White House Issues Scientific Integrity Memo

The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy has issued a long-awaited memo to federal departments to ensure scientific integrity within the government. The memo, written by OSTP Director John P. Holdren, is the follow up to a March 9, 2009, statement by President Barack Obama on the issue.

The OSTP memo provides guidelines to federal agencies and offices on scientific integrity but it does not provide many details. It states that government agencies need to ensure a "culture of scientific integrity" because public trust can only be gained if science is done without political influence or efforts to alter scientific findings. This includes the free flow of scientific information, especially conveying to the public the technical data used to make policy decisions.

It states that the process for choosing scientists to be members of federal advisory committees should also be done openly and on the basis of the individual's scientific qualifications, not their political beliefs. Issues of conflict of interest should be publicly reviewed. And the memo says that the professional development of government scientists should be encouraged, including allowing for publishing research results in peer-reviewed journals and presentations of research findings at professional meetings.

Details of implementing these guidelines are up to each department or agency, the memo states, and Holdren asks that they report to him within 120 days on any actions they have taken to implement the OSTP policies.

A number of government watchdog groups have been critical of OSTP on this issue because Obama had said that the guidelines would be issued within 120 days of his March 2009 statement. Now that the policies have been issued, these groups are wondering what took so long.

"This guidance was almost two years in the making but it reads like it was finalized at the last minute," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, in a statement. PEER is a national alliance of local state and federal resource professionals. "If it took this long to produce this very short guidance memo, how long will it take agencies to do the hard work of reducing these hazy principles to concrete, enforceable rules and procedures?"

Gary D. Bass, executive director for the advocacy group OMB Watch, is also concerned about the lack of specificity in the OSTP memo. "Articulating a vision for scientific integrity is essential, but the devil will be in the details, some of which are lacking in this memo," he said in a statement.

Congress has been following the issue of scientific integrity at federal agencies for many years and will be looking critically at how the OSTP guidelines are implemented. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), who will be chairman of the House Science & Technology Committee's Subcommittee on Investigations & Oversight when the next Congress convenes in January, finds the OSTP guidelines problematic.

"Upon initial review, these guidelines seem very similar to the standing guidance already in place," Broun said in a statement. "I am looking forward to evaluating these guidelines in the upcoming Congress because, as we have seen over the past two years, rhetoric without action only breeds additional abuse of scientific integrity."