It certainly doesn’t look good. Federal investigators have confirmed that the White House altered a peer-reviewed report last May to expand a six-month drilling moratorium following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The decision sparked complaints from the peer-reviewers themselves, who said they never signed off on such a recommendation.

A detailed accounting of exactly what happened is included in a new report from the Interior Department’s Inspector General. The document has garnered traction in the press (Politico, AP) and has already been used by at least one senator, Louisiana Republican David Vitter, as evidence that the administration of Barack Obama isn’t making good on its promise to base policies on sound science. The conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute is even calling on Obama to fire his chief energy and climate advisor, Carol Browner.

The inspector general does not assert wrongdoing, however, and the administration (which later apologized) makes a plausible case that it was exercising its right to issue policy after consulting the science. A simple reading of the final report offers some evidence for this. After all, one set of recommendations is clearly attributed to the report (“The report recommends…”) and a second set of recommendations – including the moratorium – is clearly attributed to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar (The Secretary recommends…"). The moratorium is described as a temporary pause that would allow for “implementation of the measures proposed in this report”, and the word “moratorium” doesn’t appear in those detailed recommendations.

Regardless, this technical distinction failed to crystallize in the minds of many. The team that conducted the scientific review had agreed with the secretary’s recommendation for a more limited moratorium and a temporary pause on then-current drilling operations, but the final language recommended a moratorium on all drilling operations (later overturned in by the courts). In their letter (posted here), the reviewers made it clear that they did not agree with the final decision and felt that their names were being used to support it.

What is not at all clear – due to poor editing and/or poor communication – is whether the moratorium was actually part of the report and therefore subject to external review. If not, then it’s actually the peer-review team that is stepping on the policymakers’ toes.