Got to do as much damage as possible on the way out the door - EPA edition

[brycejones]

The EPA has finalized a rule essentially requiring all data used in a study to be made publicly available. For research related to public health issues this includes personal medical records.

EPA finalizes rule limiting research used for public health and environmental policy

The rule would have prevented past major studies that relied on private data from going ahead.

www.axios.com

 

[compcons]

Note that they want to force studies to disclose raw data and that it seems based on some whacky theory that the EPA is making decisions based on some non-existant data.

 

[brycejones]

Note that they want to force studies to disclose raw data and that it seems based on some whacky theory that the EPA is making decisions based on some non-existant data.

The Trump admin has lent credibility to every crazy conspiracy theory that conservatives have cooked up over the last 20 years and then tried to take action on them.

 

[Sunburn74]

The EPA has finalized a rule essentially requiring all data used in a study to be made publicly available. For research related to public health issues this includes personal medical records.

EPA finalizes rule limiting research used for public health and environmental policy

The rule would have prevented past major studies that relied on private data from going ahead.

www.axios.com

This actually is a good thing and is something being done across the board by researchers and research journals.

Whilst yes it allows for people to check your work this isnt the real reason why it matters as much. The real reason is people can use the data you collected for additional research on similar or even entirely different topics. Someone may ask a different question entirely than what the original data was aimed to study but because it happens to also contain the answers to that question it can be used or can be merged with other datasets to become even more powerful. In medical research this is extremely useful because there are so many questions that can be asked and solved but do few datasets to work with so you have to maximize every data set available to try and answer as many questions as possible.

 

[brycejones]

This actually is a good thing and is something being done across the board by researchers and research journals.

Whilst yes it allows for people to check your work this isnt the real reason why it matters as much. The real reason is people can use the data you collected for additional research on similar or even entirely different topics. Someone may ask a different question entirely than what the original data was aimed to study but because it happens to also contain the answers to that question it can be used or can be merged with other datasets to become even more powerful. In medical research this is extremely useful because there are so many questions that can be asked and solved but do few datasets to work with so you have to maximize every data set available to try and answer as many questions as possible.

If your concern is public health then the new rules don't seem to actually deliver on that:

"The practical result of this sort of change is that the EPA would be precluded from relying on scientific papers that contained the clearest indications of public harm. This would almost certainly lead to weaker rules or a decision not to regulate at all. "

In a parting gift, EPA finalizes rules to limit its use of science

On its way out, the Trump administration makes things harder for the next one.

arstechnica.com