In this new presidential order of 23 May 2025, Trump pretends to
“restore the scientific integrity policies of my first Administration and ensures that agencies practice data transparency, acknowledge relevant scientific uncertainties, are transparent about the assumptions and likelihood of scenarios used, approach scientific findings objectively, and communicate scientific data accurately”
repeating his goal in
“restoring a gold standard for science to ensure that federally funded research is transparent, rigorous, and impactful, and that Federal decisions are informed by the most credible, reliable, and impartial scientific evidence available”
where
““Weight of scientific evidence” means an approach to scientific evaluation in which each piece of relevant information is considered based on its quality and relevance, and then transparently integrated with other relevant information to inform the scientific evaluation prior to making a judgment about the scientific evaluation. Quality and relevance determinations, at a minimum, should include consideration of study design, fitness for purpose, replicability, peer review, and transparency and reliability of data.”
While the order that
“science [in a federal agency should be] conducted in a manner that is:
(i) reproducible;
(ii) transparent;
(iii) communicative of error and uncertainty;
(iv) collaborative and interdisciplinary;
(v) skeptical of its findings and assumptions;
(vi) structured for falsifiability of hypotheses;
(vii) subject to unbiased peer review;
(viii) accepting of negative results as positive outcomes; and
(ix) without conflicts of interest”
sounds nice and dandy, incl. even a Popperian item!—while I highly doubt the Agent Orange has ever read anything from the author of Open society and its enemies—as well as an assessment of uncertainty and a critical look at the role of models—as if we were not, as a whole, following or trying to follow these tenets!—, the true intent of this order is to submit all research produced by federal agents and federally funded researchers to a vetting by political appointees before submission to a (vetted) scientific journal. As already been put into practice in some Departments. The rosy terms that set how science should be done are turned tupsy-turvy to the Trump administration Newspeak, while the purges in said administration render quality control more illusory than ever… Even the use of the term Gold Standard in a US policy declaration shows how little Trump understands about the term, given the USA abandoned at least twice the gold standard, in 1933 and 1978.
A few days after I wrote this piece, the New York Times published an article pointing out the above (in better terms) and reporting on an open letter from Stand Up for Science signalling the dreadful consequences of the executive order. With a primary correction to the above picture. And the central message that
We view this Executive Order as an escalation of the ongoing assault on science. The first six sections employ common scientific language to spell out a “gold standard” for science that would not strengthen science, but instead would introduce stifling limits on intellectual freedom in our Nation’s laboratories and federal funding agencies. Notably, the order comes from an administration that has already defunded areas of research they do not agree with, pushed vaccine misinformation despite widespread evidence, lied about the impacts of climate change, and incorrectly defined sex determination as binary, when biology proves it is not, in their own Executive Order. Throughout the document, scientific language is hijacked, and ideas are turned on their heads.
And then Andrew decided to discuss its ridiculness on 03 June and again on 03 June. (Which made me realize polygraphs are still used by US law enforcement agencies!)
