Why We Did This Report
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General is issuing this report to notify the Agency of concerns identified during an investigation so that it may consider measures for improvement regarding scientific integrity and ethical conduct.
Summary of Findings
The OIG has identified concerns regarding the EPA Office of Research and Development’s, or ORD’s, review and clearance process for manuscripts; its lack of oversight of published manuscripts, authorship designation, and lab visitors; and its failure to ensure that ORD staff uphold federal ethical standards and Agency policies regarding impartiality and scientific integrity in the workplace. These issues enabled an ORD researcher to collaborate with family members on EPA work products without obtaining the proper waivers to guard against conflicts of interest, to add the researcher’s underaged child as a coauthor to a manuscript that had already been cleared by EPA management, and to bring the researcher’s underaged children into an EPA lab despite established safety prohibitions. In addition, we are concerned that the OIG was not notified in a timely manner that the EPA had initiated its own internal investigation into these issues, which adversely affected the efficiency and effectiveness of our investigation.
