This past Wednesday, 10 days before the next deadline in the Obama Administration’s meandering toward a scientific integrity policy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its final official scientific integrity policy (H/T Nature News). Drafts have been in the open since March, and formal comment was requested on the policy in August. Besides the final policy, you can also see the associated Procedural Handbook.
As best as I can tell, the changes made since the August draft are generally for clarification and/or additional emphasis. Like most other policies, much more attention appears focused on the conduct of agency scientists than on other agency personnel that have responsibilities over scientists or would interact with scientists and/or their research information (though Section 7 is specifically targeted at supervisors and managers of scientific personnel..
While the documents released by NOAA are images saved in .pdf format (rather than files where you can search text and work with the data), I’m taken by the level of transparency connected to the process. You can review NOAA’s response to the comments it received during the public comment period. This is a very useful means for reviewing the changes between the draft and final documents. Granted, it’s not much transparency, but with how private and un-public this effort has been, we get to see some of the thinking behind an agency’s perspective on this policy. NOAA has also promised to be public about the number of complaints it receives under this new policy.
Of course, implementation of the policy will be a large test to its effectiveness. But I would commend the process embraced by NOAA to other entities looking to develop their own policies in this area.
As for next week’s executive branch-wide deadline (December 17), I do not expect a large public release in connection to it, as none is required. Besides, the recent actions of the Health and Human Services Secretary in overriding a Food and Drug Administration decision on an abortifacient drug have attracted attention to scientific integrity in ways the Administration, or the Office of Science and Technology Policy, may not want at the moment. I’ll post on that soon.
