Peer review, a process where the details of scientific studies are examined by authorities in their respective fields for applicability, reliability and merit before being published, have been in the news a lot recently. In order for the results of a study to be published in The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature or any other periodical with a pretense of scientific integrity, it must be scrutinized by a largely anonymous but influential group of recognized experts. Some times this works, sometimes it does not. Some studies are accepted and published and are later disregarded as erroneous. Others are rejected for publication but in the future turn out to be meaningful.
Nobody regards the construction of bills being put before the US Congress as a scientific process or the result of one. Bills like the trillion dollar plus monstrosity budget bill are a repudiation of science. What's important is that there is no "peer review" of the various parts of this bill, or any other bill, by recognized experts. Even worse, no names of authors are attached to the sections of the bill for which they are responsible. There is zero transparency.
No congressman can truthfully say that they've read the entirety of a 4,155 page budget bill. Worse yet, unknown people who were never subjected to the electoral process wrote the provisions of a bill that after being signed into law will affect the lives of every one living in the US and other countries as well.
What this does is insulate the individual Congressman from any responsibility for the negatives of the legislation, a primary goal of all bureaucracies in general and republican governments in particular. The President himself, the last piece in the jig saw puzzle of legislation, has never read the complete bill and is unlikely to understand most portions of it.
It's noteworthy that a culture that worships science and technology dismisses its role in government.
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