Reason #5764 That Trump Was Elected

EPA to reform its science advisory boards

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Tuesday he planned to curtail the practice of distributing research grants to scientists appointed to the agency’s scientific advisory boards to improve their “independence and transparency and objectivity.”

“If we have individuals who are on those boards receiving money from the agency, sometimes, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, that calls into question the independence of the recommendations that come our way,” Pruitt said, speaking at a Heritage Foundation event. “Next week, I will issue a directive that addresses that, to ensure the independence and transparency and objectivity with respect to the scientific advice that we are getting at the agency.”

“Reforming EPA’s advisory boards will strengthen public trust in the EPA and the science the agency uses to justify its policies,” Thea McDonald, communications director for the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, told Western Wire.

“Chairman Lamar Smith has long advocated for a more balanced and transparent membership on the advisory boards, especially after conflicts of interest and a lack of transparency became prevalent during the Obama administration,” McDonald said. “In fact, the committee and the full House this year passed a bill by committee Vice Chairman Frank Lucas, the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, to accomplish these goals.”

“It’s terrific that EPA chief Scott Pruitt is taking this long overdue step to eliminate the Obama EPA practice of stacking scientific advisory boards in order for them to rubberstamp EPA overregulation as science-based,” Steve Milloy, lawyer and author of “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA,” told Western Wire.

“For too long EPA paid outside scientists to publish agency friendly ‘science’ and then had the very same scientists review and approve their own research under the guise of independent peer review,” Milloy said.

Milloy, who served on the Trump EPA transition team, praised the work of the Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, for calling attention to this EPA practice, which Milloy called “corrupt” in a March 2012 op-ed.

For this, a  Forbes Editor said the  EPA Administrator Is Scarier Than Radical Islamic Terrorists

I wish them well, but I doubt this will work. Without to promise of EPA funds why would anyone want to waste their time on these advisory boards?