EPA Proposes Limits To Science Used In Rulemaking (reuters.com) 314
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule on Tuesday that would limit the kinds of scientific research it can use in crafting regulations, an apparent concession to big business that has long requested such restrictions. Under the new proposals, the EPA will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential medical and industry data. The measure was billed by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt as a way to boost transparency for the benefit of the industries his agency regulates. But scientists and former EPA officials worry it will hamstring the agency's ability to protect public health by putting key data off limits.
The EPA has for decades relied on scientific research that is rooted in confidential medical and industry data as a basis for its air, water and chemicals rules. While it publishes enormous amounts of research and data to the public, the confidential material is held back. Business interests have argued the practice is tantamount to writing laws behind closed doors and unfairly prevents them from vetting the research underpinning the EPA's often costly regulatory requirements. They argue that if the data cannot be published, the rules should not be adopted. But ex-EPA officials say the practice is vital.
The EPA has for decades relied on scientific research that is rooted in confidential medical and industry data as a basis for its air, water and chemicals rules. While it publishes enormous amounts of research and data to the public, the confidential material is held back. Business interests have argued the practice is tantamount to writing laws behind closed doors and unfairly prevents them from vetting the research underpinning the EPA's often costly regulatory requirements. They argue that if the data cannot be published, the rules should not be adopted. But ex-EPA officials say the practice is vital.
Before saying it is good or bad : example ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ? (Score:5, Informative)
Medical research.
The participants in a medical study generally are protected from having their medical histories exposed to the world.
I suppose one could argue that knowing someone is 37, a non-smoker, takes over-the-counter asprin, and has high-blood pressure might not be enough to expose who they are. But in more detailed tests knowing someone had cancer in a timeframe or making their DNA public definitely could be invasive.
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You're talking about HIPPA regulations - have you ever read the HIPPA regulations? Ever worked in a HIPPA regulated field?
HIPPA regulations require that patient identity be protected - I used to work in the clinical drug trial industry and we used six-digit patient numbers and three letter initials to identify patients in our studies, and the client research companies protected the key that mapped the six-digit IDs and initials to the actual consent forms and other personally-identifiable documents.
Take you
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But it that identity is kept confidential at all the study couldn't be used by the EPA if this proposed rule is passed.
the EPA will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential medical and industry data
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But it that identity is kept confidential at all the study couldn't be used by the EPA if this proposed rule is passed.
the EPA will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential medical and industry data
I've never seen a medical study based on a person's name or social security number.
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So none of those studies (i.e. no studies) would be use under this ruling. :-)
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Re: Before saying it is good or bad : example ? (Score:5, Informative)
They're compensated.
Bull-hockey. Having one's entire life laid bare is hardly compensation for a free home page.
Re: Before saying it is good or bad : example ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The general population disagrees or Facebook wouldn't be as successful as they are.
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Actually they were asked, and agreed.
The strongest argument could be that agreements isn't valid because they didn't understand it. However if contracts can be thrown out because one party didn't understand, we have trouble.
What trouble, exactly? Trouble for corporations, insurers, employers, etc. who write one-sided, non-negotiable contracts that shit all over the slaves?
If a party enters into a contract without understanding it, then there's no meeting of the minds. If the other party was the one who wrote it, and you can show they knew or should have known that the first party didn't understand it, they fucking lose.
Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ? (Score:5, Interesting)
But what sort of research would be private and have an impact ?
Here's some of what the Union for Concerned Scientists had to say about attempted GOP legislation that tried to do the same thing:
Agencies such as the EPA don’t make all this information publicly available for a number of very good reasons. Protecting individuals’ privacy is prime among them. For example, we’re all aware of the laws that protect the privacy of our medical records. The Secret Science bill appears to require the EPA to release such confidential personal health information about the participants in scientific studies if it wants to use health studies to make regulatory decisions—a direct violation of health privacy law. The bill also fails to protect intellectual property rights, another reason data often cannot be publicly released.
Further, the bill would not compel companies and others to make their relevant data publicly available to the agency.
The upshot is, if this bill became law, the EPA would not be able to use public health data protected by confidentiality agreements to enact science-based regulations. The result? The EPA would not be able to carry out its mission of protecting public health and the environment.
What’s Wrong with Expecting the EPA to Make All of Its Data Available—Isn’t Complete Transparency a Good Thing? [ucsusa.org]
Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ? (Score:5, Informative)
Excerpt from a letter signed by 1000 scientists urging Pruitt not to do this: [amazonaws.com]
Proponents for these radical restrictions purport to raise two sets of concerns: reproducibility and
transparency. In reality, these are phony issues that weaponize ‘transparency’ to facilitate political
interference in science-based decisionmaking, rather than genuinely address either. The result will be
policies and practices that will ignore significant risks to the health of every American.
First, many public health studies cannot be replicated, as doing so would require intentionally and
unethically exposing people and the environment to harmful contaminants or recreating one-time events
(such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill).
Second, there are multiple valid reasons why requiring the release of all data does not improve scientific
integrity and could actually compromise research, including intellectual property, proprietary, and
privacy concerns. Further, EPA has historically been transparent in demonstrating the scientific basis of
its decisions, so the public can hold the agency accountable to establish evidence-based safeguards; any
changes should be made with the full consultation with and support of the scientific community.
Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Proponents for these radical restrictions purport to raise two sets of concerns: reproducibility and
transparency. In reality, these are phony issues that weaponize ‘transparency’ to facilitate political
interference in science-based decisionmaking, rather than genuinely address either.
It is the same as pretty much everything else with them.
1. Establish the desired outcome. Eliminate abortions, get more republicans elected, more tax cuts for high earners, etc.
2. Determine what paths get that outcome ignoring ethics entirely or to a great degree.
3. If necessary come up with "reasons" why you had to take those actions.
4. Take those actions.
With abortions, you have such things as requiring a 6 foot wide hallway. There have been no rational basis for why that is required beyond they wanted to shutdown more abortion clinics, but the stated reason was for the health of the people involved. In other words, they lied.
In voting, you have protecting against fake voting as the stated reason. In practice their voting role purges, voter id requirements, etc, etc raise barriers to voting that tend to favour their side. In short, they lied again.
With this you have the stated reason of protecting us from non verified info and such, but the outcome of gutting more of the EPA and making the planet dirtier. In short, they lied again.
They elected someone known for lying and have established a pattern of lying continuously to get their way. None of this is new..
Hell Trump just called the leader of North Korea "Very Honourable."
Truth means nothing to these people. Only outcomes matter. It is all a means to the end.
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Re: "Proponents for these radical restrictions purport to raise two sets of concerns: reproducibility and transparency. In reality, these are phony issues that weaponize ‘transparency’ to facilitate political interference in science-based decisionmaking, rather than genuinely address either."
Centralized "big science" communities more likely generate non-replicable results [arxiv.org]
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I hear you and agree, but I doubt very much that you'll get any traction on /. with this observation, in spite of the fact that it actually has its own wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Note that this is a crisis already in the realm of openly published research results and conclusions. There isn't any good reason to think that the numbers cited in the Nature study are going to be any smaller for studies conducted by parties with even stronger (monetary or sociopolitical) vested interests, wh
Pot, Kettle, Bang (Score:4, Insightful)
"weaponize transparency". Where on Earth do you shills^Wpeople think this shit up. Or is truth no longer acceptable when it doesn't fit your narrative?
Hello anonymous! By your own logic, we should not take into account your criticisms because you have not been fully transparent yourself.
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You're modded -1: Absolutely Correct.
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When one considers that science owes its success to this concept of reproducibility, it is alarming that anybody would consider reproducibility to be some sort of a partisan issue.
Science is Not What You Think: How It Has Changed, Why We Can't Trust It, How It Can Be Fixed
Henry H. Bauer
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The pattern is pretty clear: Actual attempts to reproduce research tend to produce shockingly low reproducibility rates. For those who have been paying attention to the situation, this is not actually news. It seems to only be news for those who refuse to track these types of problems.
Nature article from May 2016 [nature.com]
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If the basis of your complaint about this rule change is "Pruitt is a poopy face!"
Its not. Pay attention. Pruitt isn't trying to increase transparency, he's using it as a pretext to reduce the application of science in government policy making. That's why he's demanding the medical data be de-anonymized in order to use it for policy purposes. He knows that would be illegal and thus will get all the science based on that medical data excluded.
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That's your claim. Not supported by _anything_.
The rules say nothing about anonymized data, only a moron or a troll would jump on that conclusion. Because they already have a predicided conclusion.
+5 good explanation (Score:3)
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So right and that is something just as much on the left as on the right. However, that doesn't mean any given policy when evaluated on it's own merits should be opposed simply because it comes from the side of the isle you don't stand on. To me if your data-sets aren't available for peer review, then basically no on can tell if you actually did science or just cooked the books and applied a convenient method. I don't see where 'confidentiality' should be a problem. It is easy enough to clean data and d
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If the concern is that confidential health information needs to become public in order to confirm studies under this bill is accurate, then it's a law written in bad faith. That's the point. If you can reproduce findings in a study without the part of a record that ties an identity to the relevant medical data then there is no issue with the scientific method.
Now, maybe, that's not what this bill is attempting to do, but I have yet to read anything on this that doesn't make me suspicious. And the histori
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Patient confidentiality has little to do with the "confidential data" referred to. They're referring to data that is kept from other researchers not for patient confidentiality, but for trade secret, fuck you I'm not sharing my research, etc. type bullshit. They may claim patient confidentiality as the reason, but it's trivial to anonymize data or allow an audit or even just give them all of the data as long as they say they'll protect it.
Here's how you comply with HIPAA:
1) Get the other party to say they
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if this bill became law, the EPA would not be able to use public health data protected by confidentiality agreements
Almost all public health data can be used once it's de-identified. There will be some examples where an unusual combination of timing and medical conditions would mean it has to be kept confidential, but that's the exception and the number of cases will be small.
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No it does not. Studies must still follow HIPPA regulations and mask identifying data. Anonymized data doesn't prevent a study from being public.
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...or else there would be no medical journals, would there?
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No it doesn't.
Please cite the text that you think forbids basic anonymization.
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But what sort of research would be private and have an impact ?
Cancer clusters vs. HIPAA.
Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ? (Score:5, Insightful)
But instead of relying on science, our political system lets companies write the laws and regulations that govern them. As a result, we get abominations like polluted water in Flint MI, West Virginia, and North Carolina.
Before releasing something into the water supply, samples should be tested for contaminants. And if those samples don't make the grade, those responsible need to be held accountable. Making discharge safe typically involves diluting it to approved contaminant levels before releasing it into the water supply. Simple, really. There are labs that can and do test discharge samples for a plethora of contaminants, acidity, color, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, etc. But they don't test for everything that might be dangerous - prescription drugs for example. These sort of things need to be put right before they are put in our water. But it won't happen if science doesn't make the rules and regulators don't enforce those rules.
Because science and technology can verifiably be used to clean up the environment, whereas politics demonstratively won't, I propose replacing Scott Pruitt with AI. If AI is good enough for the CIA, it's gotta be better for the environment than a corrupt political lackey.
--
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/videos/what-lies-upstream/ [pbs.org]
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"... politicians chose to provide poisonous dirty Flint Mi. water, because the nibberized neighborhoods they served could not afford to pay for clean water. Most industry had moved to Mexico or China; nobody produced a thing of value to exchange for clean water. What is your issue? Nothing is free ... nobody has a right to anything they cannot buy at market price. Poor people = poor water; productive people = yummy clean water."
Nope. It starts with reckless polluting, which results in an artificial scarcity
Hockey sticks (Score:2)
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Potentially, there's very little that is impacted when it comes to the ability of the EPA to make sound and rational regulation decisions. The main reason that scientists and researchers are complaining about the rule change is because it shoulders them with the cost of first deanonymizing medical data in order to be able to present it for consideration in EPA rulemaking. They were not previously required to do this in which case they present research which the government in turn kept secret and consequentl
That is super scary (Score:2)
The main reason that scientists and researchers are complaining about the rule change is because it shoulders them with the cost of first deanonymizing medical data in order to be able to present it for consideration in EPA rulemaking.
So what you are saying is that before people were sharing de-anonymoized medical data with federal agencies? HOLY SHIT. Why are we not screaming to the skies about that, since government traditionally has the worst security, and no overbite as to what employees are doing
Re:Before saying it is good or bad : example ? (Score:4, Informative)
Not everything is about your politics.
If a construction crew drops a girder, what happens if it hits a Trump voter? Is this any different from what happens if it hits a Clinton voter instead?
I expect snark in response, of course, since you're more interested in looking clever than you are in finding truth.
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(Excellent post, btw).
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There is a special place in hell for those who downmod humor.
See, in Chicago, there's a running joke that the dead continue to vote. So if one was killed by a girder in Chicago, Republican or Democrat, as a dead person they'd continue voting for the DNC for the next few decades.
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"That is literally textbook psychopath behavior."
Well, sure. But remember that we're largely talking about corporations and their data. AFAICS, corporations are basically sociopathic so a bit of psychopathy in the interest of the shareholders is probably to be expected.
Do you want to end up watering crops with Brawndo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because this is how you end up watering your crops with Brawndo.
Re: Do you want to end up watering crops with Braw (Score:2)
Are we not already watering oyr plants with it? In other areas this is already the case. People are drinking raw water, we produce CO2 as if there is no tomorrow, we use plastics as if this is not an issue, people start believing in a flat earth.
Fracking recipes, too? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this end-to-unattributed data going to have a fat, juicy exception written for fracking compounds? Asking for my grandkids.
Ask yourself (Score:2)
Do you want the Trump Administration to make new environmental rules based on secret science?
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Do you want the Trump Administration to make new environmental rules based on secret science?
I don't want the Trump Administration to make any new environmental rules because they can be trusted to protect anything and anyone but the environment and the public.
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It's OK, folks--Kohath's merely asking a question [rationalwiki.org].
Scott Pruitt just announced more transparency (Score:5, Interesting)
Empirical Analysis (Score:3)
Sounds like they need to further develop their hypothesis, conduct trials to collect data, establish a control group, analyze the data and present their findings for peer review to determine precisely how much Science should be permitted at the EPA.
There's actually another, unintended effect. (Score:5, Interesting)
The intent may be to hobble the use of public health data, but it will may also force pesticide companies to publish trade secrets in order to have their products registered for legal use. At present this data is treated as confidential by the EPA.
This will not only affect new pesticides, it could also affect already registered pesticides, even if you grandfathered in the original registration. That's because a new registration number needs to be issued whenever the manufacturer changes any of the inert ingredients in the formulation, or even makes changes to the the production processes.
Re:There's actually another, unintended effect. (Score:5, Insightful)
Very funny!
No. Your prediction is wrong. Approvals for pesticides are not "rulemaking".
Here is a hint: if you think that a change that the administration is making isn't intended to benefit large companies, you are almost certainly wrong.
Skeptical Science (Score:5, Insightful)
I am skeptical of any Trump associate (or even any guy Trump likes) proclaiming they are trying to make a government agency more transparent. Remember this is the guy who insisted on a bug sweep of his government office and also installed an expensive privacy phone booth, and insists on a security detail greater than that of most 3rd world dictators. He gets favors like cheap rent from industry lobbyists and then tries to lie about it.
And, for good measure, freely uses taxpayer money for luxury travel so lavish that even Trump has to notice.
So spare me protestations that this member of the Trump clown show is going to make anything better at the EPA for anyone except his industry executive friends and that any criticism is just anti-Trump bias. For someone to have faith in him doing the right thing they would have to be delusional, ignorant, partisan or any combination.
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Why single out Trump, you really think there is a single politician left who isn't just interested in lining his own pockets and would harvest and sell your organs if he thought he'd get away with it?
Re:Skeptical Science (Score:5, Interesting)
Why single out Trump, you really think there is a single politician left who isn't just interested in lining his own pockets and would harvest and sell your organs if he thought he'd get away with it?
#1: The article was about a a Trump appointee and crony.
#2: There are many politicians and even more career bureaucrats who are community minded, idealistic, and work hard from the common good. I am not going to name names here because I don't want to get into a shitstorm of denials and misinformation.
#3: I will, however, point out that every time I see a statement like this, I remember there is one woman who has been investigated pretty much constantly for over a quarter of a century by the most nasty and mean legislators and political operatives using over $100M of taxpayer money to do so. A media network including Fox News, all right wing radio, and several print publications are fully dedicated to to defaming her. There has been no such thing as a crackpot theory or accusation that was too extreme to investigate. After all this she has not been indicted or convicted of one single crime.
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There has, and the older ones among us might even remember such a time.
Re: Skeptical Science (Score:2)
Trump admin called for it, so it must be bad - don't bother with details of facts!
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I’m with the Evil Death Industries on this o (Score:5, Insightful)
Environmental regulations should be strictly based on science, but it should be on published research with publicly available, peer reviewable data.
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That's fine. Please release the results of your latest colonoscopy to the public domain so we can use it to help formulate public policy.
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Please mail the stool samples to: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500.
Be sure to include a return address!
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You know that's illegal to send by the US Postal Service don't you? You have to use UPS or Fedex.
Just don't want you to get in trouble, or for the AC to miss out on the specimen.
Re:I’m with the Evil Death Industries on thi (Score:5, Insightful)
Environmental regulations should be strictly based on science, but it should be on published research with publicly available, peer reviewable data.
Absolutely! I would in fact propose a law that requires any company that challenges EPA regulation based on this argument to open all their own books and research in the interest of transparency.
Re: I’m with the Evil Death Industries on th (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely! Partisan humbug and rancor aside, transparency is a good thing. If it's not transparent and reproducible, it's NOT science.
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What, exactly, is stopping these corps to cough up the dough themselves for this data and do their replication? Oh yes. Fucking greed.
Reproducibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Without data and methods, the study can't be reproduced, so the conclusions can't be challenged.
That's not science.
Anonymize the data. That's what everyone else does. Or compel data from the entities in question. Compelling data is only a rule change away.
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Anonymize the data. That's what everyone else does.
That's specifically what this rule is proposed to prevent. That constitutes the confidential data that is not being disclosed, and thereby the entire research is excluded from EPA consideration. And due to HIPAA and the unlikelihood that patients will all sign a release for their medical information, that's exactly what would happen.
Re:Reproducibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not what the rule says. It bans research which is underpinned by confidential data. Now, nobody ever releases _all_ data regarding a research, any research. The question is whether _relevant_ data is held back. We don't need to know personal identification for a medical research to have validity (see: current standards in medical research), ergo this data is not underpinning an anonymized research and it can be consulted under the new rule while being HIPAA compatible.
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You seem to know a lot about the wording of this rule. Did you find a source for the full text? Until then, I remain very skeptical - as my interpretation lines up with the current administrations goals very well.
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Or, maybe, just let the corps negotiate for that data themselves for their counterstudies?
What else do you expect from the... (Score:3, Funny)
Environmental Pollution Agency?
the Enterprise Protection Agency ? (Score:2)
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In other words... (Score:3, Insightful)
This change will require environmental regulation decisions to be based on publicly-available data, rather than secret datasets - and the problem is what, exactly? Critics of this rule change apparently are forcing themselves to pretend medical data can't be annonimized and made public...
What is fascinating is that the critics are ignoring how this regulation would protect their interests of a business-favoring administration tried to ram thru a regulation rolling back a clean water regulation ("I have secret medical data that shows humans have an incredible tolerance for less in their drinking water, we we are rolling back safe water regulations").
And the problem is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Under the new proposals, the EPA will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential medical and industry data.
So the EPA proposes that the science used to determine public policy and environmental regulations be held to the same rigorous standard as your average sixth-grade science fair submission, and critics attack the proposal because... decisions based on secret data is the only way to protect the environment?
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You seem to think there is some HIPPA requirement that prevents publishing medical data for research purposes - take a look here [hhs.gov]:
The HIPAA Privacy Rule establishes the conditions under which protected health information may be used or disclosed by covered entities for research purposes. Research is defined in the Privacy Rule as, “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing, and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.” See 45 CFR 164.501. A covered entity may always use or disclose for research purposes health information which has been de-identified (in accordance with 45 CFR 164.502(d), and 164.514(a)-(c) of the Rule)
De-identifying health information is as simple as removing patient name, birth date, and any other non-medically relevant identifier before publishing the data.
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Tit for Tat (Score:2)
Understanding HIPPA regulations (Score:4, Informative)
The HIPAA Privacy Rule establishes the conditions under which protected health information may be used or disclosed by covered entities for research purposes. Research is defined in the Privacy Rule as, “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing, and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.” See 45 CFR 164.501. A covered entity may always use or disclose for research purposes health information which has been de-identified (in accordance with 45 CFR 164.502(d), and 164.514(a)-(c) of the Rule)
Source: Health Information Privacy [hhs.gov]
Ignorance of the HIPPA regulations is fueling much of the backlash this proposed federal regulation change is attracting.
Once the data is "de-identified" it can be published, and removing identifying elements is trivial.
Seriously??? (Score:2)
"The EPA has for decades relied on scientific research that is rooted in confidential medical and industry data "
Am I reading this incorrectly? To me this means the EPA is relying on data that is not publicly available for peer review. How can you even call it science if you data-sets are not available for peer review?
Re:Real Science is Reproducible (Score:5, Insightful)
Not disclosing public health data does not make a result non-reproducible. It just makes it less convenient to reproduce.
In your conception of "reproducible", gravity wave detection is not science, because you can't reproduce the detection of any specific event.
Re:I'd prefer limiting laws to scientific ones. (Score:5, Informative)
"Solid research" means meeting the normal standards for research in that field.
I've actually worked with public health data, and the standard for exchanging data is to aggregate that data in such a way that personally identifiable information is not recoverable. For example when you report an HIV case, you know the person lives at 123 Maple Street, but you instead report it as occurring within a geographic area that contains enough people that it's not feasible to work out who that person is, even if you combine it with other data.
That's the usual standard. If you ask for surveillance data, you get sanitized data, never raw data. It may limit the kinds of conclusions you draw, but it doesn't undermine the validity of the conclusion you *do* draw.
Re: I'd prefer limiting laws to scientific ones. (Score:5, Informative)
I worked with such sanitized data. Geography is reduced to a state and time reduced to a year. That was definitely not enough to do science.
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That's less precise than is usual. Week/county is more typical in infectious disease surveillance. But in any case, it's not the case that even that's "not enough to do science". It's not enough to do a lot of things you might want, but I've seen results with not much more than that precision that were useful (e.g. the spread of the Asian Tiger Mosquito from its introduction through California plant nurseries).
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Yeah, let's get a test environment set up, stat. And by environment, I guess I mean a duplicate Earth? That doesn't sound all that practical, you know.
Re: Yes! (Score:3, Informative)
Secret laws, secret courts, tyranny.
Secret data, secret science, charlatanism.
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Cite some of them. Please, go right ahead.
fn (Score:2)
Re:Ummm... did the Trump administration just do go (Score:5, Insightful)
But requiring all the science data to be available is a GOOD thing.
Unless the science data can't be made available, thereby invalidating all research that involves medical side effects. This is just a way to prevent science from being used because it proves too much.
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No, it did not. This is merely a trick to make it feasible to discount public health data in making public health decisions that might put a damper on profit.
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Now, I hate Pruitt and everyone else involved in this shitshow, but ... it looks like they actually did something positive for a change.
That's exactly their intent - to LOOK like they did something positive, when in fact it is a major setback for science-based policy.
Re:US on their way back (Score:4, Insightful)
Donald Trump is such a terrifying fascist dictator that literally nobody fears speaking about him on any platform.
THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM-BENITO MUSSOLINI (1932)
Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State.
Now of all the players in American politics today, which group does this best describe?
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The difference is that by now our leaders found out that it means jack shit if people talk. If anything, it keeps them from revolting because they think they still have freedom.
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You see what's going on here? We have whole boards where any meaningful conversation ceased long ago because Trump here and Hillary there. Did it do anything? Please.
The reason why things happen in those other places is mostly because people still give a shit. We've gone long beyond that.
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First of all I did not say that Trump is fascist dictator. I also did not say that the US is a fascist state. My point is that the Us is moving towards conditions which resemble a totalitarian police state including white chauvinism (that is the declaration of race the the claim of superiority of the white race). And that is pretty much what fascism is built on. If you look at your Mussolini quote, you can see that the collectivism excludes Mussolini himself. And if you look at historical fascistic regimes,
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If the data shows that we need more CO2, more NOx and more SO2 in our atmosphere, by all means do it!
Re: I wonder how /. would feel (Score:2)
Requiring publicly-accessible for all environmental decisions, either increasing or rolling back regulations is a good thing, and the technology needed to minimize medical data to confirm with hills is trivial - unless the Trump administration calls for it, then his critics insist that true science requires decisions based on secret datasets!
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You prefer environmental regulations based on secret data?
I have a report right here that says smoking two packs of cigarettes a day has absolutely no negative health effects. What was that, you want to see the data, sorry, HIPPA regulations prevent me from releasing it - trust me.
or
I've got a report right here that details the positive health effects increased greenhouse gases have on children under 3 years old. What was that, you want to see the data, sorry, the data is proprietary so I can't release it