GAO report gives HHS agencies a D in scientific integrity reporting

I guess it isn't just us "misinformation spreaders" who are pointing out the issues of scientific integrity in the HHS agencies. A new GAO report finds the HHS agencies lacking.

On April 20, the GAO released a report expressing concern about scientific integrity inside HHS agencies and recommends that all the agencies (CDC, FDA, NIH, HHS) need to improve staff training on reporting these incidents (hence my “D” grade in the headline).

The GAO report noted that a few of those surveyed at the FDA and the CDC further stated that “they felt that the potential political interference they observed resulted in the alteration or suppression of scientific findings.”

Note that they only surveyed a 16 people total in all the agencies so a few people reporting issues in that small of a sample set suggests that the problems are massive.

Here’s the summary of the recommendations (click to see full size version):

For the full analysis of the GAO report, see this well written substack article on the GAO report.

Summary

We are not the only ones noticing a lack of scientific integrity in the HHS agencies.