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NRC Perchlorate Report and NRDC Reaction

This week the National Research Council released a report on the "Health Implications of Perchlorate Ingestion."  The study is significant because, as the New York Times reported yesterday, "Depending on how federal and state regulators interpret the academy's recommendation, the Defense Department, its contractors and other federal agencies responsible for contamination from perchlorate, a component of solid rocket fuel, could avoid cleanup costs of hundreds of millions of dollars."  The political stakes are very high.

The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) responded to the report by claiming that, "the NAS panel's recommendation was likely shaped by a covert campaign by the White House, Pentagon and defense contractors to twist the science and strong-arm the academy."  In other words, the NRC report reflects the results of political pressure and maneuvering by Bush Administration officials.

My first reaction to this is, of course it does.  Given the political stakes we should only be surprised if the NRC was not pressured by people in the executive branch. It is important to remember that the federal agencies request, pay for, and shape the charge for NRC studies.  All heads of federal agencies are political appointees and some of these heads (e.g., DOD) are among the most influential in the Bush Administration.  I have participated in and reviewed a number of NRC studies and, while none had the political stakes that the perchlorate study has, in every one agency officials paying for the study had a clear sense of what they'd like to see in the final the report and we not shy in their efforts to influence the panel.

But just because politics is ever present in the NRC process does not mean that we turn a blind eye.  Clearly, if policy makers or the public begin to view NRC reports as just another battleground for partisan politics, much of what science has to offer policy making will be lost (for more read this essay).

The NRDC has done an admirable job of uncovering a paper trail showing how much effort Bush administration officials went to shape the panel's composition and its charge.  The NRDC efforts should be viewed as a model of oversight of the NRC.  And oversight of the NRC is extremely rare, though much needed because what the NRDC has uncovered may be less unique than commonly assumed.

Specifically, the NRDC has found:

1)        " ... senior White House officials reviewed and apparently edited a highly technical document charging NAS with evaluating detailed scientific questions."  This is significant because the charge given to a committee dictates its scope and how questions are framed.  Often the framing of questions bounds the range of policy recommendations that result.  It is for this reason that I wrote earlier this week, "More important than the composition of scientific advisory panels is the charge that they are given ...".  What is missing in the NRC is an open and transparent process for developing a charge to its committees.  If the executive branch officials, both in agencies and the White House, who are paying for the study are responsible for developing with NRC staff the committee's charge, then we should fully expect that the charge will be slanted toward the political views of those funding the study.  One option would be for the NRC to require politically charged issues to be funded by a diversity of parties.  For example, NRDC could have been invited to be a co-sponsor of the study and thus be allowed to participate in the development of the charge.  This may not always be a simple solution, as the government has deep pockets and advocacy groups often do not.  But in this case this would have allowed for political compromises to be reached between NRDC and the Bush Administration well before bringing in the experts to answer technical questions.

2)        " ... the White House, Pentagon and DOD contractors sought to manipulate the panel's membership to place "friendly" scientists on it." Just like in the development of the charge, the composition of the panel can easily be (and very often is) "stacked" in one direction or another (here is an example). Just as in the discussion of the charge above, such stacking would be less likely if those responsible for funding the study reflected a diverse set of interests.  It is hopeless to think that there are unbiased or objective scientists who are untainted by politics out there who could have been placed on this panel.  But dealing with the issue of the panel's composition before submitting the technical questions would have gone a long way toward increasing the legitimacy of the report's conclusions. When I wrote earlier this week of "... developing transparent, accountable and effective processes to manage politics in science," an example of such a process is to ensure that a diversity of political perspectives are represented in those who pay for and help to put together such panels.  By relying only on the Bush Administration for funding for this study, it opened the door to an undue influence from one political perspective over others.

All of this suggests that the NRC needs to take a long hard look at its efforts to connect scientific advice with the needs of policy makers.  The NRC faces a bit of a conflict as well because its studies are paid for by the folks to whom it is providing advice.  It can to some degree deal with this by requiring a diversity of funding sources for particular studies and allowing these diverse participants to collectively reach agreement on a committee's charge and composition.  The alternative is that we see the political battles fought either inside of the NRC committee or in the public after it is released, which in both cases will diminish the positive role of science in contributing to policy.