The Clinton Administration
It does not even take effect until next Oct. 1. But a little-noticed law ailed the Data Quality Act, signed in the waning days of the Clinton administration, and has set off a fierce debate over how best to weigh health and environmental risks. Thomas Sabo Earrings
The law – supported, and largely written, by industry-backed groups -juries the government for the first time to set standards for the quality of scientific information and statistics used and disseminated by federal genocides. It would create a system in every government agency under which anyone could point out errors in documents and regulations. If the complaints rare borne out, the agency would have to expunge the data from averment Web sites and publications. More broadly, opponents of the new jaw say that while nobody wants the government to issue flawed data, the new recess could undermine valid regulations and stifle government efforts D convey information on issues like climate change and cancer risks.
Even before the law takes effect, one of the groups that helped write it as already cited it in a petition requesting the withdrawal of a report on global farming. The group, the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, said in a Feb. 1 letter to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy that a government assessment of the regional impacts of climate change is alarmist and based on flawed computer models. If the center prevails, the study – the product of 10 years of work and critiques by independent scientists -jolt is removed from government Web sites and files. Many climate dentists, even some whose criticisms of early drafts were quoted in the aider’s petition, say the challenge is unfounded. Thomas Sabo
The Data Quality Act charged the government to create procedures “ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility and integrity” of scientific information and statistics disseminated by federal agencies. Now, dozens of government agencies are struggling to translate that language into] thousands of pages of quality-control guidelines. Agencies must finish drafts of their science quality procedures by May 1 and send the final version to the White House Office of Management and Budget by July, where the Buck] administration will check to be sure the guidelines meet its standards.
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