White House Releases Report on Strengthening Federal Scientific Integrity

National Science and Technology Council’s Scientific Integrity Fast-Track Action Committee recently released a new report titled “Protecting the Integrity of Government Science.” The report studies the current state of information gathering and dissemination in the U.S. scientific enterprise and offers principles and recommendations to help build a culture of scientific integrity across the federal government.

The report was issued in response to President Biden’s January 2021 Presidential Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking. Committee producing the report was responsible for first assessing the current state of scientific integrity and identifying areas for strengthening. The Committee outlined key principles to ensuring scientific integrity, which include the ability to freely voice dissent, including more scientist in policy development, and increased transparency and accountability.

The Committee seeks to strengthen scientific integrity policies to ensure that informed decision making and accountability from the outset. The report calls on agencies to strengthen their scientific integrity polices and to deter undue influence, pay specific attention to violations from the senior and high-level officials. Furthermore, the report states that scientific integrity is “everyone’s” responsibility and stresses that all federal agencies—not just science agencies—be responsible for upholding integrity.

The report also addresses what it calls “emerging themes,” such as diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, as well as new challenges associated with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. “New technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, present new challenges to scientific integrity, including the potential for bias when data used to train algorithms are not representative of the underlying phenomenon and algorithms themselves are not transparent.”

The report identifies important steps the federal scientific community can take to further enhance scientific integrity and ensure greater transparency and accountability with the U.S. scientific enterprise. To read the full report visit: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/01-22-Protecting_the_Integrity_of_Government_Science.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=FYI&dm_i=1ZJN,7PE4K,M3WXSL,VEJQI,1.