Collecting and releasing environmental data have stirred up controversy in Washington, says David Goldston, and will continue to do so. Data sound like a grey, non-partisan and unemotional topic for political discussion. But decisions on what data to collect and release for use in research or policy-making are hardly neutral in their impact. This may be clearest in the arena of environmental policy, where hard-fought disputes over the collection and dissemination of data frequently break out. Indeed, perhaps the only thing politicians agree on about environmental data is that more data are always better - in theory.
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