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President Biden is hoping to add more teeth to scientific integrity policies across government.
Senior Correspondent
The White House on Friday held its first task force meeting to develop strategies for empowering career federal scientists, including through identifying incidents of interference in previous administrations.
Several dozen scientists from across government attended the inaugural gathering of the Scientific Integrity Task Force, which President Biden created shortly after taking office. Headed by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, Biden launched the panel to combat political interference in the scientific work by federal agencies’ career employees. In addition to reviewing each agency’s policy for protecting against interference, the task force will examine what went wrong in recent years.
Updated: 9:34 AM EDT May 10, 2021 By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Eager to the turn the page on the Trump years, the Biden White House 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 informati
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New White House panel aims to separate science, politics
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 Hou
WASHINGTON
Eager to the turn the page on the Trump years, the Biden White House 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.
“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.”