Move research misconduct review out of the Office of Scientific Integrity

Research notes

• The instrument is Executive Order 14303, Restoring Gold Standard Science (signed 2025-05-23, published 2025-05-29), read in full at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-05-29/html/2025-09802.htm. Sections 5 and 7 are the operative ones for this Quote.
• partial rather than done: responsibility moved, but to a senior political appointee designated by the Administrator, not to “an independent body”. Not started would miss a real, dated change in who evaluates misconduct at EPA.
• Federal Register full-text search restricted to EPA returned 0 documents for “research misconduct” and 0 for “Office of Scientific Integrity” in the window.
• EPA’s scientific-integrity pages read 2026-09-06. Status unchanged. All four pages in EPA’s scientific-integrity section were read on this date and the inconsistency is real, one-sided and resolvable. EPA’s Scientific Integrity Policy page (updated 2026-07-31) offers exactly one document, the 2012 policy, and describes it as “EPA’s 2012 Scientific Integrity Policy”. Scientific Integrity at EPA (updated 2026-04-24 on the companion policies page) and Policies and Practices cite an “[EPA 2025 Scientific Integrity Policy]” as the source of every glossary definition. That 2025 policy is cited and not published: the policies-and-practices page’s own “Scientific Integrity Policy” link points back at the page offering the 2012 document, and no 2025 policy PDF is linked anywhere in the section.
• So the operative published policy is the 2012 one, which is what EO 14303 §5(a) would produce — it reverts agency scientific-integrity policies to those in force on 19 January 2021 and requires revocation of the changes made under the January 2021 memorandum. The glossary’s citations to a 2025 policy are the strongest sign that a superseding document exists internally; it is a lead, not Evidence, because no allowlisted page carries it.
• Where misconduct review sits, which is the ask: EPA’s published procedures still route it through the Scientific Integrity Official. The policies-and-practices page links “Coordination Procedures between the Scientific Integrity Official and the Office of Inspector General Regarding Scientific Misconduct Allegations” and “Policy and Procedures for Addressing Research Misconduct — EPA Order 3120.5”, and names no independent body and no designated senior appointee. That is the half of the Quote that has not happened, and it is why this stays partial rather than climbing: the shift EO 14303 §7 effects is to a political appointee designated by the Administrator, and EPA has published nothing implementing it.
• EPA’s own site search cannot be used to look for the 2025 policy: it returns an identical 12,097-byte page for a real query and a nonsense one, measured on this date.