Scientific Integrity

Politicians threatened the existence of the Fish Passage Center after it produced numbers showing dramatic declines in salmon passing through the eight dams on the Columbia and lower Snake rivers.

Public agency scientists are under growing political pressure to alter, dilute or suppress their findings on issues of economic impact or controversy. When scientists find themselves in the political crosshairs, with their careers threatened, they call PEER.

In cases spanning the country and involving disciplines from botany to economics, PEER—

• Provides legal defense to scientists targeted because their work is politically inconvenient. Our defense of the staff of the Fish Passage Center is but a sample of our scientific docket of cases;
• Exposes scientific fraud and manipulation by political managers. PEER seeks to hold the science manipulators accountable; and
• Pioneers new legal paths to debunk political science substituting for real science.

For more than two decades, PEER has worked with and on behalf of scientists to empower them in confronting their own agencies and the political and commercial forces behind scientific perversion.