While critics cast the Trump administration as anti-science, requiring in response vigorous defense of science, analysis of the Trump EPA reveals instead a strategy to develop deregulatory science. In its first 3 years, the Trump EPA introduced and started to implement a variety of new frameworks to remake scientific risk analysis, changing how it assesses exposures, hazards and costs of chemical harms. The article focuses on EPA frameworks associated with the Clean Air Act, Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science rule and Toxic Substances Control Act. The new approaches compel the agency to ignore many pathways of exposure and pivotal studies of hazards, include dose-response models that treat pollution as healthful and change how costs and benefits are calculated. Yet it justifies these frameworks in terms of evidence-based decision-making, transparency and the separation of science from politics. According to its political appointees, the Trump EPA stands for scientific integrity, because it is promulgating evidence-based approaches in risk analysis that show regulation to be neither necessary nor appropriate. This is not just rhetoric but represents an effort to engage science to delegitimize environmental regulation. There is continuity between the Trump EPA and past efforts to use science to justify regulatory rollbacks: defending science by demarcating it from non-science is just as much a strategy for deregulation as it is for regulation. A key lesson is that contesting deregulation by declaring it anti-science reflects an impasse, as deregulatory approaches then also seek to take the mantle of science. The alternative to engaging in debate over demarcation is to make explicit the values and interests shaping practices of regulatory science.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Langston, Nancy;
(January 2018)
DOCUMERICA and the Power of Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB114442000/)
Article
Jacob Darwin Hamlin;
(January 2018)
Access Denied: The Continuing Challenge to Environmental Sciences in the Trump Era
(/isis/citation/CBB254720392/)
Article
Jennie L Durant;
(October 2020)
Ignorance loops: How non-knowledge about bee-toxic agrochemicals is iteratively produced
(/isis/citation/CBB459611870/)
Article
Thomas, Julia Adeney;
(January 2018)
Confronting Climate Change: The Uneasy Alliance of Scientists and Nonscientists in a Neoliberal World
(/isis/citation/CBB677279767/)
Book
Charles Halvorson;
(2021)
Valuing Clean Air: The EPA and the Economics of Environmental Protection
(/isis/citation/CBB488007911/)
Book
William M. Alley;
Rosemarie Alley;
(2020)
The war on the EPA : America's endangered environmental protections
(/isis/citation/CBB217333973/)
Book
David J. Hess;
(2016)
Undone Science: Social Movements, Mobilized Publics, and Industrial Transitions
(/isis/citation/CBB272081586/)
Article
Oliver Todt;
José Luis Luján;
(2022)
Rationality in Context: Regulatory Science and the Best Scientific Method
(/isis/citation/CBB425178130/)
Article
Alina Geampana;
(2019)
Risky Technologies: Systemic Uncertainty in Contraceptive Risk Assessment and Management
(/isis/citation/CBB376759289/)
Article
Leonie Dendler;
Gaby-Fleur Böl;
(July 2021)
Increasing Engagement in Regulatory Science: Reflections from the Field of Risk Assessment
(/isis/citation/CBB423909656/)
Book
David Vogel;
(2018)
California Greenin': How the Golden State Became an Environmental Leader
(/isis/citation/CBB569183355/)
Article
Charles Halvorson;
(Spring 2019)
Deflated Dreams: The EPA's Bubble Policy and the Politics of Uncertainty in Regulatory Reform
(/isis/citation/CBB066968357/)
Article
Anja Bauer;
Alexander Bogner;
(2020)
Let’s (not) talk about synthetic biology: Framing an emerging technology in public and stakeholder dialogues
(/isis/citation/CBB333309152/)
Article
Colleen Lanier-Christensen;
(September 2021)
Creating Regulatory Harmony: The Participatory Politics of OECD Chemical Testing Standards in the Making
(/isis/citation/CBB606231580/)
Article
Judy Z Segal;
(August 2018)
Sex, drugs, and rhetoric: The case of flibanserin for ‘female sexual dysfunction’
(/isis/citation/CBB311917478/)
Article
Emmanuel Henry;
Valentin Thomas;
Sara Angeli Aguiton;
Marc-Olivier Déplaude;
Nathalie Jas;
(September 2021)
Introduction: Beyond the Production of Ignorance: The Pervasiveness of Industry Influence through the Tools of Chemical Regulation
(/isis/citation/CBB736985993/)
Article
June Jeon;
(December 2019)
Invisibilizing politics: Accepting and legitimating ignorance in environmental sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB717880925/)
Article
Stephens, Neil;
Atkinson, Paul;
Glasner, Peter;
(December 2011)
Documenting the doable and doing the documented: Bridging strategies at the UK Stem Cell Bank
(/isis/citation/CBB128580755/)
Article
Angela N. H. Creager;
(September 2021)
To Test or Not to Test: Tools, Rules, and Corporate Data in US Chemicals Regulation
(/isis/citation/CBB745420064/)
Article
Henri Boullier;
Emmanuel Henry;
(2022)
Toxic Ignorance: How Regulatory Procedures and Industrial Knowledge Jeopardise the Risk Assessment of Chemicals
(/isis/citation/CBB183545703/)
Be the first to comment!