EPA says it will eliminate its scientific research arm

A lot of comments are rightfully pointing out the destructive nature of this move. But looking at it from another angle, is it possible this is a symptom of a deeper problem?

What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as political actors pushing an agenda? If that belief is widespread, is an action like this seen not as 'destruction', but as 'dismantling a biased system', even if it seems counterproductive to the rest of us?

can we imagine no other ways besides the EPA to take care of the environment? if we can't, then it was always a precarious situation.

A significant portion of the electorate believes that the government is hiding aliens, or that the political leadership are all secretly lizard people (whether this is meant literally or as a metaphor for Jews or whether they think Jews are secretly lizard people depends on the person). There are vast and necessary government functions that most of the electorate doesn't understand or doesn't value or completely misunderstands.

Even on hacker news I frequently see people completely misunderstanding how, for instance, scientific research gets funded in the US. And the readership of this site is far more likely than a random sample of Americans to know about scientific research.

Dismantling chunks of the government based on the ignorance of some portion of the electorate is just bad policy.

Unfortunately you’re right, this is more about beliefs.

Do we have real proof that a sizeable portion of Americans believe in the secret lizard people thing? Best I could find:

https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...

"Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, or not?"

11% said yes or were unsure.

That's from 2013, so I can't even begin to imagine what a poll from today would look like.

> What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as political actors pushing an agenda?

They do, but it’s not a belief they came upon accidentally. It was pushed over decades using billions of dollars and multiple media conglomerates.

I think the original sin of this political era is the Citizen United ruling that money is free speech and corporations are persons.

> What if a significant portion of the electorate no longer believes institutions like the EPA are neutral arbiters of science, but instead see them as political actors pushing an agenda?

This is clearly the case. The next question is, how did this happen? Did these people come to this conclusion based on their own diligent research, or were they led to this opinion by supremely funded vested interests that influence every branch of our society?

Come to Texas. Qualitatively, the answer is a thunderous, enthusiastic "yes".

11% said yes or were unsure?! One in fucking ten people, in the most generous interpretation, did not know whether the government were secretly shape-shifting aliens. God, how did we get here.

Well are we talking literally (under the old definition, not the new definition that the kids are apparently using these days) or metaphorically?

Yeah, but some proportion of those were joking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischievous_responders

For sure Fox et al. have been pushing the idea that scientists have biases, but it can also be true that science has become more biased.

Update: a little evidence. This doesn't cover change over time, but it strikes me as fairly extreme, unless you are willing to go very far down the "reality has a liberal bias" road: https://github.com/hughjonesd/academic-bias

Belief in aliens is fairly benign. Consider that half the population have an IQ below 50.

Noooo, that’s not true. Below 100, as it’s weighted for this to be true: half above half below. It could theoretically be possible for the half below to also be below 50, but this would require the other half to all be above 150, and both are absurd, because there are a whole horde of people of completely average intelligence.

Checking IQ test results, we see they follow a Gaussian with a mean of 100 and a stddev of 15.

Arguably, institutions like the EPA exist to moderate extremes. The EPA simulatenously prevents industry from causing cancer clusters and extinctions while also preventing eco-terrorism. All the science, surveys, and purple prose done by the EPA and consultants is arguably kinda bullshit, but it is very useful bullshit because its a whole lot better than assassinated mining executives and hospitals full of throat cancer victims.

I don't think the majority of electorates know that the EPA exists, let alone know what they do.

This is nothing more than Project 2025 at work.

It is so fucking sad that people, voting on vibes and single issues, sleepwalk into situations like this.

Republicans not always do what the electorate wants.

Abortion, gun control and releasing the Epstain list are have popular support but the are against it.

Sometimes a small influential group can push for an agenda. That are more organized and have more money

Democrats also do not always do what the electorate wants.

How many times did they have executive and both houses since Roe v Wade without passing law to enshrine the right to abortion?

Surely they could have released the Epstein list as well.

We can argue which party is “worse than the other” for sure, but both serve themselves and neither is a bright shining star of serving the actual people IMO.

Its a fact that the EPA added ~6000 employees during the Biden administration and also instituted DEI policies to follow President Biden’s Executive Order 14035 (2021). This included employee-led special emphasis groups, LGBTQ+ events, and justice-oriented programs. All this is out of focus from the EPA's goal to safeguard the natural environment.

It should be NO surprise that there is massive push-back after a republican administration came to power. Donald Trump explicitly campaigned to cut the EPA’s size and funding and to eliminate DEI and environmental justice programs in the federal government.

If the EPA added ~6000 employees during Biden, why did it have 1,155 employees when Trump took office?

Wow, the bullshit some people are high on.

They believe that because an elite few (Project 2025 authors and others) want all science to be demoted in the eyes of the public. Because that way lies control of the masses.

The last thing an authoritarian leader wants is a challenge to his authority, one that scientists will almost certainly provide.

1,155 is the number of employees in the research office. The EPA overall had 16,155 employees in January 2025 [1].

[1] https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-reduction-for...

> Republicans not always do what the electorate wants. > > Abortion, gun control and releasing the Epstain list are have popular support but the are against it.

No they're not, though? At least, amongst their voterbase. The Epstein files are the first truly bipartisan issue I've seen, the other two are very strictly partisan issues, and most Republicans/Conservatives I know do not want either.

Liberal in US = center right

wow. so as our society our only options are "do nothing" or "murder executives". i am sorry for your worldview.

> or were they led to this opinion by supremely funded vested interests that influence every branch of our society?

I hope you realize the irony that this argument applies to both sides of the argument here. In other words, how do you know that your research was done in an unbiased way?

As opposed to…?

> Wow, the bullshit some people are high on.

From the article, which was easy to google:

> The EPA currently has more than 16,000 employees, adding more than 6,000 during Joe Biden’s administration as the agency sought to rebuild.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/11/environm...