicting the president, who said Alabama was in danger. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019, file photo, President Donald Trump talks with reporters after receiving a briefing on Hurricane Dorian in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington. A new 46-person federal scientific integrity task force with members from dozens of government agencies will meet for the first time Friday, May 14, 2021. During Sharpiegate, NOAA reprimanded some meteorologists for tweeting that Alabama was not threatened by the hurricane, contradicting the president, who said Alabama was in danger. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

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