By Janet Raloff
The Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill, signed into law on Dec. 30, 2005, mandates that the federal government clean up its scientific act—at least for a year. The law prohibits the three agencies from knowingly disseminating bad data and bans application of any political litmus test to experts under consideration as outside advisers.
No agency funds shall be used “to disseminate scientific information that is deliberately false or misleading,” the statute commands.