18 Aug 2011
How Assessing and Managing Risk Are Different:
Professional football training
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Science
The Houston Texans are holding training camp in Houston, where it has been routinely very hot and humid. What the team is doing is making a clear distinction between the assessment of human health risk (in this case, from heatstroke and dehydration) and the management of these risks.
It's an interesting lesson showing why the conventional methods of human health risk assessment used by government are so flawed.
More...12 Aug 2011
Drinking Water Regulations and Conservation:
The latter makes the former more expensive
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Economics
A report in the Barnstable Patriot suggests that water conservation is raising the cost of drinking water in Hyannis, Massachusetts.
More...1 Apr 2011
Disease Clusters and Environmental Health:
Oral Testimony of Richard B. Belzer
by Richard Belzer
in Legislation, Regulatory Science
In his capacity as President of Regulatory Checkbook, Neutral Source's Managing Editor Richard Belzer was asked to testify before the US Senate on scientific and technical issues related to the identification and verification of environmental disease clusters. The bill under consideration is S. 76, the "Strengthening Protections for Children and Communities From Disease Clusters Act," co-sponsored by Sens. Boxer (D-CA) and Crapo (R-ID).
Neither Regulatory Checkbook nor Neutral Source take positions on or advocate the passage or defeat of substantive legislation.
The full oral testimony is reproduced below the jump.
The full written testimony is here.
More...31 Mar 2011
Disease Clusters and Environmental Health:
Written Testimony of Richard B. Belzer
by Richard Belzer
in Legislation, Regulatory Science
In his capacity as President of Regulatory Checkbook, Neutral Source's Managing Editor Richard Belzer was asked to testify before the US Senate on scientific and technical issues related to the identification and verification of environmental disease clusters. The bill under consideration is S. 76, the "Strengthening Protections for Children and Communities From Disease Clusters Act," co-sponsored by Sens. Boxer (D-CA) and Crapo (R-ID).
Neither Regulatory Checkbook nor Neutral Source take positions on or advocate the passage or defeat of substantive legislation.
The full written testimony is reproduced below the jump.
The full oral testimony is here.
More...1 Mar 2011
The REINS Act:
Would it work as intended?
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Policy
House and Senate Republicans have proposed legislation (HR 10, S 299) intending to substantially change federal regulatory practice. The proposed Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2011 (The "REINS Act").
What is the bill supposed to do? What is it likely to do?
More...21 Jan 2011
Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration:
Clinton and Obama directives compared
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Policy
On January 18, President Obama issued an executive order that modifies longstanding principles and procedures for centralized regulatory oversight conducted by by the Office of Management and Budget.
The three tables below provide a side-by-side comparison of the new text with the text of Executive Order 12,866, issued by President Clinton in 1993. To guide readers in making comparisons, text that is underlined is the same in both documents.
Interpreting such texts requires close attention to detail. For this reason, we have color-coded both texts as follows:
GREEN HIGHLIGHT: Directive language (e.g., "shall", "must") with tightly defined verbs (e.g., "identify", "assess", "design", "maximize", "promulgate") often applied to concrete objects (e.g., "net benefits", "duplicative", "burdensome", "least burdensome", "most cost-effective") sometimes comprehensively (e.g., "only").
Objective performance evaluation generally is possible.
YELLOW HIGHLIGHT: Hortatory language (e.g., "should", "may") with loosely defined verbs (e.g., "consider", "promote", "endeavor to provide", "harmonize"), or used to modify directive language ambiguously (e.g., "where feasible and appropriate", "to the extent feasible").
Objective performance evaluation typically is impossible.
Where GREEN text is preceded or followed by YELLOW text, the result is always weaker.
More...
14 Jan 2010
Paperwork Reduction Act
How to improve implementation of the law
by Richard Belzer
in Paperwork Burdens
On October 28, 2009, the Office of Management and Budget solicited comments on its implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act. The purpose of the PRA is to minimize burdens on the public resulting from the federal government's information requests.
Neutral Source managing editor Richard Belzer submitted comments on his own behalf. These comments eventually will be uploaded by OMB to Regulations.Gov, the Federal government's web portal for all regulatory matters. (Clicking on the link above will reveal a fundamental weakness of the web portal: Unless the agency chooses to include information identifying the name and organizational affiliation of the submitter, there is no way to find any specific comment without opening them all.)
In response to numerous requests, a copy of these comment is posted to the Library.
More...24 Oct 2009
How Big is the Risk of H1N1 ("Swine") Flu? Part 2:
Where is the anti-vaccination movement located
by Richard Belzer
in People & Institutions, Regulatory Science
In a recent post we noted an apparent factual inconsistency: Vaccine opponents are often described as being motivated by religion and animus toward science, but the most public vaccine opponents do not appear to have these characteristics.
We've found more data showing that opponents of childhood vaccines are predominantly located in wealthy, liberal communities.
More...3 Jul 2009
National Organic Program:
Is it 'going to seed'?
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Policy
Washington Post staff writers Kimberly Kindy and Lyndsey Layton say the US Department of Agriculture's National Organics Program is falling short, allowing synthetic ingredients or to be used in making organic foods.
In their long Page One story, Kindy and Layton never reveal crucial facts about the National Organic Program: it's a marketing program, not a food safety program.
More...30 Mar 2009
Forecasting Economic Depression:
Illustrating the pitfalls of expert elicitation
by Richard Belzer
in Information Quality, Regulatory Science
In recent years there has been a notable increase in the use of expert elicitation in human health risk assessment. The method usually involves empaneling a group of experts and, through a carefully crafted and complex set of procedures, asking each panel member to provide a subjective probability that some phenomenon that cannot be directly observed is true or false. The Environmental Protection Agency has an informative external review draft white paper on the subject.
In environmental health, expert elicitation has been used to quantify the risk of cancer from drinking water disinfection byproducts, the likelihood that routine exposure to particulate matter in air causes premature mortality, and the magnitude of uncertainties related to climate change. Each is a tough scientific question. For example, the risk involved may be quantitatively small, and hence hard to discern, or the scientific uncertainties may be very large. Judgment is required, and the judgments of scientists inevitably reflect a mixture of scientific expertise and nonscientific opinion.
The need for discerning science from policy in expert judgment has been recognized for decades, at least since the 1983 National Research Council Red Book. No consensus yet exists concerning how to do this in practice. As a result, practitioners of expert elicitation typically acknowledge the problem but not much else. The EPA external review draft white paper mentioned above, for example, says that Agency technical support documents relying on expert elicitation should address "[p]ossible correlations with non-elicited components of the overall analysis or policy question" -- a phrase that, when translated into plain English, means the inflitration of experts' policy views into their characterization of science.
Today's Wall Street Journal has an example drawn from a very different arena -- macroeconomic forecasting -- that offers a wealth of insight about the problems with expert elicitation.
More...25 Feb 2009
Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration, Part 3:
Cass Sunstein and his critics
by Richard Belzer
in People & Institutions, Regulatory Policy
Long time University of Chicago Law (and recent Harvard Law) professor Cass Sunstein is expected to be nominated by President Obama to be the new Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. OIRA is the statutory office within the White House Office of Management and Budget that, among other things, has conducted centralized regulatory oversight on behalf of the president since 1981.
When Susan Dudley was nominated in 2006 to head this office, Neutral Source published an eight-part analysis of her "paper trail," which is summarized here. We undertook this task because her nomination generated controversy from certain activist groups, most notably Public Citizen, and we found significant factual discrepancies between the actual content of this paper trail and her critics claims about it.
We intend to repeat this effort, but Sunstein presents an unusually difficult challenge.
More...24 Feb 2009
Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration, Part 2:
Alive and well, reports to the contrary notwithstanding
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Policy
In a February 17 article, Politico reporter Josh Gerstein claims that "[i]n his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations" and "managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps." Gerstein further claims that this "escaped notice because they were never announced by the White House Press Office and were never placed on the White House web site."
Gerstein's reporting is erroneous.
More...
3 Feb 2009
Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration, Part 1:
Executive Order 13497
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Policy
On January 30, President Obama signed Executive Order 13497, which begins the process of changing the way the Office of Management and Budgwet performs centralized review of draft proposed and draft final regulations. In a memorandum to agency heads, the President also announced a plan to produce "a set of recommendations" within 100 days (~ May 14, 2009).
Texts for both documents are provided below.
More...12 Nov 2008
Petition for Correction to the Office of Management and Budget Concerning the Draft 2008 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulation
by Richard Belzer
in Information Quality
On November 7, 2008, Regulatory Checkbook -- Neutral Sourcve's sister nonprofit organization -- filed a public comment on the Office of Management and Budget's draft 2008 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulation.
This public comment also was submitted as a formal Petition for Correction under OMB's Information Quality Guidelines (PDF). Under those guidelines, influential information OMB disseminates must be substantively and presentionally objective, transparent and reproducible, and provide utility for its intended purposes of informing Congress and the public.
The draft Report does not satisfy these information quality standards.
OMB is obligated by its own guidelines to respond within 60 days (i.e., by January 6, 2009).
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25 Sep 2008
Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulation:
2008 draft report published for public comment
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Economics
The Office of Management and Budget has published its 2008 draft report to Congress on the benefits and costs of federal reguilation. OMB is required by lawe to publish this report every year.
Public comments are due by Friday, November 7, 2008.
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