RE: Question for 21 September: Can we trust the EPA?

[Tom Beierle <beierle@rff.org>]

In order to help people keep track of the many conversations going on in this dialogue, the organizers would like to be able to provide summaries of particularly interesting threads for the entire group.  This thread on trust is one of those particularly interesting ones.  I've offered to play the role of liaison between the thread and the broader group of participants by trying to pull together some of the themes at the end of the day.  Out here on the East Coat, its the end of the day.  So, here is my humble summary and some thoughts for where we might want to take the discussion over the next few days.

The thread ranges broadly across issues of trust and EPA, but two themes stand out.  The first deals with whether individual staff or the entire agency manipulate information (and access to it) to push a particular policy agenda (pro-industry, pro-environment--opinions differ).  The second theme deals more with issues of competence: Given its staff, mandates, budget, etc. does EPA have the ability to provide quality information?

>From the perspective of someone seeking "trustworthy" information from any source, these two themes translate into two quite different questions:
1. Is this information biased by an agenda that is not in my interest? and
2. Is this information complete and correct?

Over the next few days, it might be interesting to push these issues a bit as we think about different sources of information (federal, state, etc.): To what extent is our trust or mistrust of information related to the motivations of those providing it vs. notion's of the data's quality and completeness?