House Republican promises to scrutinize administration's policy on science

The incoming chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee’s oversight panel on Monday promised to scrutinize the Obama administration’s scientific integrity standards next year.

The comments come just days after John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, issued a memorandum to the heads of all federal departments and agencies laying out the administration's scientific integrity priorities. The memo called for “a clear prohibition on political interference in scientific processes and expanded assurances of transparency.” President Obama issued a memorandum in March 2009 on scientific integrity that required Holdren to issue his memo.

In a short statement issued Monday, Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), who will chair the Investigations and Oversight subcommittee in the next Congress, said he plans to evaluate the administration’s scientific-integrity policy.

“I look forward to evaluating these guidelines in the upcoming Congress because, as we have seen over the last two years, rhetoric without action only breeds additional abuses of scientific integrity,” Broun said in the statement.

Broun has accused the Obama administration of “muzzling experts, limiting access, retaliating against dissent and systematically misrepresenting science.” 

He has focused much of his criticism on the Environmental Protection Agency’s determination that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare, as well as White House climate and energy policy coordinator Carol Browner’s work on climate change.