WASHINGTON - Hundreds of US government scientist have complained that they have been victims of political interference and pressure from superiors to skew their findings. This was revealed in a survey released by an advocacy group on Wednesday.
Some 1600 scientists of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who responded to an online questionnaire reported that they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work. This was also confirmed by Union of Concerned Scientist.The group sent an online questionnaire to 5500 EPA scientists and received 1586 responses. Majority of them were from senior scientists who have worked for the agency for 10 years or more. The survey included chemists, toxicologists, engineers, geologists and experts in the life and environmental sciences.
Jonathan Shradar, EPA spokesman attributed some of the discontent to the “passion” scientists have toward their work. He gave the example of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, who served EPA for a long time as scientist, weighs heavily the science given to him by the staff in making policy decisions.
But director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Scientific Integrity Program Francesca Grifo stated the survey results revealed “an agency in crisis” with low morale, especially among scientist involved in risk assessment and drawing up regulations. “The finding reveals that researchers are generally continuing to do their work, but their scientific findings are set aside when it comes to write regulations” said Grifo.
The report said that 889 scientists (60 per cent of those responded), reported personally experiencing what they viewed as political interference in their work over the last five years. Timoty Donaghy, one of the report’s co-authors, said that a large number of scientist did not respond to the survey so it should not be viewed as a random sample of EPA scientists.
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