Welcome to the Neutral Source Blog
15 Mar 2006 in Welcome, Regulatory Science, Regulatory Economics, Regulatory Policy, Information Quality, Legislation, Litigation, Peer Review, People & Institutions, Corrections, Events, Glossary
Neutral Source opened for business on the Ides of March 2006.
Our mission is to provide a forum for discussion and debate about
the scientific and economic information lurking behind
regulatory polices and decisions. Where these policies and
regulations are well-grounded in science and economics, we
promote them as ideals worthy of
emulation throughout public policy. Where they are
not, we make evidence of error widely accessible to technical and
nontechnical audiences alike.
Scientific and economic information disseminated by federal regulatory
agencies is subject to information quality standards issued in 2002 by
the Office of Management and Budget. Since then, federal agencies have
had a legal obligation to ensure that the information they disseminate
is objective
and provide administrative means for the public to correct
error.In 2005, OMB issued supplementary guidance
on peer review intended to reduce the incidence of these
errors.
A public policy revolution began in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan
issued Executive
order 12,291.
For the first time, federal regulatory agencies had a legal obligation
to use science and economics to inform their decisions. When President
Bill Clinton issued Executive
order 12,866
in 1993, it proved that the cause of reasoned regulatory
decision-making informed by science and economics was a bipartisan
goal.
From the outset, regulatory agencies became monopoly providers
of the scientific and economic information use to make regulatory
decisions. Economics teaches that monopolies are undesirable because
they provide too little product, they charge too much for what
they produce, and quality suffers because they do not experience the
discipline of competition. These lessons are as true for the public
sector as they are for any private sector industry, and for this reason
the promise of the public policy revolution has not been realized.
The next public policy revolution will inject competition into the
supply side of the market for regulatory science and economics, and
Neutral Source is its vanguard. Regulatory alternatives
will be developed through a competitive democratic process
that welcomes instead of discourages stakeholder
participation. The effects of these alternatives will be
studied and estimated by competing interests, for they have the
strongest incentive to discover and expose scientific and economic
error and bias.
NeutralSource.orgis the first public forum for time-sensitive, critical reviews of regulatory science and economics.Click on About for more information concerning how to support this endeavor.
