IRON PYRITE, FeS2, OF COURSE, IS “FOOL’S GOLD.” And a recent editorial in the American Association for the Advancement of Science Science magazine describes the phoniness of Trump’s Executive Order “Restoring Gold Standard Science,” May 23, 2025. David Michaels and Wendy Wagner pick an appropriate title “Fool’s Gold” for their June 19, 2025, editorial. Professor Michaels is at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health; Professor Wagner is the Richard Dale Endowed Chair, School of Law, University of Texas, Austin.
Here are tidbits gleaned from their editorial. As background, see also “Trump and Science/Tech.”
Obama, Biden and an Attempted Culture of Scientific Integrity. “Over the past four decades,” Michaels and Wagner write, “the White House has exerted increasing political control over the scientific work of federal agencies, while invoking executive privilege to obscure decision-making processes from public view…. Attempting to remedy this flawed structure, the Biden administration—building on Obama administration initiatives and in response to political interference during the first Trump administration—developed a framework to institutionalize a ‘culture of scientific integrity’ within federal agencies. This provided staff with mechanisms to report and correct ‘inappropriate influence’ that could compromise the ‘objectivity’ or ‘transparency’ of their work.”
A Gold Standard from Trump?? As one might guess, Professors Michaels and Wagner report, “President Trump’s EO rescinds the Biden-era framework: Political appointees are now charged with determining and enforcing what the EO terms ‘Gold Standard Science,’ defined using open-ended terms like ‘reproducibility,’ ‘collaborative,’ ‘falsifiab[le],’ and ‘accepting negative results as positive outcomes’ without any requirement to consider widely accepted scientific or medical practices or conventions. The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy is directed to issue further guidance within weeks.”
The Pyrite Thus Far. “But,” the professors note, “administrations must be judged by their actions, not just their words. Department of Government Efficiency efforts led to the loss of hundreds if not thousands of government scientists and abruptly terminated billions of dollars of ongoing research, gutting the national capacity to produce any science at all, much less ‘gold standard’ science. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright misrepresented studies on the impacts of the climate crisis. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made egregiously erroneous claims about vaccine safety and then forced the resignation of the top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration. A resigning National Institutes of Health official accused the agency of ‘censorship.’ Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again report, initially filled with errors of interpretation and references to nonexistent journal articles, cannot be considered ‘gold standard science.’ Yet under the EO, which dovetails conveniently with presidential initiatives to limit civil service protections and make it easier to fire career employees, career government scientists who publicly disagree may be subject to discipline.”
This is clearly one stupid way to do science.
Political Apparatchiks in Charge. Michaels and Wagner note, “By formalizing political control over agency science, the EO institutionalizes a ‘doubt science’ approach to shaping policy. Political apparatchiks are now granted broad license to manufacture uncertainty and confusion, cherry-pick studies that support their policy needs, and discard those that provide inconvenient results. In an unprecedented action, the EO requires agencies to retrospectively review and modify ‘regulations, guidance documents, policies, and scientific evaluations’ produced during the Biden administration if President Trump’s appointees believe the underlying scientific work is not aligned with its new gold standards.”
Geez. This matter of alignment with Trump agenda has already been enforced in other matters by asinine Truth Social comments, retribution, and ICE actions.
Professors Michaels and Wagner conclude, “The scientific community must—once again—unite to confront politically motivated manipulation of the scientific enterprise. It must protect the professional autonomy of federal scientists from unfounded allegations of misconduct, infringements of scientific freedom, and arbitrary termination. Congress must be encouraged to enact proposed legislation to curb political interference in agency science. And the concept of scientific integrity itself must be realigned with scientific conventions defined—not by the White House—but by the scientific community.”
Image from the Chicago Tribune.
Hear, hear! Trump and Science is analogous to Trump and Eclipses. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025