Mansfield Becky
The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
Soc Stud Sci. 2021 Feb;51(1):28-50. doi: 10.1177/0306312720970284. Epub 2020 Nov 5.
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 . 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.
尽管批评者将特朗普政府描绘成反科学的，认为需要大力捍卫科学，但对特朗普领导下的美国环境保护局（EPA）的分析却揭示出一种不同的策略。在其执政的头三年里，特朗普领导下的EPA引入并开始实施各种新框架，以重塑科学风险分析，改变其评估化学危害的暴露情况、危害程度和成本的方式。本文重点关注与《清洁空气法》、《加强监管科学透明度规则》以及《有毒物质控制法》相关的EPA框架。这些新方法迫使该机构忽视许多暴露途径和关键的危害研究，包括将污染视为有益健康的剂量反应模型，并改变成本和效益的计算方式。然而，它却以循证决策、透明度以及科学与政治分离为由为这些框架辩护。据其政治任命官员称，特朗普领导下的EPA代表科学诚信，因为它在风险分析中推行循证方法，表明监管既无必要也不合适。这不仅仅是言辞，而是一种利用科学使环境监管失去合法性的努力。特朗普领导下的EPA与过去利用科学为监管倒退辩护的努力存在连续性：通过将科学与非科学划清界限来捍卫科学，既是放松管制的策略，也是监管的策略。一个关键教训是，通过宣称放松管制是反科学来对抗它反映了一种僵局，因为放松管制的方法也试图披上科学的外衣。参与划界辩论的替代方案是明确塑造监管科学实践的价值观和利益。
