On May 23, President Trump delivered a decree Entitled “Restore the science of gold standards”. And, in news that can surprise our readers, it seems remarkably good, focusing on questions such as reproducibility and conflicts of interest. Although there were a few things that could be better formulated, with regard to basic scientific practices, the language was remarkably reasonable.
So why did we not report on what seemed to be a little good news? I had planned to do so, but the situation is complicated by the fact that the order is structured in a way that makes it very sensitive to which is responsible for its implementation, a situation sufficiently subtle so that I cannot understand how to manage it. Fortunately, I only had to wait a week for a member of the Trump administration to show how dangerous he could be and highlight his biggest problem.
Sunday, the commissioner of Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary, appeared in one of the information programs of the weekend, where he was asked about the decision to limit Access for pregnant people to COVVI-19 vaccines. The host mentioned that the aggregation of studies involving a total of more than 1.8 million women had shown that the vaccine was safe and effective.
Makary rejected all of this data because it was not a “science of gold standards”, perfectly illustrating how the sentence can be used as a tool to mislead the public.
Fixing standards
The decree defines the science of gold standards in various ways that have already been discussed and promoted by the scientific community itself, including groups such as the Open scientific movement. He mentions things such as the reproducibility and the use of hypotheses that you can show are false, the open communication of results and uncertainties and the emphasis on collaborative work. It also includes some obvious rules, as prohibiting it from federal employees to engage in a research failure.
Overall, with regard to scientific practice, the elements of the science of gold standards seem to go from obvious and harmless to very positive.