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Regulating Science: Increasing Quality Control in Government Research

Regulating Science: Increasing Quality Control in Government Research. Kenneth E. Fernandez University of Nevada, Las Vegas Mark S. Davis Ohio State University. Research Questions. Should we be concerned about the quality of government research?

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Regulating Science: Increasing Quality Control in Government Research

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  1. Regulating Science: Increasing Quality Control in Government Research Kenneth E. Fernandez University of Nevada, Las Vegas Mark S. Davis Ohio State University

  2. Research Questions • Should we be concerned about the quality of government research? • What are the threats to the quality of government research? • What can be done to improve research quality in government settings?

  3. Government Research • What is government research? • Example: “The Bureau of Justice Statistics collects, analyzes, publishes, and disseminates information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government. Impartial, timely, and accurate statistical data are essential to guide and inform federal, state, and local policymaking on crime.”

  4. For government research to be useful it should: • Be of high quality (follow scientific norms) • Be perceived as high quality (meeting scientific norms) • Scientific Norms: • Universalism • Communality • Organized Skepticism • Disinterestedness

  5. Trust in Science • Scandals in Science • Evidence that public trust in science, in general, is not deep • Academic scholarship calling into question the scientific method, its objectivity, practicality • Post-positivists • Post-modernists

  6. Scandals in Science • Private Industry: Vioxx; ghost writers • Academia: guest authors; journals published Vioxx studies; falsifying data; conflicts of interests • Government Research: Union of Concerned Scientists accused Bush administration of suppressing or distorting the scientific analyses of federal agencies to bring these results in line with administration policy

  7. Survey Research • 2005 Survey found 42% of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service scientists felt pressured to not report findings that did not agree with Bush policies on endangered species • 2010 Eurobarometer: 58% of respondents agreed "we can no longer trust scientists to tell the truth about controversial scientific and technological issues because they depend more and more on money from industry."

  8. Public Choice & Research Quality

  9. Monitoring Research Activities

  10. Research Context & Quality

  11. Solutions

  12. Solutions • Impossible to monitor all research • Identify high risk activities • Biomedical vs. physics • Federal vs. local level • Regulatory vs. allocational • Peer-Review • Easiest to implement • Promotes: universalism, communality, organized skepticism, and disinterestedness

  13. Peer Review • Peer review will look different than in academia • Needs to be quicker • Reviewers may be compensated and vetted • Advisory committees • Interested parties will be motivated to help form organized skepticism, ensure disinterestedness

  14. Conclusion • Trust in science has been threatened • Research setting difficult to monitor = possible shirking • Principal-agent and conflict of interest problems are enduring policy problems • Peer review seems to be a practical, and politically feasible mechanism to adopt • Unfortunately, the review of advisory committees is rarely required at the federal level (Jasanoff 1999), and even rarer at the state or local level.

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