NOAA leaders violated agency’s scientific integrity policy, ‘Sharpiegate’ investigation finds

WASHINGTON - An investigation conducted on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that agency leadership violated its scientific integrity policy through actions that led to the release of a statement that backed President Donald Trump’s false statement about the path of Hurricane Dorian.

The NOAA statement, issued Sept. 6, 2019, contradicted its own meteorologists at a weather forecast office in Birmingham, Ala.

The scandal over the forecast for Hurricane Dorian has come to be known as "Sharpiegate," after Trump modified a NOAA forecast map shown in an oval office briefing to depict the storm threatening Alabama.

The report, whose findings were accepted by NOAA's leadership and released Monday, found Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator, and former NOAA deputy chief of staff and communications director Julie Kay Roberts guilty of twice violating codes of the agency's scientific integrity policy.

"It will be clear to anyone reviewing the accounts captured in this highly credible, independent Scientific Integrity report that the political leaders who interfered in our emergency response system need to publicly apologize or resign," said Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., who had filed a complaint and is the sponsor of a bill that would make such violations more accountable across federal science agencies.

NOAA's scientific integrity policy prohibits political interference with the conduct and communication of the agency's scientific findings.

The investigation, requested by two NOAA employees, a former NOAA administrator, Tonko and others, was conducted on NOAA's behalf by a panel assembled by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution dedicated to facilitating good governance that conducts assessments for government agencies.

The requests were made in the wake of NOAA's issuance of a September 2019, statement that criticized the National Weather Service forecast office in Birmingham for a tweet that contradicted Trump's inaccurate assertion from Sept. 1, in which the president claimed that Alabama "will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated" from the Category 5 storm.

That statement embroiled NOAA in a storm of controversy over whether there was political interference with the scientific agency responsible for issuing life-saving severe weather warnings. The statement was widely interpreted within NOAA's National Weather Service as contradicting an accurate forecast because of political pressure from the White House and the Department of Commerce.

The investigation recommends no punishments for either Jacobs or Roberts, the latter of whom has since moved on to a different position within the Commerce Department. Instead it recommends that various guidelines and training materials be updated, and changes made to the integrity policy procedures to ensure that a similar act does not occur. It specifically calls for NOAA or other agencies to investigate alleged violations of scientific integrity when they involve senior NOAA and Commerce political leadership and it advocates mandatory scientific integrity training.

Trump has nominated Jacobs to the Senate-confirmed position to lead the government's lead oceans and atmospheric science agency, and his nomination has cleared the Senate Commerce Committee. These findings and the pending results of a Commerce Department inspect general's report may cloud his prospects on the Senate floor.

NOAA's scientific integrity officer received four complaints of misconduct after the unsigned Sept. 6 statement was released.

The NOAA officer, Cynthia Decker, along with others, determined that "it was in the best of NOAA" for an independent review of matter. Decker then enlisted NAPA.

During their review, which lasted from December to March, the NAPA panel found that acting Jacobs and Roberts violated NOAA's scientific integrity policy in two instances, doing so "intentionally, knowingly, or in reckless disregard" for the agency's code of scientific conduct.

First, it found that Jacobs and Roberts violated NOAA's code for science supervision and management for not giving the NWS Birmingham office an opportunity to engage in the drafting of the unsigned NOAA statement that reprimanded them. Second, it concluded that Jacobs and Roberts violated the same code for their role in developing and issuing the statement.

Jacobs's four-page response to NAPA's report argues that NAPA ignored the actual substance of the statement, which he contends was "accurate." He writes, "NAPA never questions or refutes the scientific veracity of the actual statement."

He said the statement is not the kind of scientific activity for which the integrity policy was intended to be applied and "is not practical or workable." Jacobs wrote, "Using NAPA's interpretation, all social media posts, including tweets, that referenced any NOAA employee's work would have to be reviewed by the scientist who completed the initial or previous work."

Roberts said she should not be held in violation of the NOAA's scientific integrity policy, because the drafting of the statement was directed by officials at the Department of Commerce. She says NOAA officials, including herself, raised concerns over the language in the statement. She contends, "additional reviews by NOAA officials would have done little to change the outcome."

The NAPA panel was not permitted to interview the Commerce Department officials involved in drafting the statement. The Washington Post has reported that the White House sought for NOAA to correct the record on the Hurricane Dorian forecast, and orders to NOAA were handed down through top aides to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, since NOAA is part of the department.

In a memo accompanying the final report, Stephen Volz - the Commerce Department's assistant administrator for satellite and information services and designated scientific integrity determining official - notes that Jacobs and Roberts were under pressure from others involved in the drafting process. Those other officials were not necessarily bound by NOAA's scientific integrity policy, Volz noted.

"Dr. Jacobs and Julie Roberts did not believe it was a good idea to release a statement, but felt significant external pressure to do so. They recommended, at two different points, that the reference to the Birmingham WFO be removed - an edit that, if accepted, may have avoided the policy violation," Volz wrote, using the acronym for a National Weather Service Forecast Office.

"However, when the edit was not incorporated, they chose to release the statement as a NOAA document."

Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official who directs the UCS Center for Science and Democracy and one of the complainants to NOAA, "There are absolutely no consequences for those who actually engaged in misconduct," Rosenberg said, calling it "very disappointing."

"It's hurricane season again," Rosenberg said in an interview, "Why would we think this won't happen again?"

Craig McLean, NOAA's acting chief scientist, who immediately called for a scientific misconduct investigation after the Sept. 6 statement, wrote that he concurred with the NAPA findings but lamented that there was no one to be held accountable for them within NOAA.

"The Panel concludes that Jacobs and Roberts felt that the situation they were in was out of their hands and their actions were driven by the direction of unnamed and uninterviewed Commerce officials who may well have been the subjects of the redactions," McLean wrote. "While there may be found causes of sympathy for the oppressed and meek subordinates of domineering autocratic ogres, I hardly can find sympathy in this scintilla of an argument for clemency. If not the single highest person in NOAA, who will stand for the Scientific Integrity of the agency and the trust our public needs to invest in our scientific process and products?"

The NOAA investigation is the first of three expected in the incident: The Commerce Department’s inspector general and the House Science Committee are expected to release reports.