By Elena Saxonhouse and Adam Beitman

Shortly after Scott Pruitt took over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Sierra Club filed a formal complaint with the agency's Inspector General demonstrating that he violated EPA's Scientific Integrity Policy in multiple ways. Our filing called for an investigation into and resolution of Pruitt's televised denial of established science: the fact that carbon pollution plays a strong role in fueling the climate crisis. Wednesday, we received a private letter in response from the EPA's Office of the Science Advisor. Unfortunately, the letter and the panel decision it describes provide a fundamentally flawed reading of the Scientific Integrity Policy. The decision fails to address many of the areas of the policy the Sierra Club had called attention to, relies on partial quotes from the policy, and provides Pruitt with special protections afforded to actual scientists working at the agency, although he is—quite obviously at this point—not a scientist. This erroneous and incomplete review led to a conclusion that Pruitt had not technically violated the policy because he was expressing an "opinion."