As Measles spreads, Polio warming up on deck, a new Dark Ages in the offing.
Who could argue with setting a “gold standard” for science?
Actually, thousands of scientists from around the country.
President Trump has ordered what he called a restoration of a “gold standard science” across federal agencies and national laboratories.
But the May 23 executive order puts his political appointees in charge of vetting scientific research and gives them the authority to “correct scientific information,” control the way it is communicated to the public and the power to “discipline” anyone who violates the way the administration views science.
It has prompted an open letter, signed by more than 6,000 scientists, academics, physicians, researchers and others, saying the order would destroy scientific independence. Agency heads have 30 days to comply with the order.
Since Mr. Trump returned to the presidency in January, his executive actions have not expressed robust support for science, nor even an understanding of how scientists work.
Among other things, the administration has eviscerated National Science Foundation research funding and fired staff scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, which is responsible for forecasting weather hazards. A government report on child health cited research papers that did not exist.
“The erosion of American scientific capacity isn’t theoretical, it’s underway,” Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, wrote Monday in his newsletter. In an email later in the day, he called the executive order “a general tool for dismissing all inconvenient science.”
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy spokeswoman, Victoria LaCivita, said by email that the executive order was designed to rebuild “a crisis of trust between the scientific community and the American public.”
During Mr. Trump’s first term, his administration repeatedly undermined or disregarded scientific research, especially with respect to climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency tried to restrict the data that could be used to set environmental policy. The new executive order would expand that kind of control across the federal agencies and the national laboratories.
The open letter invoked a troubled past of manipulating science. “History illustrates, in no uncertain terms, the dangers of state-dictated ‘scientific truths,’” it says. “State-sponsored programs in Nazi Germany based on the ‘science’ of eugenics led to the genocide of millions of Jews, people with disabilities, and people identifying as L.G.B.T.Q.+ who were deemed to have ‘life unworthy of life.’”
Andrew Dessler in Climate Brink:
The brightest of these foreign students stay in the U.S., attracted by the intellectual freedom and strong commitment to research by the federal government. Some have continued their innovative work in academic institutions, while others launched groundbreaking startups. More than half of America’s billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants, with many starting out as international students in university research labs.
That is how it used to be, at least. Now, due to Trump’s immigration policies, top foreign scholars who might once have chosen American universities view studying in the U.S. as too risky and are going elsewhere. The breakthroughs they make and the associated economic benefits, therefore, are going elsewhere, too.
The erosion of American scientific capacity isn’t theoretical — it’s underway. Research programs across the country are already shrinking as a direct result of implemented policies.
Thus, America faces a choice: Will we defend the government-university partnership that made us the world’s scientific superpower, or will we surrender our scientific leadership?
That’s why it’s essential to reaffirm our commitment to science. One immediate way to do that is to restore funding to NSF, NIH and NASA that supports university research and the production of future scientists. If we choose to surrender our edge in scientific research, it won’t be easy to regain it.
Open Letter in Support of Science:
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. Section 7 outlines the selection of a “senior appointee designated” by the head of the every agency to “evaluate alleged violations” of the “Gold Standard Science” edict. This will be the “sole and exclusive means of evaluating and …addressing alleged violations” overseeing the “use, interpretation and communication of scientific information.”
We see through this bad faith appropriation of scientific language and principles.
The Executive Order further consolidates political control over the Nation’s scientific infrastructure, co-opting the language of open science to implement a system under which direct presidential appointees are given broad latitude to designate many common and important scientific activities as scientific misconduct, and to penalize those involved accordingly.
History illustrates, in no uncertain terms, the danger of state-dictated ‘scientific truths’. The anti-scientific interpretations of genetics by Lysenko in the Soviet Union resulted in famine that killed millions. State-sponsored programs in Nazi Germany based on the “science” of eugenics led to the genocide of millions of Jews, people with disabilities, and people identifying as LGBTQ+ who were deemed to have “life unworthy of life.”
Signed by 6000 scientists and counting..
This coup has echoes of 2 events; it’s mystifying to me they’re not mentioned more often. One is the Taliban; comments for more than a quarter century have pointed out their return of large areas to the 11th century. The other is the takeover of Soviet agriculture by the delusionally Lamarckian Trofim Lysenko, setting Soviet food production back by decades. Practice run for the current bunch ending the world.
Maga = Madness