The Trump Administration has issued, yet another, executive order (EO) with consequences for the federal science infrastructure: Restoring Gold Standard Science. The title proposes a noble, albeit confusing, goal as until recently the U.S. was arguably the global leader in science .
The EO starts with sweeping narratives and debatable assumptions. “Over the last 5 years, confidence that scientists act in the best interests of the public has fallen significantly.” As in most cases, the story is quite a bit more complicated. According to research from the Pew Charitable Trusts (Public Trust in Scientists and Views on Their Role in Policymaking), while trust in science is lower now than prior to the pandemic, confidence increased from October 2023 to October 2024. It is also important to better understand why the public lost trust in science back in 2020.
FABBS also questions the claim that “A majority of researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics believe science is facing a reproducibility crisis.” The broad science community works diligently in the pursuit of reproducibility and replication. In the past 10 years, scientists have committed time and energy to strategies and efforts to increase reproducibility with open practices, a report from the National Academies, and new federal funding streams in pursuit of reproducibility.
The EO advises federal employees not to “engage in scientific misconduct nor knowingly rely on information resulting from scientific misconduct.” It also directs all federal departments and agencies to establish policies that align their activities with the following Gold Standard Science principles: reproducible, transparent, and falsifiable; subject to unbiased peer review; clear about errors and uncertainties; collaborative and interdisciplinary; skeptical of findings and assumptions; accepting of negative results as positive outcomes; and free from conflicts of interest. It also reinstates the Trump Administration’s earlier scientific integrity policies.
FABBS notes that in the definitions, the EO includes behavioral and social science as examples of disciplines it considers science.
(b) “Scientific information” means factual inputs, data, models, analyses, technical information, or scientific assessments related to such disciplines as the behavioral and social sciences, public health and medical sciences, life and earth sciences, engineering, physical sciences, or probability and statistics. This includes any communication or representation of knowledge such as facts or data, in any medium or form, including textual, numerical, graphic, cartographic, narrative, or audiovisual forms.
Absent from the new order? Anything about preventing political interference before disseminating scientific findings, a problem scientists reported many times during Trump’s first term. Rather, the order gives a political appointee the power to decide when those findings need to be “corrected” and to take disciplinary action against those seen as the perpetrators of misinformation.
Regarding next steps, the order directs the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to issue guidance for federal agency adoption of “Gold Standard Science” principles in the next 30 days, by June 23. Agencies will then, in consultation with OSTP and the Office of Management and Budget, update their policies related to the production and use of scientific information.
While committed to the stated goal of the EO, FABBS notes that the same administration is proposing drastic budget cuts to federal science agencies, undermining the ability of scientists to conduct powerful research designs and methods. Furthermore, this administration has already defunded numerous areas of research that contradict their narratives, most notably, pushing vaccine misinformation despite widespread evidence.
