EXCLUSIVE: Scott Pruitt Will End EPA’s Use Of ‘Secret Science’ To Justify Regulations

[Crick]

Speculate that Crick is thinking about the health/medical fields?

Speculate that the EPA has a legitimate use for medical data in protecting the environment.

 

[Crick]

scientist haven't had to prove their outcomes from research in decades to push agendas.
now they do, and as a leftists, you hate to learn what they are trying to do to you.

On what do you base that idea? For one, there is no such thing as a proof in the natural sciences. There is evidence. So, can you demonstrate for us any science entity: organization, journal, group - that has dropped their criterion for demonstrating evidence of an hypothesis? Because it looks very much as if, like your president, you are just making shit up.

The lame attempt at an appeal to authority shows your position so weak that it can not survive debate.

Bravo!

Can you read simple English? There is no appeal to authority here. My comment is addressed directly at poster Two Thumbs contention that "scientists haven had to prove their outcomes from research in decades". You don't seem to have much respect for mainstream science. Can you show us an example of a scientific entity having dropped their criteria for demonstrating evidence of an hypothesis?

 

[Crick]

scientist haven't had to prove their outcomes from research in decades to push agendas.
now they do, and as a leftists, you hate to learn what they are trying to do to you.

On what do you base that idea? For one, there is no such thing as a proof in the natural sciences. There is evidence. So, can you demonstrate for us any science entity: organization, journal, group - that has dropped their criterion for demonstrating evidence of an hypothesis? Because it looks very much as if, like your president, you are just making shit up.

Oh! does that mean you now view climate models as lacking evidence for good science research?

Cheers

The scientific literature is filled to overflowing with evidence supporting AGW. The amount of evidence supporting your contentions is what is lacking and that in the extreme.

 

[skookerasbil]

Speculate that Crick is thinking about the health/medical fields?

Speculate that the EPA has a legitimate use for medical data in protecting the environment.

You've got to be kidding me s0n. Really? You really think that in 2018 the EPA exists for the purpose of protecting the environment? What a profound level of naive for somebody who's no kid. You mean to tell me that during your college days you never came across the term "bureaucratic inertia"?

"Protecting the environment"

 

[Billy_Bob]

Speculate that Crick is thinking about the health/medical fields?

Speculate that the EPA has a legitimate use for medical data in protecting the environment.

You really are clue less... names redacted, other identifying items redacted, = no HIPPA violation...

 

[Billy_Bob]

scientist haven't had to prove their outcomes from research in decades to push agendas.
now they do, and as a leftists, you hate to learn what they are trying to do to you.

On what do you base that idea? For one, there is no such thing as a proof in the natural sciences. There is evidence. So, can you demonstrate for us any science entity: organization, journal, group - that has dropped their criterion for demonstrating evidence of an hypothesis? Because it looks very much as if, like your president, you are just making shit up.

Oh! does that mean you now view climate models as lacking evidence for good science research?

Cheers

The scientific literature is filled to overflowing with evidence supporting AGW. The amount of evidence supporting your contentions is what is lacking and that in the extreme.

And not one cognitive thought in your brain to discern being lied too...

This last year alone there are 490 papers refuting the piles of IPCC crap and bought/paid for outcomes.. Wake Up fool!

 

[Sunsettommy]

scientist haven't had to prove their outcomes from research in decades to push agendas.
now they do, and as a leftists, you hate to learn what they are trying to do to you.

On what do you base that idea? For one, there is no such thing as a proof in the natural sciences. There is evidence. So, can you demonstrate for us any science entity: organization, journal, group - that has dropped their criterion for demonstrating evidence of an hypothesis? Because it looks very much as if, like your president, you are just making shit up.

Oh! does that mean you now view climate models as lacking evidence for good science research?

Cheers

The scientific literature is filled to overflowing with evidence supporting AGW. The amount of evidence supporting your contentions is what is lacking and that in the extreme.

Ha ha,

YOU who keep avoiding the well documented evidence that a few of the short term climate models DO FAIL the test. as I have shown in THIS POST and elsewhere you keep avoiding! They are CENTRAL to the AGW conjecture since they base those Per Decade prediction/projections on Emission Scenarios as detailed in the IPCC reports.

The importance of this Per Decade warming rate projection is shown by having it REPEATED in every subsequent IPCC report. They talked about it in 1990, they STILL talk about in 2012.

Carry on with your silly evasions....................

.

 

[Sunsettommy]

The reason the data on which certain scientific findings are based cannot be made public is because it is personal health data and its release is prohibited by HIPAA. So your first demand would have to be that HIPAA be rescinded. Are you up for that?

Any AGW data that involves HIPAA?

I made the distinction that all science based programs need to be open and transparent so that they are done in the light of day. they must openly prove their points so others can replicate or refute the junk some call science.

The data behind studies which the EPA cannot release - the origin behind this flap - cannot be released because it is personal medical data and is protected by HIPAA.

You keep bringing this up, but never make a case for it, meanwhile several commenters here have pointed out that such personal details can be redacted.

Why do keep ignoring it?

 

[Sunsettommy]

Speculate that Crick is thinking about the health/medical fields?

Speculate that the EPA has a legitimate use for medical data in protecting the environment.

Even when I am helping you, you come back to be an ass about it.

You have not once made a case for the HIAPPA claim, which you don't even understand since it doesn't apply to science research anyway as shown in THIS LINK :

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Excerpt:

"Who is Covered by the Privacy Rule

The Privacy Rule, as well as all the Administrative Simplification rules, apply to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and to any health care provider who transmits health information in electronic form in connection with transactions for which the Secretary of HHS has adopted standards under HIPAA (the “covered entities”). For help in determining whether you are covered, use CMS's decision tool.

Health Plans. Individual and group plans that provide or pay the cost of medical care are covered entities.4 Health plans include health, dental, vision, and prescription drug insurers, health maintenance organizations (“HMOs”), Medicare, Medicaid, Medicare+Choice and Medicare supplement insurers, and long-term care insurers (excluding nursing home fixed-indemnity policies). Health plans also include employer-sponsored group health plans, government and church-sponsored health plans, and multi-employer health plans. There are exceptions—a group health plan with less than 50 participants that is administered solely by the employer that established and maintains the plan is not a covered entity. Two types of government-funded programs are not health plans: (1) those whose principal purpose is not providing or paying the cost of health care, such as the food stamps program; and (2) those programs whose principal activity is directly providing health care, such as a community health center,5 or the making of grants to fund the direct provision of health care. Certain types of insurance entities are also not health plans, including entities providing only workers’ compensation, automobile insurance, and property and casualty insurance. If an insurance entity has separable lines of business, one of which is a health plan, the HIPAA regulations apply to the entity with respect to the health plan line of business.

Health Care Providers. Every health care provider, regardless of size, who electronically transmits health information in connection with certain transactions, is a covered entity. These transactions include claims, benefit eligibility inquiries, referral authorization requests, or other transactions for which HHS has established standards under the HIPAA Transactions Rule.6 Using electronic technology, such as email, does not mean a health care provider is a covered entity; the transmission must be in connection with a standard transaction. The Privacy Rule covers a health care provider whether it electronically transmits these transactions directly or uses a billing service or other third party to do so on its behalf. Health care providers include all “providers of services” (e.g., institutional providers such as hospitals) and “providers of medical or health services” (e.g., non-institutional providers such as physicians, dentists and other practitioners) as defined by Medicare, and any other person or organization that furnishes, bills, or is paid for health care.


Health Care Clearinghouses.Health care clearinghouses are entities that process nonstandard information they receive from another entity into a standard (i.e., standard format or data content), or vice versa.7 In most instances, health care clearinghouses will receive individually identifiable health information only when they are providing these processing services to a health plan or health care provider as a business associate. In such instances, only certain provisions of the Privacy Rule are applicable to the health care clearinghouse’s uses and disclosures of protected health information.8 Health care clearinghouses include billing services, repricing companies, community health management information systems, and value-added networks and switches if these entities perform clearinghouse functions."

==========================
As usual you failed once again to make a case. It is clear you are posting certified baloney.

Go read deeper in the link where they post instructions, here is some of it:

"De-Identified Health Information. There are no restrictions on the use or disclosure of de-identified health information.14 De-identified health information neither identifies nor provides a reasonable basis to identify an individual. There are two ways to de-identify information; either: (1) a formal determination by a qualified statistician; or (2) the removal of specified identifiers of the individual and of the individual’s relatives, household members, and employers is required, and is adequate only if the covered entity has no actual knowledge that the remaining information could be used to identify the individual."

You entire unsupported HIPAA argument has been annihilated!

 

[Crick]

Why don't you tell us what data the EPA could not reveal.

 

[Sunsettommy]

Why don't you tell us what data the EPA could not reveal.

You are so smashed on this, time to walk away after all I destroyed your HIPAA argument.

You still can't wrap the valid idea of Transparency of science research being used to formulate regulations. That is what the EPA administrator is trying to do. You come in with BOGUS HIPAA baloney, which was conclusively addressed by going to website that deals with HIPAA disclosure laws.

You got anything better?

 

[Crick]

Yeah. Tell us what data the EPA could not reveal.

 

[Sunsettommy]

Yeah. Tell us what data the EPA could not reveal.

Classic deflection mode.

However there are examples over the years:

'Junk science'? Studies behind Obama regulations under fire

 

[Crick]

From your Fox News example:

"The Obama administration’s EPA had originally justified the ban based on a study by the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, which said the insecticide was linked to childhood developmental delays."

My charge still stands. The data that could not be revealed was HIPAA protected data.

Try again.

 

[Sunsettommy]

From your Fox News example:

"The Obama administration’s EPA had originally justified the ban based on a study by the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, which said the insecticide was linked to childhood developmental delays."

My charge still stands. The data that could not be revealed was HIPAA protected data.

Try again.

The very next two paragraphs you dishonestly left out:

"The EPA Scientific Advisory Panel’s meeting report said: “[T]he majority of the Panel considers the Agency’s use of the results from a single longitudinal study to make a decision with immense ramifications based on the use of cord blood measures of chlorpyrifos as a PoD for risk assessment as premature and possibly inappropriate.”

The USDA stated it had “grave concerns about the EPA process...and severe doubts about the validity of the scientific conclusions underpinning EPA’s latest chlorpyrifos risk assessment.”

Not a mention of HIPAA concerns, which I have already addressed earlier straight from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services website:

"De-Identified Health Information. There are no restrictions on the use or disclosure of de-identified health information.14 De-identified health information neither identifies nor provides a reasonable basis to identify an individual. There are two ways to de-identify information; either: (1) a formal determination by a qualified statistician; or (2) the removal of specified identifiers of the individual and of the individual’s relatives, household members, and employers is required, and is adequate only if the covered entity has no actual knowledge that the remaining information could be used to identify the individual."

DE-IDENTIFIED health information can be disclosed without restrictions!

HIPPA concerns are easily addressed.

You have NOTHING to stand on, Crick!

 

[Sunsettommy]

Crick,

I have reread the thread to realize that you employed a RED HERRING with that bogus HIPPA bullcrap, which I destroyed at posts 49 and again 55. From MY opening link is a BIG example of dishonest Red Herrings:

"Democrats and environmentalists have largely opposed attempts to require EPA rely on transparent scientific data. Said data would restrict the amount of studies EPA can use, but a major objection is making data public would reveal confidential patient data, opponents argue.

“A lot of the data that EPA uses to protect public health and ensure that we have clean air and clean water relies on data that cannot be publicly released,” Union of Concerned Scientists representative Yogin Kothari told E&E News.

“It really hamstrings the ability of the EPA to do anything, to fulfill its mission,” Kothari said."

They know there are many "Cricks" out there who would are easily snookered with these bogus arguments thrown in their ignorant faces.

The EPA is doing the right thing forcing researchers to show ALL of their work, before we can take their claims seriously.

 

[Crick]

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/new-rule-could-force-epa-ignore-major-human-health-studies

Privacy concerns
The problem, critics say, is that human epidemiological studies often rely on gathering reams of sensitive information from thousands of individuals, such as their medical history and personal habits, along with exactly where they live and work. Those details are usually guarded by confidentiality agreements that bar researchers from sharing data that would allow an individual to be identified.

Existing studies could be bound by confidentiality agreements that make it impossible to give EPA the data it wants, Thorne says. And future researchers could have more trouble recruiting participants if they fear their information would be made public. “If those [confidentiality] documents say we will be required to release your private information to the U.S. government or to the public, [people] would be wise not to participate,” he says.

In its proposed rule, EPA says it wants to make data publicly available “in a manner that honors legal and ethical obligations to reduce the risks of unauthorized disclosure and reidentification” of anonymous study subjects. The agency says sensitive data could be shielded by a variety of measures, including storing them at special federal data centers and restricting who has access to them. And it suggests that the transparency requirement could, in certain circumstances, be waived if not practical to implement. It does not provide an estimate of the cost of complying with the rule.

In a press release the agency claimed the proposed provisions are consistent with data access requirements of major scientific journals include Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Science, along with many other journals, has recently adopted measures to encourage data sharing and increase transparency, Science Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Berg said in a prepared statement. Those measure can include requiring authors of published papers to deposit underlying data in a publicly available database. But he noted there are “exceptional circumstances, where data cannot be shared openly with all,” including cases where papers are based on data sets that include personal information. Journals will still publish those papers, but will tell researchers wishing to reanalyze or replicate the studies to negotiate directly with the authors to obtain the sensitive data.

In general, researchers who share their data usually first strip information such as name, date of birth, or place of residence that would enable people to trace it back to an individual, says Joel Kaufman, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who is studying air pollution and heart disease. He’s now preparing a “limited” data set for the roughly 7000 participants in his study, so that other researchers can work with it. “That’s the right thing to do,” Kaufman says. “But I fear that that’s not enough for what the proponents of this regulation are trying to do, which is to get data that we know we can’t provide.”

On the industry side, an American Chemistry Council (ACC) spokesperson says the Washington, D.C.–based trade group is looking at the new EPA rule, but has few detailed comments at this point. “Our industry is committed to working with EPA to help ensure the final rule increases transparency and public confidence in the agency’s regulations while protecting personal privacy, confidential business information, proprietary interest and intellectual property rights,” spokesperson Jon Corley said in a prepared statement. In the past, ACC has supported similar efforts to bar EPA from using nonpublic data in certain kinds of rulemakings, while noting that the agency often uses confidential or proprietary data provided by industry in doing its work.

For example, industries fund extensive research into the health effects of chemicals, often through private laboratories that rely on animal testing. In internal EPA emails released by the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the agency’s deputy administrator in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Nancy Beck, wrote that for a majority of industry studies, confidential business information “can be waived and the data can be made available.” (Beck was formerly a top official at the chemistry council.) But the EPA proposal also suggests such industry information could be exempted from the transparency rule.

Long history
The new EPA proposal is the latest in a long-running campaign to let the public and regulated industries sift through the raw data of epidemiologists whose work could affect pollution regulations.

In the 1990s, members of Congress pressed for legislation requiring scientists to disclose their raw scientific data, partly in response to a Harvard University study finding a correlation between more air pollution and lower life expectancy. Several times in recent years, the House of Representatives passed a bill requiring public disclosure of data from any new studies used by EPA to write regulations, but the proposal never made it out of Congress. The champion of that bill, Representative LamarSmith (R–TX), flanked Pruitt at Tuesday’s unveiling of the new proposal, smiling.

EPA will now accept public comments on the proposal for 30 days, then is expected to issue a final rule.

Environmental groups and others have already said they expect to challenge the rule in court. Potential lines of attack, attorneys say, include claims that EPA has not met the letter of federal law in evaluating the rule’s costs and benefits, or explained which federal law has provided it with the authority to issue the new requirements.

 

[Crick]

Scientists Favor Transparency, but Say EPA Plan Will Limit It

“This is not about all of the details that scientists need to scrutinize each other’s work. That information is already widely available, and scientists spend a tremendous amount of time disclosing all of their data and methods to get their work published,” she said. “This is adding additional burdens; it’s not the information that is required for appropriate peer review and reproducibility of studies. This is clearly just a political move.”

 

[Crick]

The E.P.A. Says It Wants Research Transparency. Scientists See an Attack on Science.

Under the proposed policy, the agency would no longer consider scientific research unless the underlying raw data can be made public for other scientists and industry groups to examine. As a result, regulators crafting future rules would quite likely find themselves restricted from using some of the most consequential environmental research of recent decades, such as studies linking air pollution to premature deaths or work that measures human exposure to pesticides and other chemicals.

The reason: These fields of research often require personal health information for thousands of individuals, who typically agree to participate only if the details of their lives are kept confidential.

 

[Crick]

House Approves Bill To Force Public Release of EPA Science - Slashdot

House Republicans are taking aim at the Environmental Protection Agency, targeting the way officials use science to develop new regulations. A bill approved Wednesday by the GOP-controlled House would require that data used to support new regulations to protect human health and the environment be released to the public. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said "the days of 'trust me' science are over," adding that the House bill would restore confidence in the EPA's decision-making process. Connecticut Rep. Elizabeth Esty and other Democrats said the bill would cripple EPA's ability to conduct scientific research based on confidential medical information and risks privacy violations by exposing sensitive patient data. The bill was approved 228-194 and now goes to the Senate.