The house has passed a bill that would limit the way the EPA conducts is scientific research.
The Secret Science Reform Act of 2014 would require the Environmental Protection Agency to base its rules only on scientific studies whose data can be shared in sufficient details that other researchers can duplicate the research. A vote is expected within the hour, and this post will be updated with its results.
Supporters of the bill say they want to make sure that any scientific study that is used to regulate business be made available to the public. While this seems reasonable on the surface, opponents say it is another attempt to weaken the EPA.
“This bill does not permit me to mince words,” Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas said. “It’s an insidious attack on the EPA … and the culmination of one of the one anti-science and anti-health campaigns I’ve ever witnessed in my 22 years in Congress. It is born of the Republicans’ long-standing obsession with two seminal scientific studies conducted by Harvard and the American Cancer Society.”