The Center for Data Innovation has responded to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) request for information on the proposed rulemaking “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” which seeks to ensure that the science supporting EPA’s decisions is transparent and available for independent validation. This ruling proposes that when making decisions, EPA will exclude or deprioritize studies in which the underlying data is not publicly available. This would impede EPA from using relevant scientific data in the hundreds of decisions it makes every year and diminish its ability to protect public health and safety. We suggest EPA withdraw the proposed rule and instead adopt policies that overcome the technological and cultural barriers to data sharing and reproducibility.
