The Interior Department’s abrupt elimination of a new U.S. Geological Survey advisory panel intended to protect scientific integrity is alarming researchers already dismayed by funding freezes and personnel cuts.
Six weeks after the Federal Advisory Committee for Science Quality and Integrity convened its first meeting, it and five other advisory panels were axed by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
“This administration’s decision to disband a committee dedicated to ensuring scientific quality and integrity is a serious misstep that undermines our commitment to excellence in research,” former panel member Jacob Carter said in an email Friday, adding that “if there is a lack of capacity and expertise to strengthen processes such that … cases of misconduct and violations of scientific integrity continue, then that will jeopardize the health of Americans.”
Carter, a research scientist, said he learned of the committee’s disbanding by email Thursday, though Burgum signed the actual order Feb. 27.
