The National Association of Scholars (NAS) welcomes U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin’s decision to appoint Louis Anthony Cox and Stanley Young to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC)—Cox returning as Chair, a position he held during the first Trump administration. Young previously served on the EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB)—a position from which he was fired by the Biden administration in 2021, in a move of little precedent and dubious legality. Both Cox and Young are eminent figures who we expect to do yeoman work to improve EPA policy.
We praise them not least because NAS has the good fortune to be associated with both of their careers. Anthony Cox spoke at our 2020 conference, Fixing Science: Practical Solutions to the Irreproducibility Crisis, and we have had occasion to praise his contributions to the 2019 CASAC review. Stanley Young has been the lead researcher and co-author for our Shifting Sands series of reports (2021-2025), which examined how irreproducible science affected select areas of government policy and regulation. The first of the Shifting Sands reports focused on how irreproducible science affects the environmental epidemiology of airborne fine particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5)—precisely CASAC’s remit. We know enough of Cox’s and Young’s knowledge and wisdom regarding proper scientific procedures and environmental epidemiology to be delighted that they will contribute to CASAC and thereby inform EPA policy.
The EPA’s announcement noted that “The well-qualified experts from a broad range of scientific disciplines bring the experience and expertise needed to provide Gold Standard scientific advice to EPA leadership as they advance the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.” The phrase Gold Standard of course refers to the 2025 Restoring Gold Standard Science Executive Order, which promulgated a general directive for federal agencies to address the irreproducibility crisis of modern science by improving transparency and integrity in the scientific research used to inform government policy. Much of NAS’s science policy work in the last decade has focused on publicizing the existence and dangers of the irreproducibility crisis, with an eye to both academic practice and government policy. Cox and Young are precisely those whom the EPA needs to apply Gold Standard Science to its clean air policy.
Which matters not only because scientific research should seek the truth rather than a political end but also because misguided EPA policy can cause staggering economic damage and unnecessary constraints on economic freedom. We care most about science’s truth-seeking procedures, but it is not idle that the EPA has used non-transparent scientific research to justify clean air policies with cumulative costs in the many billions of dollars, or even trillions. The consequences of the irreproducibility crisis are not merely academic.
We have made several suggestions to the EPA over the years about reproducibility policy reforms we believe they should enact. But what we say to CASAC, and especially to Cox and Young, is this: you already know that what America needs is science policy that relies on depoliticized research, the correct use of statistics and the correct assessment of risk, transparent data, transparent procedures, transparent exercises of government expertise, and rigorous requirements for scientific integrity applied to all scientific research that informs government policy. You know that scientists should seek the truth rather than a given policy outcome. We urge you to translate what you know as swiftly, efficiently, and comprehensively as possible into practical advice for the EPA, which they can use to reform the regulatory nuts and bolts of their clean air policies.
You will have the NAS’s support for this excellent mission, and the support of all Americans who care that the EPA uses only the best science, depoliticized, transparent, and honest, to craft government policy.
Photo by U.S. Department of Agriculture on Flickr
