Summary
The National Academy of Sciences has removed its climate chapter from the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence while it conducts an “independent review” of the process used to produce it.
That sounds reassuring, but NASEM has not said who will conduct the review, who will choose them, what records they will see, or how much of their work will be made public.
A serious review should examine author selection, conflicts, outside participants, funders, peer review, internal correspondence and the treatment of dissent. It should also ask whether NASEM’s existing rules were good enough, not simply whether staff followed them.
And if NASEM is serious about restoring confidence in its process, the review should not end with one judicial-manual chapter. The same questions should be asked about its 2026 extreme-weather attribution report and its 2025 greenhouse-gas review, completed on a six-week “fast-track.”
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has decided that its controversial climate chapter for judges needs an independent review. That is welcome news, but it’s only half of what’s needed.
On August 7, the National Academy of Sciences announced that the climate-science chapter in the fourth edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence would disappear from its website while an independent review examines the process used to produce it. The Federal Judicial Center had already removed the chapter after objections from Republican attorneys general. NASEM now says it wants to know whether its own procedures were adequate to ensure the “highest standard of objectivity.” The review is expected to conclude this fall.
So far, so good. But who exactly is going to do this independent reviewing? NASEM has not identified the reviewers. It has not said how they will be selected. It has not said what documents they will see, what witnesses they can question, whether their findings will be published in full or even what “independent” means in this case.
It has already told us one thing the review will not examine. According to NASEM, “This assessment is about the process used to produce the chapter and not about the validity of climate science.” Nobody needs another blue-ribbon panel to determine whether carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. But if the issue is process, then let us actually review the process.
What Would an Independent Review Look Like?
The National Academies knows how to describe independent review. Its reports routinely say reviewers are chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, and that the purpose is to test whether a report meets standards for quality, objectivity, evidence and responsiveness to the study charge. NASEM also normally identifies the reviewers and the people responsible for overseeing the review.
First, publish a written charge laying out exactly what the reviewers are being asked to determine. That means addressing whether NASEM's procedures were followed, whether conflicts were properly identified, whether the group of authors was balanced, whether contrary views got a fair hearing, whether outside contributors were properly disclosed, and whether editors or staff made decisions that affected the chapter's objectivity.
Second, identify the reviewers and disclose their possible conflicts. At a bare minimum, no one who contributed to the chapter, supervised it, funded it, advised the project, participated in its review, or belongs to the management chain whose conduct is under examination should be judging whether the process worked.
Third, give the reviewers the whole record: materials on how authors were selected, nominations, conflict disclosures, correspondence, meeting records, outside submissions, reviewer comments, responses to those comments, funding information and any internal discussion about affiliations or potential bias.
There may be legitimate reasons to redact personal or confidential material. There is no legitimate reason to reduce the final product to “we looked into it and found our procedures were adequate.”
Finally, publish enough of the review record that people outside NASEM can understand what went wrong, insofar as something did. An institution cannot restore trust by asking the public to trust its private investigation of whether the public should trust it.
We Have Seen This Problem Before
Firebreak readers have some context here. Earlier this month we examined NASEM’s new report, Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts. NASEM released the report on July 16, declaring that major scientific advances now allow more robust attribution of individual extreme-weather events and their impacts to human-caused climate change.
As we documented, the committee heard from Michael Burger of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. What the report did not list in his affiliation was that Burger is also of counsel at Sher Edling, the firm prosecuting climate lawsuits against oil companies. In a committee presentation, Burger openly discussed the relationship between developing attribution science and climate litigation. The committee also included, during part of the study, Delta Merner of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate-accountability operation. Researchers from Climate Central appeared in the acknowledgments. Washington Post “Climate Zeitgeist Reporter” Shannon Osaka briefed the committee on how journalists use attribution research and on the declining reader interest in attribution stories on their own.
We also noted the funding network around the project and the litigation campaign, and the oddity of a scientific committee receiving advice from people whose professional work would benefit from stronger, more usable attribution claims.
None of that proves a scientific conclusion false. But the purpose of conflict and bias rules is precisely to guard against public doubts about how judgments were made in the first place.
If NASEM wants to examine whether its procedures were adequate to guarantee objectivity in the judges’ manual, why would it not ask the same questions about the attribution report?
NASEM owes readers a straight answer on who selected the committee, and on which conflicts got flagged as relevant and which got waved off. It owes an explanation for why Burger's Sher Edling position never made it into the affiliation listed in the report. And it owes an account of what the peer reviewers actually knew about the litigation relationships surrounding the project, including whether anyone raised concerns, and if so, what happened to them.
The Report Did Make It to Court
Our previous piece also pointed to the timing of the attribution report. It appeared July 16, as briefing was underway in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, the Supreme Court case involving Boulder’s climate claims against fossil-fuel companies. We said we would soon find out whether the new NASEM report would become useful litigation material.
Notably, on August 3, the Natural Resources Defense Council filed an amicus brief supporting Boulder, and the National Academies’ July attribution report is all over it. The brief’s table of authorities cites the 2026 report on pages 5, 7-9, 12-13, 17-18 and 20-21. It also cites NASEM’s 2025 report, Effects of Human-Caused Greenhouse Gas Emissions on U.S. Climate, Health, and Welfare.
The amicus brief then uses the 2026 report to argue that attribution science has developed credible methods for connecting greenhouse-gas emissions to extreme events and their resulting damages, including harms allegedly suffered by Boulder.
This is why process matters: the National Academies seal is valuable in court because judges are not expected to reconstruct an entire scientific literature from scratch. A NASEM report arrives carrying institutional credibility. Judges, reporters and policymakers reasonably assume that conflicts were managed, competing views were considered and the process was designed to produce an objective assessment. If that assumption is wrong, we’ve got a problem.
Why Stop With the Judges’ Manual?
The 2026 attribution report raises obvious questions because the product is already being used in climate litigation. The interests of committee members, outside contributors, funders and litigation advocates are therefore highly relevant. But so too is the process behind NASEM’s 2025 report on greenhouse gases, health and welfare.
NASEM itself called its prior look a “fast-track review.” It announced the project on August 7, 2025, after EPA proposed reconsidering the 2009 greenhouse-gas Endangerment Finding, and said the report would be completed in September. It was published September 17.
Six weeks is not a long time to assemble a committee, review an enormous scientific literature accumulated since 2009, receive and evaluate evidence, manage conflicts, draft conclusions, put the report through independent peer review, address the reviewers’ comments and produce a consensus document on one of the most politically consequential scientific questions in federal regulation. Maybe NASEM performed this feat impeccably. If so, an independent process review would strengthen the institution.
A Review Worth Having
NASEM’s decision to pull the judicial chapter and review its process could turn out to be window dressing. There are reasons to suspect it will. Announcing an “independent review” without identifying the independent reviewers, the scope of their work or what the public will get to see is not much of a commitment.
But it is also an opportunity, because NASEM has publicly acknowledged something important: the quality of scientific advice depends not merely on whether smart people produced it, but on whether the procedures used to produce it were adequate to ensure objectivity.
Take that principle seriously.