Attack on Science – Inspectors General Play an Important Role in Maintaining Scientific Integrity. Trump Just Fired Them
What Happened: Late Friday night, the President fired most of the Inspectors Generals in major government departments. In each department, the Inspectors General is supposed to be an independent investigator of the department’s adherence to policies and procedures, including the implementation of scientific integrity (SI) policies that protect the rights of scientists to do their work without political interference. The key word here, now blatantly ignored by this president is “independent”.
Why This Matters: If federal employees, including federal scientists, are concerned about waste, fraud, or abuse of departmental actions and policies, they can raise concerns to the Inspector General’s office. For scientific integrity policy, if a scientist is being censored or told to manipulate their scientific work to meet political goals, their first stop should be raising the concern with their agency’s Scientific Integrity officer. The Biden administration made great strides in instituting or updating scientific integrity policies in most agencies and required the designation of a senior staff member to serve as the SI officer. However, in egregious cases, SI officers may not have sufficient independence and authority to investigate and report on violations. The Inspectors General can bolster the work of these SI officers, but only if they are truly independent of agency leadership. Clearly, it is that independence that is under attack in this administration.
The Details
Most of those fired IGs were appointed during the first Trump administration but apparently had not demonstrated sufficient loyalty to the President. This is a recurring theme of this administration-- that loyalty to Mr. Trump is more important than adherence to the Constitution, to the mission of the agency where one works, or to the scientific process and scientific evidence. That obviously doesn’t bode well for efforts to prevent political interference in science broadly and, more specifically, in the science used in making public policy decisions.
As an agency scientist in the civil service, your responsibility and oath when accepting the job is to the Constitution and the mission of the agency. I knew that when I was an agency scientist. Agency missions are set out in the specific legal statutes that give agencies their mandates. This administration doesn’t care about that. Loyalty to the president ”trumps” all regardless of any other factors – like facts, evidence, or legal mandates. The loss of independent inspectors is a blow to our constitutional democracy and the rule of law.
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