Joining other scholars and scientists in denouncing proposed federal regulations on scientific research, Harvard University president Drew Faust this week urged officials at the US Environmental Protection Agency to reject plans to restrict the type of studies regulators could use to craft new policies.
In a letter sent Monday to EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, Faust called the proposed regulations “fundamentally flawed” and said they risk “not just erosion of the public trust . . . but also progress on improving the health and well-being of our communities and our nation.”
In April, Pruitt proposed a rule, called “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science,” that he said would improve the science the agency relies on by ensuring that all the data it uses is available to the public.
“The era of secret science at EPA is coming to an end,” Pruitt said in a statement at the time. “The ability to test, authenticate, and reproduce scientific findings is vital for the integrity of [the] rule-making process. Americans deserve to assess the legitimacy of the science underpinning EPA decisions that may impact their lives.”
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But critics say the proposal would significantly reduce the number of studies that policy makers could review, as researchers often use confidential health data. For example, as Faust noted in her letter, a landmark 1993 Harvard study linking air pollution to premature deaths relied on such confidentiality agreements with its subjects to protect their health records.
In a joint letter to Pruitt, the editors of some of the world’s leading scientific journals, including Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also criticized the proposed regulations, noting that some studies wouldn’t be possible without keeping subjects’ personal information confidential.
