Just a quick heads up that the semantics of “conflict of interest” has changed, at least in the context of the US House of Representatives.
Traditionally, the meaning of “conflict of interest” is captured by Wikipedia’s one-liner:
A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation occurring when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation.
That seems fairly straight forward.
However, in H.R.1422 — 113th Congress (2013-2014), passed on 11/18/2014, the House authorized paid representatives of industry interest to be appointed to the EPA Advisory Board, saying:
SEC. 2. SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD.(b)(2)(C) – persons with substantial and relevant expertise are not excluded from the Board due to affiliation with or representation of entities that may have a potential interest in the Board’s advisory activities, so long as that interest is fully disclosed to the Administrator and the public and appointment to the Board complies with section 208 of title 18, United States Code;
So, the House of Representatives has just reversed the standard definition of “conflict of interest” to say that hired guns of industry players have no “conflict of interest” sitting on the EPA Science Board, so long as they say they are hired guns.
I thought I was fairly hardened to hearing bizarre things out of government but reversing the definition of “conflict of interest” is a new one on me.
The science board is supposed to be composed of scientists, unsurprisingly. Scientists, by the very nature of their profession, do science. Experiments, reports, projects, etc. And no surprise the scientists on the EPA science panel work on … that’s right, environment science.
Care to guess who H.R.1422 prohibits from certain advisory activities?
SEC. 2. SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD.(b)(2)(D)
Board members may not participate in advisory activities that directly or indirectly involve review or evaluation of their own work;
Scientists are excluded from advisory activities where they have expertise.
Being an expert in a field is a “conflict of interest” and being a hired gun is not (so long as being a hired gun is disclosed).
So the revision of “conflict of interest” is even worse than I thought.
I don’t have the heart to amend the Wikipedia article on conflict of interest. Would someone do that for me?
PS: I first saw this at House Republicans just passed a bill forbidding scientists from advising the EPA on their own research by Lindsay Abrams. Lindsay does a great job summarizing the issues and links to the legislation. I followed her link to the bill and reported just the legislative language. I think that is chilling enough.
PPS: Did your member of the House of Representative vote for this bill?
I first saw this in a tweet by Wilson da Silva.