The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) announced Thursday that agency officials have taken retaliatory action against three scientists who spoke out against scientific opinion.
Five EPA scientists alleged to the OIG that they were retaliated against for expressing differing scientific opinions on chemical evaluations while former President Donald Trump was in the White House, and the watchdog office ultimately Conclusion Three of them came under fire for doing so. of three scientist Employees who faced retaliation faced various forms of harassment, received low performance ratings, missed bonus payments, and were transferred to other positions within the bureaucracy.
“The investigation conducted by EPA OIG found that three of the five scientists were retaliated against in violation of EPA's scientific integrity policy for expressing differing scientific opinions,” EPA OIG said of its findings. “One of the three scientists was also found to have been retaliated against after engaging in protected activity in violation of the Whistleblower Protection Act. EPA OIG has consistently recognized promoting ethical behavior and protecting scientific integrity as EPA's top management priorities.” (RELATED: Officials told Biden administration's EPA its aggressive green power plant plan has serious flaws, documents reveal)
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“I worked with almost all PhD-level scientists and kind of naively thought that we could solve the problems by having a scientific discussion,” said one of the three scientist whistleblowers. The Hill“Instead, what we received was bullying, harassment, name-calling and instructions to just ignore things without any explanation or justification.”
According to the OIG, each of the three scientists who filed complaints alleged that the retaliation arose from scientific disagreements about the specific risks of certain chemicals and attempts by other EPA officials to revise their studies. The EPA blamed the Trump administration for creating the situation the EPA OIG described.
“EPA has received Office of Inspector General (OIG) reports on five whistleblower complaints regarding the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention's New Chemicals Program,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The events described in these reports began during the previous administration, when political leaders exerted intense pressure on both career administrators and scientists in EPA's New Chemicals Program to review and approve new chemicals more quickly. The reports also note that no additional resources were provided for the increased workload of the New Chemicals Program that resulted from changes to the Toxic Substances Control Act.”
Kayla Bennett, science policy director for the Association of Public Employees for Environmental Accountability, an organization that helped file some of the complaints, disputed the EPA's assessment of the situation in comments to The Hill.
“The situation was horrific under the Trump administration,” Bennett told the outlet, but “all of these same issues, both in terms of retaliation and the underlying scientific issues, are happening under the Biden administration.”
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