Top Three Findings from the Latest UCS Survey of Federal Scientists

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) recently conducted a survey of federal scientists to ask the state of the science, and the results are in. This is our tenth iteration of the survey since 2004, and to our surprise and delight, challenges remain, is the widespread consensus that scientists in the federal government are more positive about their jobs now than at any time we’ve conducted the survey.

We sent the survey last September and October to over 46,000 scientists across six federal agencies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), US Fish and Wildlife , Mailed Service (FWS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The survey was conducted in conjunction with the University of New Hampshire Survey Center and the project was approved by the University of New Hampshire Institutional Review Board.

Several interesting trends in the survey data prompted us to either say “Eureka!” or sparked our interest in learning more. Here are three insights that we believe offer important insights on how to further strengthen research integrity policies in agencies.

Significant improvements in research integrity training

At UCS, we strongly believe that federal scientists should be well educated on the content of their agency’s scientific integrity policies. It is important that researchers are fully aware of their rights, have easy access to Research Integrity Policy documents, and know who to contact – and what the investigation process will be – if they witness a potential breach of research integrity.

Research integrity policy training can even help strengthen diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility considerations in agencies. Scholars earlier in their careers or who identify with a historically marginalized group may feel less able to speak up when they witness a potential violation of scholarly integrity. Training can therefore help to provide them with basic tools to understand their rights. As my colleague Jacob Carter previously wrote, “Early-career scientists are not typically trained in scientific integrity, even though the issue is clearly important to the scientific community. Educating young scientists on this critical issue could help raise awareness of the issue of scientific integrity and educate the future scientific workforce.”

A majority of the researchers we interviewed—73 percent (1,170 respondents)—reported that they received adequate training on their research integrity policies. This far exceeds the percentages when we conducted these polls during the Trump and Obama administrations. For example, at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, 72 percent (140 respondents) said they felt adequately trained on scientific integrity guidelines, a 16 percent increase compared to our 2018 results (56 percent, 189 respondents) and an increase by 40 percent compared to results from 2015 (32 percent, 250 respondents). And the US Fish and Wildlife Service is no outlier; We saw similarly large increases in all of the agencies we surveyed.

While training on research integrity policies is certainly not the be-all and end-all to ensuring that authorities protect researchers and their work from political interference, it is a good indicator that things are moving in the right direction and can help , to prevent this laying the groundwork for major changes in agencies.

Personnel capacity was a major concern

As UCS previously investigated, a large-scale brain drain took place during the Trump administration. For example, we previously noted that EPA’s Office of Research and Development, the agency’s scientific research arm, lost 12 percent of its workforce between 2016 and 2020. Unfortunately, our survey results show that a lack of human resources continues to hamper science-based agencies.

Fifty-nine percent of the researchers surveyed (982 respondents) said they had seen staff attrition, retirement, or hiring freezes in the past two years. Of these, about 88 percent (868 respondents) said a lack of capacity made it difficult for them to fulfill their agencies’ science-based tasks. Seventy percent (715 respondents) of those who reported burnout said it was due to a lack of staffing capacity. And respondents overwhelmingly cited limited human resources as the number one obstacle to science-based decision-making.

As one NOAA scientist put it, “The most significant limiting factor in my agency’s ability to maintain scientific integrity is its staffing levels. We are constantly being asked to do more with less or more with the current workforce.”

Staffing shortages at the EPA have recently reached staggering proportions and may hamper its ability to fully implement President Biden’s climate goals. The EPA’s staffing level today is about the same as it was in the 1980s. Thousands of EPO employees affiliated with the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union that represents about half the EPO workforce, are lobbying Congress to address staffing issues in their agency.

More than 160 scientists report being bullied or harassed

Online harassment and bulling against academic and federal researchers are persistent threats that have increased in recent years. Scientists from certain fields — like climate scientists, social scientists, and COVID-19 scientists — appear to be particularly vulnerable to online harassment. For example, a March 2022 poll conducted by the magazine Science found that 38 percent of COVID-19 researchers said they had experienced at least one type of attack, ranging from personal insults to death threats.

We asked two new poll questions to assess whether federal scientists are being bullied or harassed by people outside of government because of their scientific work. Our results indicate that this is not a common problem faced by federal scientists; 79 percent of the scientists (1,283 respondents) stated that they had not experienced such harassment in the last two years. However, we are very concerned that 10 percent of the scientists surveyed (162 respondents) said they had been bullied in the last two years. CDC scientists reported the highest percentage of bullying among the six agencies we surveyed, at 16 percent (52 respondents).

Even one scientist experiencing this form of harassment is too much. Scientists just do their jobs, conducting studies and analyzing data to better understand aspects of our world; these activities should never result in threats to her life or the life of her family or other forms of harassment.

In addition, we found a much more mixed response when we asked whether researchers were aware of the process for reporting external harassment at their agency and whether they felt their agency would adequately protect them from harm. About 45 percent (725 respondents) agreed, while 28 percent (451 respondents) disagreed. Findings show that agencies can do more to make federal scientists aware of how to raise concerns about external harassment and feel better protected in such situations.

Found solid gains but needed more work

The scientists who took part in our survey reported stronger and more effective protections for scientific integrity in their agencies, better working conditions for scientists and progress in measures to improve diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in agencies. However, scholars also described a number of challenges that remain, including a lack of staff to carry out the agency’s science-based work, doubts as to whether the protections of scientific integrity will endure beyond the current government, and a persistent lack of diversity in the agencies’ staff, leadership and advisory committees.

It is clear that the Biden administration has made some real strides in strengthening the standards of scientific integrity in the agencies. Recently, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a framework for scientific integrity, which agencies will now adopt. It should help to further standardize and strengthen scientific integrity across agencies.

However, there is still much work to be done to protect scientists and their work from political interference, including the need for Congress to enact these achievements into law so that they can endure no matter which government comes to power. We at the Union of Concerned Scientists will continue to monitor these issues closely, as we have since 2004. And we will continue to reach out to news agencies to ensure unfettered science and data feed into government policy.