On May 23, the Trump administration issued An executive decree Entitled “Restore the science of gold standards”. Using a pleasant rhetoric, the order indicates that it aims to protect scientific rigor, prevent misconduct and restore public confidence in government science.
But under this brilliant golden is a return to strategies which threaten to weaken federal science, to reject the scientific conclusions and to open the door to the political manipulation of the policy based on evidence.
A striking example is its directive according to which agencies must make public “data, analyzes and conclusions” associated with any scientific information used to shape the major policy. On the surface, this seems to defend transparency. But he closely reflects the rule of “Secret Science” of the Trump Administration of Trump, which was explicitly designed to exclude studies according to the provision of raw data.
This rule would have Prohibited EPA from considering basic research in public healthIn particular the epidemiological studies based on the personal identification of health data, unless these studies make data at the individual level entirely accessible to the public. This kind of disclosure can violate legal and ethical standardsAnd it is not necessary to ensure scientific rigor. There is no scientific basis for requiring public access to raw data as a credibility condition; Peer examination remains the real ordeal to assess scientific validity, and transparency does not alone guarantee reliable science.
The so-called transparency was a facade: the real objective was to remove the science which hampered the regulatory declines of health protections based on evidence. Federal courts struck the EPA ruleBut the tactics behind it resurfaces in this new decree, now extended to all agencies.
This tactic is not new. Tobacco companies The pioneer in the 1990s exclude certain health studies from the regulatory examination. The Trump administration’s renewed emphasis on the disclosure of data, if it was implemented in the same way, would once again allow actors with political motivation to disqualify critical research – not for scientific reasons but on legal technicalities.
The executive decree also undermines the Biden Administration 2023 Frame for scientific integrity. This framework, developed by the science and technological policy office, demanded that all federal agencies create, update and ultimately strengthen their scientific integrity policies. He protected the rights of scientists to communicate openly, provided paths for dissident opinions and established current examination processes to improve policies of scientific integrity over time. By revoking these guidelines, the Trump administration returns the chronometer.
Some agencies will return to the less complete policies of the Obama era. Others, which have adopted scientific integrity standards only recently, can be left without protection. A 2020 Analysis by the Union of Scientists concernedWhere one of us is president, noted that many Obama era policies lacked clear procedures to combat violations of scientific integrity, did not allow different scientific opinions or did not protect scientists against political reprisals. This rollback leaves federal scientists and their more vulnerable work, no less, to political manipulation and suppression.
Perhaps more insidiously, the new order criticizes the use of the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion in the development of scientific policies. Biden administration rightly recognized that Science cannot be credible if it systematically excludes marginalized voices Or does not think about how politics affects vulnerable populations. Rejecting Dei under the banner of “scientific integrity” reveals a fundamentally political and non -scientific program.
In the end, the order is likely to expand the very shortcomings that it claims to fill. He deactivates internal surveillance mechanisms, threatens to block the use of crucial studies in government decisions and silent dissent. It is not a path to a “gold stallion” – it is a plan to politicize science and marginalized expertise.
If the administration is interested in the “science of golden standards”, it should deal with the recommendations of major scientific institutions that have long invested in improving the robust, transparent and reliable that the scientific process is. Instead, the administration has chosen to draw a page from a game book for politics. Regarding the improvement of the scientific process, this is an undefined exercise.
The scientific community needs transparent guarantees responsible for integrity and reliability, but those which reflect the functioning of science. Real transparency includes the disclosure of funding sources, peer examination processes and clear justifications for political decisions. This does not mean to make confidential health data public or punish scientists for drawing embarrassing conclusions for the Trump administration’s political agenda.
The scientific community must act because the structures intended to protect research against political manipulation are dismantled. Without strong internal protections, he will fall to the scientists themselves to respect the standards of transparency, independence and rigor. They can do that by Serve advisory committees,, Submit public comments to the actions of the Federal AgencyAnd Speak publicly when science is poorly used or sidelined. Our expertise is essential not only to advance knowledge, but to ensure that policies reflect the best evidence available.
Congress also has a role to play. Adopting legislation as Act of scientific integrity would codify the basic protections between administrations and guarantee that scientific evidence retains a central role in federal decision -making. If scientists are not expressed now, space for honest governance and based on evidence can shrink even more.
If we want to reach a real gold stallion, we need federal leadership that supports, not dismantling, the American scientific enterprise and whose actions follow a daring positive vision of the future of science. In the meantime, we must defend scientific integrity not only as a professional obligation, but as a cornerstone of democracy, before political agendas redefine which counts as the truth.
Jacob M. Carter, Ph.D., is founder of Scilight and expert in federal scientific and political integrity. Gretchen T. Goldman, Ph.D., is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Union of CONSEIL Scientists.