PerspectiveFor Scientific Integrity in Government, Fix Political Appointments Process
The list of scandals featuring senior U.S. officials who subsumed scientific integrity to their political or personal interests numbers 60 entries in a new report from a bipartisan task force that traced practices under the past three presidents. The examples range from downplaying the connections between climate change and carbon emissions under George W. Bush to understating the risks of fracking on drinking water under Barack Obama, and on to retaliation against economists, biologists and climate scientists under Donald Trump. While the vast majority of the incidents listed occurred under the Trump administration, the task force warns that the pattern represents a kind of continuum: that abuses of the past weakened the guardrails of democracy to allow what’s happening today, and that the trend could escalate in future administrations unless Congress takes steps to strengthen safeguards. And at the root of each instance are the individuals who committed the abuses, whether the president or his political appointees.
The list of scandals featuring senior U.S. officials who subsumed scientific integrity to their political or personal interests numbers 60 entries in a new report from a bipartisan task force that traced practices under the past three presidents. The examples range from downplaying the connections between climate change and carbon emissions under George W. Bush to understating the risks of fracking on drinking water under Barack Obama, and on to retaliation against economists, biologists and climate scientists under Donald Trump.
Viola Gienger writes in Just Security that while the vast majority of the incidents listed occurred under the Trump administration, the task force warns that the pattern represents a kind of continuum: that abuses of the past weakened the guardrails of democracy to allow what’s happening today, and that the trend could escalate in future administrations unless Congress takes steps to strengthen safeguards. And at the root of each instance are the individuals who committed the abuses, whether the president or his political appointees.
The report, published today, is the second to emerge from the National Task Force on Rule of Law and Democracy, convened by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.
“We have big problems to solve in this nation,” the task force writes. “If we cannot agree on the facts underlying potential solutions to those problems, and we do not have qualified and dedicated people in place to develop and execute on them, we will imperil the future of our democracy.”
In addition to cataloging violations of scientific integrity, the report recommends ways to shore up the norms that have protected research and science in government. It suggests solidifying those norms into law and tightening standards to ensure that senior U.S. officials, particularly those confirmed by the U.S. Senate, are qualified and ethical.
Gienger notes that the task force draws a straight line from the deterioration of professional qualifications and, in some cases integrity, in certain political appointments. The report notes examples such as some of Obama’s ambassadorial choices and Trump naming his son’s wedding planner to be a regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have expansive portfolios of responsibility that don’t appear to match their professional qualifications, the panel notes.
“The task force emphasizes throughout the report that the United States has a historical record of addressing systemic weaknesses after bouts of abuses, including setting standards for political appointments in the decades following the 1920s Teapot Dome scandal and passing the Ethics in Government Act and the Civil Service Reform Act after Watergate,” Gienger writes.
