The Role of Governmental Organizations in Communicating About Regulating Science

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffery Morris
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Regulatory Science ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
The Public ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Government ◽  
Us Federal Government

Governments rely on regulatory science to support decisions related to the protection of human health and the environment. Not only is regulatory science produced and used differently than discovery-driven science practiced outside the government, but it also has its own means of being communicated within democratic societies and has its own challenges for public engagement. This chapter examines how regulatory science is communicated within the US federal government, principally by the US Environmental Protection Agency, using nanotechnology and biotechnology as case studies to illustrate the challenges of, and opportunities for, engaging the public on the use of scientific information to inform decisions on the introduction and use of emerging technologies into society.

scholarly journals NEW STUDY IN THE SPHERE OF WATER-RELATED ACTIVITIES

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
Владимир Кузнецов ◽  
Vladimir Kuznetsov
Keyword(s):  
Practical Experience ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
Water Legislation ◽  
The Government

The article is the review of D. O. Sivakov’s monograph “Tendencies in Legal Regulation of Water-Related Activities”. D. O. Sivakov is a leading research fellow of the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation, a specialist and author of researches in the sphere of water and environmental legislation. The author analyses the study under review from the perspective how this study assesses the role of the state in the water resources management. The author supports the reexamination by D. O. Sivakov of the conceptual framework of the water legislation through the lens of proposed legalization of the “water-related activities” concept. The author’s conclusion resulting from the comparison of practical experience in water bodies’ management in a number of foreign countries is worth noticing. As such, the author focuses on the public services by non-governmental organizations and entities of the parties to the water relations. In his study the author confines himself to a simple enumeration of powers of some state bodies in the water services sphere, which is evidently not enough for building a holistic picture of tendencies in the legal regulation of waterrelated activities.

scholarly journals American “Populism” and the Spatial Contradictions of US Govern-ment in the Time of COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (Especial) ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
John Agnew
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
White House ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Federal Government ◽  
Governmental System

President Donald Trump has been the public face of the blundering managerial response of the US federal government to the Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, beyond Trump’s personal failure lies a failure of the US governmental system. More specifically, the role of the federal government in fashioning nationwide policies across a range of areas, including public health, that one think would be empowered by a self-defined “nationalist” or right-wing populist in the White House, has been crippled by an anti-federalist ideology and the institutional inertia it has created. These have roots going back to the 1980s and the distortion of historic US federalism that these have entailed.

scholarly journals It Is Time to Move Beyond the Linear No-Threshold Theory for Low-Dose Radiation Protection

Dose-Response ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 155932581877965 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Cardarelli ◽  
Brant A. Ulsh
Keyword(s):  
Ionizing Radiation ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Low Dose ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Real Effects ◽  
Threshold Theory ◽  
The Us ◽  
Lnt Model

The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) is the primary federal agency responsible for promulgating regulations and policies to protect people and the environment from ionizing radiation. Currently, the USEPA uses the linear no-threshold (LNT) model to estimate cancer risks and determine cleanup levels in radiologically contaminated environments. The LNT model implies that there is no safe dose of ionizing radiation; however, adverse effects from low dose, low-dose rate (LDDR) exposures are not detectable. This article (1) provides the scientific basis for discontinuing use of the LNT model in LDDR radiation environments, (2) shows that there is no scientific consensus for using the LNT model, (3) identifies USEPA reliance on outdated scientific information, and (4) identifies regulatory reliance on incomplete evaluations of recent data contradicting the LNT. It is the time to reconsider the use of the LNT model in LDDR radiation environments. Incorporating the latest science into the regulatory process for risk assessment will (1) ensure science remains the foundation for decision making, (2) reduce unnecessary burdens of costly cleanups, (3) educate the public on the real effects of LDDR radiation exposures, and (4) harmonize government policies with the rest of the radiation scientific community.

Hired Guns and Ministers of Justice: The Role of Government Attorneys in the United States and Israel

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Asimow ◽  
Yoav Dotan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
The United States ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Government ◽  
Role Of The Government ◽  
Prevailing View

What is the role of a government attorney who represents a government agency on judicial review? Most academic literature in the United States (US) advocates the ‘hired gun’ model in which the role of the government lawyer is no different from that of a lawyer who represents a private client (although some academics and government lawyers disagree). The prevailing view in Israel is that government lawyers are ‘ministers of justice’, who owe a primary obligation to the public interest rather than to the client agency. This difference is attributable both to fundamental differences in legal culture between the US and Israel as well as to unique features of the Israeli system of judicial review.

scholarly journals Regulations Matter: Epistemic Monopoly, Domination, Patents, and the Public Interest

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zahra Meghani
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
Unbiased Manner ◽  
Technological Products

AbstractThis paper argues that regulatory agencies have a responsibility to further the public interest when they determine the conditions under which new technological products may be commercialized. As a case study, this paper analyzes the US 9th Circuit Court’s ruling on the efforts of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate an herbicide meant for use with seed that are genetically modified to be tolerant of the chemical. Using that case, it is argued that when regulatory agencies evaluate new technological products, they have an obligation to draw on data, analyses, and evaluations from a variety of credible epistemic sources, and not rely solely or even primarily on the technology developer. Otherwise, they create conditions for their own domination and that of the polity by the technology developer. Moreover, in the interest of advancing the public interest, regulatory agencies must evaluate new technologies in a substantively and procedurally unbiased manner.

scholarly journals Epistemic Consultants and the Regulation of Policy Knowledge in the Obama Administration

Minerva ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-558
Author(s):  
Jack Wright ◽  
Tiago Mata
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critique Of Judgment ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
White House ◽  
Diffusion Of Information ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Government ◽  
American Society ◽  
And Diffusion

Abstract The agencies of the government of the United States of America, such as the Food and Drug Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency, intervene in American society through the collection, processing, and diffusion of information. The Presidency of Barack Obama was notable for updating and redesigning the US government’s information infrastructure. The White House enhanced mass consultation through open government and big data initiatives to evaluate policy effectiveness, and it launched new ways of communicating with the citizenry. In this essay we argue that these programs spelled out an emergent epistemology based on two assumptions: dispersed knowledge and a critique of judgment. These programs have redefined the evidence required to justify and design regulatory policy and conferred authority to a new kind of expert, which we call epistemic consultants.

scholarly journals Public Comments’ Influence on Science Use in U.S. Rulemaking: The Case of EPA’s National Emission Standards

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mia Costa ◽  
Bruce A. Desmarais ◽  
John A. Hird
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Input ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Regulatory Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Use Of Expertise

Scholarship on bureaucratic policymaking has long focused on both the use of expertise and public accountability. However, few have considered the degree to which public input affects the use of research in U.S. regulatory impact analyses (RIAs). We examine changes in the research that is cited in RIAs in response to public comments to assess the influence of participation on the use of information for rulemaking. We conduct an in-depth analysis of comments on a major proposed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule to determine whether regulators alter the evidence used based on public input and whether some types of commenters have more influence than others. We analyze the text similarity of comments to scientific research utilized in the RIAs to determine whether regulators iteratively update their rule justification based on scientific information referenced in comments. We find support for seminal subgovernment theories about the relationship between business interests, Congress, and the bureaucracy; in relation to all kinds of commenters, members of Congress and industry groups had the strongest effect on changes in the research used in the RIAs. The article provides one of the first statistical analyses of science exchange between the public and a bureaucratic agency.

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