13. Environmental Protection Agency · Minor
Stop using proprietary black box models in major EPA regulations
Printed page 438 13. Environmental Protection Agency
“Avoid proprietary, black box models for key regulations. Nearly all major EPA regulations are based on nontransparent models for which the public lacks access or for which significant costs prevent the public from understanding agency analysis.”
What has happened
- Partially done
Executive Order 14303 attacks the black box directly, without banning proprietary models. Section 4(b)(i) requires agency heads, to the extent practicable and within their authority, to make publicly available the data, analyzes and conclusions behind “influential scientific information” and — subparagraph (B) — “the models and analyses (including, as applicable, the source code for such models)” used to generate it, and forbids employees to invoke FOIA exemption 5 to withhold those models without the agency head's written authorization and prior notice to the OSTP Director. Section 4(g) requires that any communication derived from a model reference the model's material assumptions. What the order does not do is what the Quote's verb asks: it nowhere tells EPA to stop using proprietary models, and section 4(b)(ii) exempts risk models used to guide enforcement actions or select enforcement targets from disclosure altogether.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- The order’s rules bound EPA employees from 30 days after signature, and EPA has been citing the order in its scientific documents: twelve EPA Federal Register documents published in the window contain the phrase “Gold Standard Science”, beginning with the endangerment-finding proposal (2025-08-01) and running through the glyphosate literature search (2026-08-25). The formaldehyde risk-calculation notice is cited here as the clearest example of EPA invoking the order in a risk assessment.
- Partial, not done: the transparency half of the Quote is a binding rule; the “avoid proprietary, black box models” half is not, and the enforcement-model carve-out cuts the other way.
- A Federal Register full-text search of EPA documents for “black box” → 1 hit, and it is OMB’s government-wide financial-assistance proposed rule (2026-10817), not an EPA model policy.
- Action
- eliminate
- Object
- proprietary black box models in EPA regulations
- ID
- 1168