The Data Quality Act, which sets standards for the quality of data used in US law-making, has turned out to be a great tool for forcing pseudoscience (asbestos isn't that bad for you) into the lawmaking process — a way to filibuster the scientists by requiring them to disprove whatever woo-woo notions you want to raise.
As the testimony of former Clinton administration Energy official and George Washington University epidemiologist David Michaels shows, the guidelines are very troubling. Michaels' complaint is that under the guise of "peer review," industry sponsored or funded attempts to undermine good science are going to get a big boost. That's for a number of reasons, one of them being the key question of who will be doing the peer reviewing.
The current guidelines say that as far as peer review goes, scientists who have worked for government have a conflict of interest and can't participate, but scientists who have worked for industry have carte blanche. As Michaels puts it, the suggestion "that academic scientists are more beholden to public funding agencies than corporate funders is on face ludicrous." And there's more. The peer review guidelines play into clever industry strategies for using the system of science to advance their economic interests.
(Thanks, Henry!)
