National Academies of Sciences faces growing scrutiny as docs reveal deep climate-advocacy bias

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) in the past year has faced growing scrutiny over whether it is maintaining standards of objectivity and impartiality regarding its work concerning climate change. 

Now the organization is under pressure from the House Oversight Committee to provide documents it withheld as part of an ongoing investigation into allegations of bias, and 22 state attorneys general are calling for an investigation and possible suspension of its federal funding over allegations it's producing materials to help plaintiffs win climate lawsuits. 

Document release raises concerns

NAS’s mission is to provide objective, independent advice, free from any conflicts of interest, to the public and the federal government. It provided 1,500 pages of documents, communications and records to the Oversight committee as part of an investigation into NAS’s decision to fast-track its review of the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed rule without authorization from a federal agency. 

Some of the documents provided have only raised further concerns that NAS’s commitment to objectivity is being undermined by its pursuit of activists’ preferred climate policies, including a July 2025 email from Marcia McNutt, who was then-president of NAS, to Carol Cicerone, who manages an endowment supporting NAS. 

The EPA had announced a proposed rule that would rescind the so-called “endangerment finding,” an Obama-era regulation that is the basis for much of the federal government’s emissions-focused climate policy. 

In her email, McNutt asked Cicerone whether she could tap funds from the endowment to support a fast-tracked effort to complete a review of the finding and help save it. 

If the EPA was successful in rescinding the finding, McNutt warned, “This would mean an end to federal investment in CO2 reduction. Their position is based on a very biased report by a handful of climate deniers.” 

McNutt’s email appears to be aimed at maintaining funding streams for activist climate research and advocacy, and presents a predetermined conclusion of the EPA’s proposed rule. This prompted Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the Oversight committee, to pressure the organization to turn over documents withheld from its original request. 

“This evidence suggests NAS intended to prepare and release a biased review to undermine any final EPA action to rescind the Endangerment Finding and provide ammunition to environmental partisans for attacks in the courts and other public discussions,” Comer wrote in a letter Friday to current NAS President Neil Shubin.

Calls to end funding

As Comer was demanding the withheld documents last week, 22 state attorneys general sent a letter to Trump administration officials, also on Friday, calling for an investigation into NAS and possible suspension and debarment of federal funding stemming from the publication of an update to an influential science manual for judges, which included a chapter on climate science. 

Just the News reached out to NAS for comment on Comer’s letter and the letter from the attorneys general, but didn’t receive a response. 

The manual is co-published by the Federal Judiciary Center (FJC). Shortly after the manual was released, a coalition of 27 Republican attorneys general, many of the same ones who signed onto Friday’s letter to administration officials, demanded the chapter be removed. 

In a letter to the FJC, the attorneys general argued that the material on climate science isn’t adhering to the FJC’s purpose of the manual, which is to “describe the basic principles of major scientific fields” without instructing judges about what “evidence should be admissible.”  

Among the issues raised in the letter is the selection of authors for the material on climate science. They include Jessica Wentz and Radley Horton, each connected with climate studies programs at Columbia University. They co-authored a paper that advocates for litigation as a means to advance climate policy.  

Wentz and Horton authored the paper with Michael Burger, who is counsel for Honolulu in its ongoing litigation against energy companies, seeking damages the city alleges the companies have caused. Burger is also of counsel with the law firm Sher Edling. 

Burger’s work is cited four times in sections addressing climate litigation frameworks, attribution of responsibility, judicial treatment of climate science and the role of the courts in addressing alleged climate harms. The manual does not disclose that the cited material comes from a lawyer working for a firm involved in climate litigation. 

The issues the coalition raises in its letter are similar to the criticisms of the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project. The project has provided training to thousands of judges, and while the institute insists its training is impartial, the materials presented in the training exclude perspectives that would be favorable to defendants in climate cases.  

Review of chapter called a ‘sham’

The FJC immediately removed the chapter from its version of the manual, but NAS refused to do so. The manual, along with the controversial chapter, remained intact on NAS’s website, and the organization stood by it. Critics, meanwhile, continued to pressure the organization to remove it, among them President Donald Trump, who called it “fraudulent, biased, and misleading.” 

NAS finally bent to pressure earlier this month and agreed to remove the chapter pending a review.

“That chapter has received considerable scrutiny, and ... NAS has determined that questions about the processes used to develop the chapter warrant an independent review,” the organization stated in its announcement of the review. 

However, the 22 state attorneys general calling for a suspension of its funding say the review process appears to be a “sham” due to the “secrecy around all aspects of the review process.” 

The attorneys general argue in the letter that “a truly independent review would appoint an external panel; use reviewers who are not activists, litigation participants, or NASEM employees; publish the review process and findings; identify the review’s scope; and ensure the review’s scope addresses the material criticisms of the Chapter.”

Another controversial report

In their letter, the attorneys general rehash the controversy over a climate plaintiffs' attorney being involved in writing the chapter, as well as other activists. And they pointed out that the effort to include the chapter comes as the Supreme Court is set to take up a lawsuit filed by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado. The high court’s ruling in the case could have extensive implications for the dozens of other climate cases winding through state courts. 

They also bring up the controversy over a report NAS published this summer in support of attribution science, which attempts to attribute individual weather events to emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The field was developed by climate activists who have stated frankly that its intent is to aid plaintiffs in climate cases. 

Burger was also involved in the development of the attribution-science report. In November 2024, he provided a presentation to the NAS attribution committee. In the presentation, he stated he was “actively involved” in Sher Edling’s cases and he explained how attribution science could be beneficial to plaintiffs in climate cases. 

In a 2020 webinar hosted by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Burger described climate litigation as a “key part of the overall solution” to global warming. 

Besides Burger’s influence, Delta Merner, who leads the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate accountability campaign, served on the NAS attribution committee that developed the report. The campaign seeks to advance climate litigation and advance anti-fossil fuel climate policies. 

Taxpayer dollars involved

In their letter, the attorneys general zeroed in on NAS’s funding. 

The organization relies on donations from climate activists that it then uses to generate reports bearing the official approval of the federal government. Through the taxpayer-funded grants NAS receives in support of its research, taxpayer dollars, the attorneys general wrote, subsidize these reports propping up climate research that favors the plaintiffs in climate cases. 

“The Attorneys General are right to question NASEM’s federal funding and seek a charter review. As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in the [Boulder] case, neutrality needs to be restored, and the radical left-wing apparatus behind these cases questioned at every turn,” O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, said in a statement. 

It remains to be seen what will come of the NAS’s review or whether the Trump administration will begin to target the organization’s funding in response to these controversies. What is clear is that the concerns about climate activist bias in NAS’s work aren’t going to go away anytime soon.