The Trump administrations on open access to research
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- During Donald Trump's first term as President, I tracked his administration's actions and positions on open access. I plan to do the same during his second term. — Peter Suber.
- I tracked his first term on Twitter, which I no longer use.
- I'm tracking his second term on Mastodon. To read or follow my Mastodon posts without a Mastodon account, use the HTML version, the RSS feed, or the Bluesky bridge account. (They're all OA!)
- The first part of this page is a collection of my tweets on his first term.
- I created it for several reasons. I want to help readers get a rapid overview of his first administration's record on these issues. I want to make it easy for me and others to link to all or parts of that history. I want to put that history online to help us understand and anticipate what he might do in his second term. I want to help users who don't want to visit Twitter/X. I want to pull together a more complete collection than I could generate from any small number of Twitter/X searches. Although these tweets are still online, I want to capture them before they disappear.
- When a tweet used a shortened URL, especially one that is dead or likely to die, I replace it here with a living, full-length URL. I leave the original Twitter handles and hashtags unchanged. When the tweets included URLs, I include them and turn them into active links; but in one case (a very long URL for a Google search), I use an active link without spelling out the URL.
- I'm starting with the tweets I remembered and was able to find. I'll add more later if I find more.
- The second part of this page is a collection of my Mastodon posts on his second term.
- In both parts, most of these posts are about open access and threats to it. But some are about suppressing, censoring, distorting, or politicizing science.
- Suggested short URL for this page = bit.ly/TrumpOA .
First term (Jan 20, 2017 - Jan 20, 2021)
2017
- Scott Pruit, #Trump nominee to head #EPA, sued for blocking public access to polluter emails in Oklahoma.
- https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2017/02/07/lawsuit-filed-against-trump-nominee-scott-pruitt-denying-public-access-polluter
2018
- April 22, 2018
- 1/8 Scott Pruitt, head of #Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (@EPA), is proposing a kind of #opendata mandate. @MikeBastasch: it "will reverse long-standing EPA policy allowing regulators to rely on non-public scientific data in crafting rules...."
-
- 2/8 Under the new policy, "EPA regulators would only be allowed to consider scientific studies that make their data available for public scrutiny....Also, EPA-funded studies would need to make all their data public."
- 3/8 Most right-wing calls for #openaccess have been politically selective, designed to embarrass liberals or harass climate researchers. I discussed examples in this 2010 article (+ problem of supporting OA & opposing politically selective calls for OA).
- 4/8 At first it seems the Pruitt policy is politically neutral. Among those arguing it's not, see Yogin Kothari (@YoginUCS). Some of the most relevant & best-confirmed science on the harms of pollution use private medical records and cannot be made OA.
- 5/8 The Pruitt policy is modeled on Lamar Smith's politically one-sided and Orwellian HONEST Act. See this Google search.
- 6/8 The Union of Concerned Scientists (@UCSUSA) just obtained @EPA docs via #FOIA showing that Pruitt's push for transparency is highly political. Note that these docs were formerly OA on the EPA web site and recently taken down.
- 7/8 Apart from exposing the political underbelly of the Pruitt policy, kudos to @UCSUSA for providing #openaccess to the docs it obtained by #FOAI. Too few FOIA applicants take that important extra step.
- 8/8 The Pruitt proposal is still not public. But Pruitt sent it to the White House for approval on April 19.
- April 25, 2018
- 1/3 Open letter from 985 scientists to Scott Pruit at @EPA: "We urge you to cease any plans to restrict the types of science that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can use in regulatory decisionmaking...."
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- 2/3 "EPA can only adequately protect our air and water and keep us safe from harmful chemicals if it takes full advantage of the wealth of scientific research that is available to the agency...."
- 3/3 "Proponents for these radical restrictions purport to [care about] reproducibility & transparency. In reality, these are phony issues that weaponize ‘transparency’ to facilitate political interference in science-based decisionmaking, rather than genuinely address either...."
- US Dept of @Interior follows @EPA in deceptively using the rhetoric of #openaccess to *limit* the science that policymakers can consider. Worse, already in effect, not subject to public comments. #Trump #openwashing.
- [@DavidWojick replied to my post above:] People have a basic right to review the underlying science when proposed regulations affect them adversely.
- [My reply to @DavidWojick above:] So far, so good, but one-sided. Agencies must be allowed to use all valid science in coming to their decisions. Ruling some out because it isn't already open blocks well-informed decisions. And using #openaccess rhetoric to dress up that obstacle to good policy is dishonest.
- [In response to a tweet on EPA openwashing] Yes. I've been tagging @EPA openwashing for the Open Access Tracking Project (http://bit.ly/o-a-t-p). See items tagged to date:
- http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/item_search?q=%23oa.epa+AND+%23oa.openwashing
- [Here just using a live URL, omitting the bad URL I first posted and my follow-up tweet correcting it.]
- From @undarkmag: "The Department of the @Interior is seeking to streamline its schedule for document archiving (and destruction). Some scientists worry about what will be lost."
- https://undark.org/article/request-streamline-federal-document-purge-doi/
2019
- New @SciAm editorial is admirably specific on how the new Congress could undo some Trumpist damage to science and science-based policy-making. Includes recommendation to oppose the @EPA's #openwashing "science transparency" rule.
- https://scientificamerican.com/article/an-open-letter-to-u-s-scientist-legislators/
- Despite the Trump admin's regressive track record on #openaccess to federally-funded research (e.g. at @EPA and @Interior), its new National Action Plan talks the talk on good OA policy. See Initiative 3. Now to watch for the details and the walk.
- https://open.usa.gov/assets/files/NAP4-fourth-open-government-national-action-plan.pdf
- From Kelvin Droegemeier (@kdroege), Director, White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, @WHOSTP: #Trump “recognises the importance of striking the balance of an open research environment & safeguarding American assets and intellectual property.”
- https://sciencebusiness.net/news/us-science-and-tech-leadership-has-trumps-unwavering-focus-says-science-adviser
- Trump's @EPA "is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations."
- The policy rests on #openwashing. Don't be fooled. For more background, see my April 2018 thread. [Link to thread of April 22, 2018, above.]
- Update November 26, 2019 See this call on the @EPA by six major journal editors to rescind the proposed rule. "The most relevant science, vetted through peer review, should inform public policy. Anything less will harm decision-making that claims to protect our health."
2020
- Immediate #OpenAccess to fed-funded research benefits authors & readers. It benefits nonresearchers as taxpayers, boosting the impact of their investment, & as beneficiaries of better healthcare, technology, policy, & education. @WhiteHouse, @WHOSTP, @realDonaldTrump, #OAintheUSA
- [In reply to this SPARC tweet:] January 16, 2020 On behalf of 210 U.S. college & university libraries, we ask @realdonaldtrump to make #OAintheUSA a reality. Making taxpayer-funded research immediately available gives students, researchers & faculty access to latest and best science to fuel innovation and speed up discoveries.
- "The [#Trump @EPA] suppressed the work of its career employees and dismissed legitimate science...dozens of former and current employees have alleged. The employees are asking investigators to discipline the top officials responsible."
- https://govexec.com/management/2020/01/career-employees-allege-epa-leaders-silenced-them-key-deregulation-effort/162559/
- When the @WHO says that #glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic" and Trump's @EPA says otherwise, who are you going to believe? Clue: The Center for Food Safety (@CFSTrueFood) reports that the EPA "relied almost entirely on #Monsanto studies."
- Update June 19, 2020. Finally, a federal court orders review of the Trump @EPA decision that glyphosate is safe for use.
- The White House OSTP (@WHOSTP) just called for public comments on US federal #openaccess policy (for texts, data, & code). Comments are due on March 16.
- https://federalregister.gov/documents/2020/02/19/2020-03189/request-for-information-public-access-to-peer-reviewed-scholarly-publications-data-and-code
- Refs to immediate/unembargoed OA suggest that it's related to the rumored #Trump action. #OAintheUSA
- US Dept of @Interior may adopt an #openwashing policy like @EPA. It encourages #opendata (good). But excludes non-compliant research from agency policy-making (bad). At EPA, this ruled out evidence that pollutants cause medical harm (the whole point).
- https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/484747-new-interior-rule-would-limit-which-scientific-studies-agency-can
- A political official in Trump's @Interior Department has inserted falsehoods about #climate into at least 9 of the Dept's scientific reports, environmental studies, and impact statements.
- https://nytimes.com/2020/03/02/climate/goks-uncertainty-language-interior.html
- The @WHOSTP and "govt science leaders...from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, [South] Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, & UK are asking publishers to make all #COVID19-related research & data immediately available to the public."
- Footnote. That version of the OSTP announcement differs in small ways from the version issued by the US Embassy in South Korea in the name of the OSTP. Not clear why they differ.
- FWIW, the one quoted in the first tweet is slightly stronger. But it's *not yet* posted at the OSTP web site or linked from the @WHOSTP Twitter feed. Not clear why the weaker one is posted to a US govt site and the stronger one (so far) is not.
- 1/ The @EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) has criticized the draft EPA "transparency" policy as unnecessary and harmful.
- 2/ The SAB is right. Don't be misled by the EPA's rhetoric of transparency here. The EPA is #openwashing. I've given my reasons in a couple of past Twitter threads. [Links to my threads from April 22 and 25, 2018; see above.]
- Update May 5, 2020. "The [@EPA] rule is so flawed that the EPA's science advisory board, which includes several Trump appointees, is questioning the agency's approach."
- 1/ Here's my submission to the @WHOSTP on strengthening US federal #openaccess policy. The main argument is to eliminate #embargoes on federally-funded research.
- 2/ FYI, I make public my conflicts of interests.
- https://cyber.harvard.edu/~psuber/wiki/Conflicts
- I hope that publishers arguing against the elimination of embargoes will make their conflicts public as well.
- 3/ The deadline for submissions is May 6, two days from today. There's still time [for] your own!
- https://x.com/WHOSTP/status/1256334620494229504
- If you want to write a comment, here's the original RFI (still using the original, superseded due date).
- https://federalregister.gov/documents/2020/02/19/2020-03189/request-for-information-public-access-to-peer-reviewed-scholarly-publications-data-and-code
- [In reply to this tweet from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy:] May 1, 2020 Reminder: The Request for Information Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications, Data and Code Resulting From Federally Funded Research closes on May 6, 2020. We want to hear from you! #science
- The @WHOSTP call for comments on federal #openaccess policy (esp eliminating embargoes) ended on May 6.
- https://federalregister.gov/documents/2020/02/19/2020-03189/request-for-information-public-access-to-peer-reviewed-scholarly-publications-data-and-code
- Here e.g. is my submission.
- https://suber.pubpub.org/pub/apqb1mp4
- Hoping for White House action before the run-up to the election makes it impossible!
- #OAintheUSA
- Another false and dangerous statement from the Trump White House.
- https://politico.com/news/2020/10/27/white-house-science-office-ending-pandemic-432827
- I used to respect the @WHOSTP.
- The pandemic has not ended in the US. It's worsening. Our two worst days for new #COVID19 infections both occurred last week.
2021
- January 1, 2021
- On its way out, the Trump admin might approve the @EPA's regressive pseudo-open proposal.
- https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/532249-epa-secret-science-rule-appears-to-clear-white-house-review
- For my arguments against it, search for #openwashing or see these two twitter threads from April 2018. [Links to my threads from April 22 and 25, 2018; see above.]
- Update January 6, 2021. The @EPA #openwashing is now a done deal.
- Update January 8, 2021. "Many observers believe [Democrats] could use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to revoke the rule."
- Update January 12, 2021. "Green groups on Monday filed a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent a new rule limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) use of certain studies from taking effect."
- Update January 29, 2021. The #openwashing policy from Trump's @EPA might be rolled back before it takes effect.
- Update February 2, 2021. Update. Gone and good riddance.
- https://washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/02/01/trump-secret-science/
- #environment #climate #openwashing
- New study: The #Trump @EPA removed public info from its web site, 80% of the time "just prior to or during active regulatory proceedings."
- https://envirodatagov.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Access-Denied-Report.pdf
- March 6, 2021
- 1/ Good news: #Biden's @Interior Dept just rescinded its #Trump-era #openwashing policy.
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- 2/ Last month the similar policy at @EPA was overturned in court, at the request of the #Biden admin.
- #Trump → #Biden:
- "The Environmental Protection Agency’s webpage about climate change reawakened from a four-year slumber on Thursday morning. Turn to the page now and you’ll see: 'EPA is restoring the science in addressing the climate crisis.' "
- https://grist.org/politics/biden-revives-epa-climate-change-site-trump-deleted/
Second term (Jan 20, 2025 - Jan 20, 2029)
- Also see the items tagged with "oa.Trump47" by the Open Access Tracking Project.
2025
January 2025
- I'm starting a #Mastodon thread on the new #Trump administration's actions and positions on #OpenAccess to research.
- I posted frequently about the actions of his first administration. But I did it on #Twitter / #X, which I no longer use.
- Also see this wiki page where I'm collecting my old Twitter posts on his first term and my new Mastodon posts on his second term.
- https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/The_Trump_administrations_on_open_access_to_research
- For updates, watch this space.
- #Censorship #OpenWashing #OSTP #ScholComm #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "The mad dash to protect environmental data from Donald Trump"
- https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/18/24346025/data-donald-trump-climate-environment-epa
- (#paywalled)
- "Information about climate change vanished from federal websites under Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called climate change “a hoax.” Now, federal agencies could face deep staff and budget cuts overseen by Trump cronies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The proposed cuts not only threaten what kind of data the government shares but also whether it can collect and organize it at all....
- One key resource that could languish under the Trump administration is the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, #EJScreen.…Even if it stays online, the tool is not as useful without constant upkeep....
- Much of the environmental data included in EJScreen is collected by the #EPA itself. The EPA isn’t likely to abandon its air quality monitors anytime soon, but #Project2025…proposes eliminating the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights that manages the tool...."
- #Censorship #Climate #ClimateChange #Environment #Takedowns
- Update. Here's a good use of #GitHub to track textual changes and page takedowns on federal govt web sites since #Trump took office.
- https://www.404media.co/github-is-showing-the-trump-administration-scrubbing-government-web-pages-in-real-time/
- This project is dedicated to the pages on #DEI. I hope someone launches a similar project on the pages dedicated to science and research.
- #Censorship #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "For the first time in its more than 60-year history, the #CDC's [#OpenAccess] Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (#MMWR) did not go out as scheduled because of a communications pause at federal health agencies issued by the #Trump administration."
- https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/generalinfectiousdisease/113905
- #Censorship #Medicine #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. As recently as January 2, 2025, #NASA had five modules for teaching #OpenScience on its web site. The #Trump administration has taken them down.
- https://science.nasa.gov/open-science/tops/os101/
- Here they are in the @internetarchive Wayback Machine.
- https://web.archive.org/web/2025010214
- #Takedowns #TrumpAntiScience #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. If you're following this thread, also follow the Silencing Science Tracker from Sabin Center for Climate Change Law (at Columbia Law School) and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.
- https://climate.law.columbia.edu/Silencing-Science-Tracker
- #Censorship #Climate #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "Datasets aggregated on data.gov, the largest repository of U.S. government #OpenData on the internet, are being deleted, according to the website’s own information. Since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, more than 2,000 datasets have disappeared from the database."
- https://www.404media.co/archivists-work-to-identify-and-save-the-thousands-of-datasets-disappearing-from-data-gov/
- #Data #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
February 2025
- This is very welcome news in the face of Trumpist depredations of US public data.
- https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/01/30/preserving-public-u-s-federal-data/
- "In recent months the Harvard Law School [@harvard_law] Library Innovation Lab [@harvardlil] has created a data vault to download, sign as authentic, and make available copies of public government data that is most valuable to researchers, scholars, civil society and the public at large across every field. To begin, we have collected major portions of the datasets tracked by data.gov, federal #Github repositories, and #PubMed...."
- #DataGov #Libraries #OpenData #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Related: Also see the End of Term Web Archive, which routinely scrapes and preserves US govt web pages before new presidents take office. Launched in 2008 and still going strong. To supplement its archive, it welcomes URL nominations of sites to save.
- https://eotarchive.org/
- #OpenData #Preservation #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Related: "As Data Goes Off-Line Under #Trump, Environmental Researchers Are Uploading Backups"
- https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/research/2025/01/29/data-goes-line-under-trump-researchers-upload-backups
- "In the first few days of Donald Trump’s second term as president, the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s #Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (#CEJST, for short) disappeared from government websites. It was an interactive map of U.S. Census tracts that are “marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution,” as the pre-Trump federal government put it—something researchers and the public could use to quickly locate and zoom in on specific communities and analyze the problems they face. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine stored a copy of the webpage, but even there, the map was gone. However, thanks to a team of researchers from multiple universities and other organizations, a new working version was posted online Friday."
- #OpenData #Preservation #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
- Related: "The #Trump administration is scrubbing the #CDC’s website of documents on #ReproductiveRights issues, sexual health, intimate partner violence, and more. We’re saving them. 𝘈𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘋𝘢𝘺 will publish and host these vital documents for as long as necessary. To share deleted documents with 𝘈𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘋𝘢𝘺, email tips@abortioneveryday.com. "
- https://jessica.substack.com/p/cdc-birth-control-guidelines-pdf
- #Censorship #Preservation #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
- "#USDA ordered to scrub climate change from websites"
- https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/31/usda-climate-change-websites-00201826
- "Agriculture Department employees have been ordered to delete landing pages discussing climate change across agency websites and document climate change references for further review, according to an internal email obtained by POLITICO...."
- #Censorship #Agriculture #Climate #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Also see the Safeguarding Research project.
- https://safeguarding-research.discourse.group/
- "You know of any publicly available material that needs safeguarding? Please post about it here!"
- #Preservation #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
- "Large amounts of public information about #HIV and the health of teens, #transgender and #LGBTQ+ people abruptly disappeared late Friday from the website of the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention [#CDC] as government agencies scramble to comply with directives from President Donald #Trump."
- https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/31/public-health-information-offline-trump-orders-00201914
- #Censorship #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
- "The #CDC has instructed its scientists to #retract or pause the publication of any research manuscript being considered by any medical or scientific journal, not merely its own internal periodicals…The move aims to ensure that no "forbidden terms" appear in the work. The policy includes manuscripts that are in the revision stages at journal (but not officially accepted) and those already accepted for publication but not yet live."
- https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/faustfiles/114043
- I trust MedPage Today, where this news appeared. But it only cites the author's Substack newsletter, which in turn cites nothing. Can anyone confirm this report?
- #Censorship #Retractions #ScholComm #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- "In a radical break with tradition, the National Science Foundation (#NSF) this week began to search through billions of dollars of #grants the agency has already awarded for anything touching on topics that President Donald #Trump has criticized. And NSF has blocked grantees and trainees from accessing funds while the review is underway, wreaking havoc across the academic research community."
- https://www.science.org/content/article/exclusive-nsf-starts-vetting-all-grants-comply-trump-s-orders
- #Censorship #ScholComm #USPol #USPolitics
- Thanks to Kate Nyhan (@kdnyhan@social.esmarconf.org) for pointing out this #Republican argument that #Democrats politicized science during the Biden administration.
- DEI: Division. Extremism. Ideology. How the Biden-Harris NSF Politicized Science
- https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/4BD2D522-2092-4246-91A5-58EEF99750BC
- It's undated but was released in October 2024, when Dems controlled the Senate and before #Trump was re-elected.
- https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2024/10/new-cruz-investigation-reveals-how-biden-harris-diverted-billions-from-scientific-research-to-dei-activists
- It was prepared by the #TedCruz-led Republican members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, the committee overseeing the #NSF.
- #DEI #Republicans #USPol #USPolitics
- "Researchers rush to preserve federal health databases before they disappear from government websites"
- https://journalistsresource.org/home/researchers-rush-to-preserve-federal-health-databases-before-they-disappear-from-government-websites/
- "Tips for preserving websites:
- To find the missing websites, go to Wayback Machine and type in the website’s URL in the search bar.
- If you’re concerned that certain websites or web pages may be removed, you can suggest federal websites and content that end in .gov, .mil and .com to the End of Term Web Archive.
- You can suggest federal climate and environmental databases to Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.
- You can suggest databases to The Data Liberation Project, which is run by MuckRock and Big Local News.
- Tell science journalist Maggie Koerth what CDC data you've downloaded and whether you've made them publicly available...."
- #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- "A Look at Federal Health Data Taken Offline"
- https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/a-look-at-federal-health-data-taken-offline/
- "On Friday January 31, 2025, several federal government datasets went offline. The datasets taken down included some widely used, large-scale national health surveys, indices, and data dashboards that inform research, policy making, and media coverage about health care and public health.."
- #Censorship #Data #Medicine #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- "Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [#CDC] were ordered late on Friday to withdraw any pending publications, at any scientific journal, that mention terms such as “transgender,” “immigrant,” “L.G.B.T.” or “pregnant people.”
- https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/01/us/trump-tariffs-news#trump-gender-research
- When CDC employees were co-authors of such pending papers, they were ordered to write to the journals and ask to be removed as co-authors. When all co-authors were CDC employees, they were ordered to ask the journal to retract the article from consideration.
- #Censorship #Retractions #ScholComm #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "Top advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [#CDC] are asking the agency’s acting director to explain the abrupt removal of information and data from CDC websites, and say when it will be restored. In a sharply worded letter sent Saturday, the group asked Acting Director Susan Monarez what the rationale was for removing the data, if the consequences and legal authority of such a decision were considered, what was being done to safeguard the data sets that were removed, and when access to them would return. The letter asks for answers by Feb. 7."
- https://archive.is/SWhYj
- The CDC advisory board was disbanded by Trump in 2019 and revived by Biden in 2021. The members "expect to be fired" for asking the agency to explain and reverse the takedowns.
- #Censorship #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- "More than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen U.S. government websites have been taken down since Friday afternoon…The purges have removed information about vaccines, veterans’ care, hate crimes and scientific research, among many other topics. Doctors, researchers and other professionals often rely on such government data and advisories. Some government agencies appear to have removed entire sections of their websites."
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/upshot/trump-government-websites-missing-pages.html
- #Censorship #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "Represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group, Doctors for America filed a lawsuit today [Feb 4] against the Office of Personnel Management (#OPM), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (#CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (#FDA), and the Department of Health & Human Services (#HHS) for the removal of a broad range of #health-related data and other information used by health professionals and researchers from publicly accessible government websites."
- https://www.citizen.org/news/doctors-for-america-sues-over-removal-of-health-information-from-hhs-cdc-fda-websites/
- #Medicine #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update, on the #CDC order directing staffers to retract pending journal articles that use now-prohibited terms like #transgender and #immigrant (earlier in this thread) …
- Bravo to the #BMJ (@bmj_latest@bird.makeup) for calling this order "sinister and ludicrous."
- https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r253
- "This is not how it works. Medically relevant terminology and inclusive language follow evidence based reporting standards or are matters of individual journal style and policy. They do not follow political orders. Similarly, co-authors cannot simply scrub themselves from articles. Authorship gives credit and accountability for the work, and an article’s list of authors does not ghost contributors. If authors wish to withdraw submissions under review at a journal, this process is feasible should all of their co-authors agree. However, if somebody who merits inclusion in the authorship group of an article requests to be removed, even with the approval of the co-authors, this is a breach of publication ethics."
- #Authorship #Retractions #ScholComm #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. Here's an online tool from #BradleyAllf to help you publish research in the #Trump age, especially if you're a US govt scientist. Just paste in your abstract and it will underline the banned words.
- https://brad7280.github.io/thoughtcrime-checker/
- #Censorship #ReviseAndResubmit #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "Staffers with Elon #Musk’s [#DOGE] entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (#NOAA)…today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency."
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/04/doge-noaa-headquarters
- What's the #Trump or #Trumpist interest here?
- 1. "#Project2025…called for the agency to be 'broken up and downsized', claiming the agency is 'harmful to US prosperity' for its role in #climate science."
- 2. Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official, "noted it had been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on NOAA data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services."
- PS: Rosenberg is right. During the GWBush admin, Senator #RickSantorum (R-PA) repeatedly tried to take down NOAA's open weather data, to benefit AccuWeather, the for-profit weather forecaster in his state. I wrote about it often at the time and may have to dig out and reup those old pieces.
- #OpenData #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. The #BMJ isn't the only journal pushing back against the #CDC directive that staff scientists should retract pending publications that use Trump-banned words. (Earlier in this thread.)
- Kudos to the _American Journal of Public Health_ (#AJPH) for pushing back as well.
- https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/114076
- From publisher Georges Benjamin: "We at the American Journal of Public Health have no interest in following the president's prohibitions on language. We will publish things under our guidelines, under our ethical principles." Benjamin acknowledged that the journal may now get fewer submissions from government scientists.
- AJPH is published by the American Public Health Association (#APHA).
- #Censorship #Medicine #ScholComm #SocietyPublisher #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. #OMB is telling #DOGE to stop using #Slack. Why? Because Slack messages are subject to #FOI requests.
- https://www.404media.co/doge-employees-ordered-to-stop-using-slack-while-agency-transitions-to-a-records-system-not-subject-to-foia/
- #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. If you're following this thread, you might also follow Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to #Trump Administration Actions, from #JustSecurity.
- https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/
- #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. The Dept of Defense (#DOD) just released the implementation plan for its upgraded #OpenAccess policy under the Biden-era #OSTP #NelsonMemo.
- https://discover.dtic.mil/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/DoD_PublicAccessPlan_Dec_2024.pdf
- This is the first fed agency action of its kind since #Trump took office. Note that, so far, this work has not stopped or changed.
- Update. "Intense backlash prompted the reinstatement of some online resources. But guidelines for safe contraception and information on racial inequities in health care remain missing."
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/health/trump-gender-ideology-research.html
- #CDC #Censorship #Medicine #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- "Scientists globally are racing to save vital health databases taken down amid Trump chaos."
- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00374-y
- #CDC #FDA #Medicine #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- [In response to a post asking whether federal agencies will stop complying with the Biden-era Nelson memo.] We honestly don't know yet. On the one hand, #Trump has taken down govt science sites and datasets in his first and second terms. On the other hand, his Office of Science and Technology Policy (#OSTP) drafted an #OpenAccess policy for federal agencies much like the one later adopted by the #Biden OSTP through the #NelsonMemo. He could have stopped those OSTP efforts but he didn't. As the time came to make a decision and perhaps sign off on it, he was entangled in impeachment hearings. One way to read these conflicting trends is that he takes down science he has ideological reasons to dislike (e.g. on climate and gender) but doesn't oppose OA as such. Or, since he probably has no opinion about OA as such, the advisors he trusts might not oppose OA as such. For example, one passage in #Project2025 (p. 439) supports OA for EPA-funded research. We'll have to wait and see.
- More details on both of this tension.
- https://bit.ly/TrumpOA
- [In response to the reply that Trump might oppose the Nelson Memo just because it was a Biden initiative.] Yes, he has a history of opposing whatever Biden did and just because Biden did it. In his first term, ditto with Obama. On the other hand, he might have allowed his (first-term) #OSTP to draft a stronger federal #OpenScience policy than Obama's in part because it would outdo what Obama was able to do on that front. In his new term, might he have a similar motive to outdo what Biden was able to do? Again, we don't know and will have to wait and see.
- [In response to a post that the first Trump admin's EPA had an openness policy but "not in the sense on public access though - rather, it limited the types of evidence that environmental regulators are allowed to consider."]
- Yes. I called this #openwashing because it used the halo of openness or transparency to block regulations that would protect the environment and climate. (Medical studies on the harms of airborne pollution could not fully open their data, for reasons of medical privacy.) Here are the #OATP items I tagged with that sort of openwashing during the first #Trump administration.
- https://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/item_search?q=(%23oa.trump+OR+%23oa.epa)+AND+%23oa.trump
- But note that #Project2025 calls for both (1) this older kind of #EPA openwashing and (2) direct, unembargoed #OpenAccess (or #PublicAccess) to EPA-funded research, echoing the Biden-era #NelsonMemo. See p 439: "Add teeth to long-standing executive orders, memoranda, recommendations, and other policies to require that EPA regulations are based on transparent, reproducible science as well as that the data and publications resulting from taxpayer-funded activities are made immediately available to the public."
- https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
- Update. "White House budget proposal could shatter the National Science Foundation"
- https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/02/white-house-budget-proposal-could-shatter-the-national-science-foundation/
- " 'This kind of cut would kill American science and boost #China and other nations into global science leadership positions,' [said] Neal Lane, who led the #NSF in the 1990s during Bill Clinton's presidency."
- PS: I've never liked #nationalist arguments for funding or fostering science. Science is international. But it looks like the #Trump admin is putting us in a dilemma. Either we see deep cuts in US science funding. Or we use nationalist arguments to avert those cuts.
- There are non-nationalist arguments to fund US science. For example, good science is usually expensive and those who do it well should be funded for the benefit of all. Unfortunately that argument is not likely to work on Trump admin officials. It's not US-specific and applies everywhere, even in China.
- #Nationalism #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. The @WashPost@flipboard.com does a good job showing the breadth of govt science and info taken down by the #Trump admin.
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/sample-government-webpages-trump-doesnt-want-you-see/
- #Censorship #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "Inside the race to archive the US government’s websites"
- https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/07/1111328/inside-the-race-to-archive-the-us-governments-websites/
- Surveying a range of initiatives with good clarity on the obstacles.
- "There are questions about whether scraping the data will really be enough. Restoring websites and complex data sets is often not a simple process.…'The repairs and attempts to recover are sometimes insurmountable where we need continuous readings of data.' 'All of this data archiving work is a temporary Band-Aid,' says Gosnell. 'If data sets are removed and are no longer updated, our archived data will become increasingly stale and thus ineffective at informing decisions over time.' "
- #Climate #Data #Medicine #OpenData #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "The Public Environmental Data Partners [#PEDP] are committed to preserving and providing public access to federal environmental data. We are a volunteer coalition of several environmental, justice, and policy organizations, researchers across several universities, archivists, and students who rely on federal datasets and tools to support critical research, advocacy, policy, and litigation work. To gather insights on what data to preserve, we reached out to our networks, which consist largely of environmental justice groups and networks, state and local government climate offices, and academic researchers. We compiled a large list of federal databases and tools, and prioritized them based on their relative impact, our confidence that we could archive them, and the relative effort it would take to obtain and archive them."
- https://screening-tools.com/
- Continuously updated.
- #Climate #Data #Environment #OpenData #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "This is Version 2 of the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, released by the Council on Environmental Quality [#CEQ] in December 2024. Although the tool remains unchanged, public access through the White House was discontinued on January 22, 2025. We re-created Version 2 and made it publicly accessible."
- https://screening-tools.com/climate-economic-justice-screening-tool
- #Climate #Environment #OpenSource #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Good question from @readbeanicecream@mastodon.social (my paraphrase): Would federated #OpenScience protect it from the kinds of #censorship and #takedowns we're seeing from the #Trump admin?
- https://readbeanicecream.surge.sh/2025/02/09/should-science-be-open-and-federated/#federated-science
- "Just as Open Science can take its cues from #OpenSource software, Federated science could take its cues from the #fediverse...Open and federated science (#OFS) would be the combination of the two ideas…Scientific research would be transparent and open to all to contribute, read, discuss, distribute and redistribute regardless of platform, publication, or institution. Doing so could increase scientific collaboration and limit the impacts of targeted attacks on science."
- #OpenAccess #OpenInfrastructure #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "Today we [Harvard Law School @harvard_law@bird.makeup Library Innovation Lab @harvardlil@bird.makeup] released our archive of data.gov on Source Cooperative. The 16TB collection includes over 311,000 datasets harvested during 2024 and 2025, a complete archive of federal public datasets linked by data.gov. It will be updated daily as new datasets are added to data.gov. This is the first release in our new data vault project to preserve and authenticate vital public datasets for academic research, policymaking, and public use."
- https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/02/06/announcing-data-gov-archive/
- #DataGov #Libraries #OpenData #Preservation #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "Trump officials exerting unprecedented control over CDC scientific journal"
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-officials-influence-cdc-mmwr/
- "Trump administration political appointees have taken steps in recent weeks to exert unprecedented influence over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's flagship medical research publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, multiple federal health officials tell CBS News. The interference included dictating what to cover and withholding studies on the growing bird flu outbreak."
- PS: Just curious. How do Trump admin officials decide that covering bird flu is bad for their agenda?
- #Medicine #ScholComm #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Over at @deltathink@bird.makeup, Dan Pollock and Ann Michael estimate the impact of #Trump executive actions on academic publishing, starting with the #CDC.
- https://www.deltathink.com/news-views-special-edition-how-much-of-scholarly-publishing-is-affected-by-us-presidential-executive-orders
- "The proportion of CDC-authored papers is tiny [0.1% of global output and 0.6% of US output], and so their suppression is unlikely to lead to a drop in publishing output. However, should the orders spread to other areas of health research, then the effects could be profound – especially for journals and publishers relying heavily on US-authored papers."
- #Censorship #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "Federal data is disappearing. On Thursday, meet the teams working to rescue it and learn how you can help. Join the Internet Archive [@internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org] and the Library Innovation Lab [@harvardlil@bird.makeup] on Feb. 13, 3pm Eastern for a special event exploring the terabytes of data they have already saved and how to access it."
- https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2025/feb/10/federal-data-is-disappearing-on-thursday-meet-the-teams-working-to-rescue-it-and-learn-how-you-can-help/
- #Censorship #OpenData #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. If you're following this thread, you should also follow the Data Rescue Project by visiting its web site and subscribing to its email list. It aims "to serve as a clearinghouse for #data rescue-related efforts and data access points for public US governmental data that are currently at risk." And it's #crowdsourced, which gives it fighting chance to be comprehensive and up to date.
- https://www.datarescueproject.org/about-data-rescue-project/
- If you're on #Bluesky, also follow its B account.
- https://bsky.app/profile/datarescueproject.org
- I'm very aware that a solo effort, like this Mastodon thread, doesn't scale to the size of this task and I welcome the arrival of a crowdsourced effort. I will use it and refer people to it.
- #Censorship #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update The #Trump admin has taken down the #OSTP #NelsonMemo.
- It was formerly at this URL.
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo.pdf
- You can still find it in the @internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org #WaybackMachine, as recently as Jan 18, 2025.
- https://web.archive.org/web/20250118021041/https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo.pdf
- We can't tell yet whether it was taken down because Trump officials didn't like the #OpenAccess policies it laid out, didn't like its use of #DEI language — or both.
- h/t https://fediscience.org/@jnonfiction@social.coop
- #Censorship #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. I still don't know the full story behind the takedown of the #NelsonMemo. But here's a clue. The Dept of Defense (#DOD) continued rolling its memo-based #OpenAccess policy *after* Trump took office and *after* the memo was taken down.
- https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/113964410103345053
- That's a sign that agencies have not been told to stop rolling out their memo-based policy upgrades. But of course that may change.
- Also note that memo is preserved in the #NationalArchives, for now, not just in the Wayback Machine.
- https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo.pdf
- (Yes, I'm aware that Trump fired Colleen Shogan, the Biden-era National Archivist.)
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/us/politics/trump-fires-the-nations-archivist-in-latest-round-of-personnel-purge.html
- #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "In the initial days of the #Trump administration, officials scoured federal websites for any mention of what they deemed #DEI keywords — terms as generic as “diverse” and “historically” and even “women.” They soon identified reams of some of the country’s most valuable public health data containing some of the targeted words, including language about LGBTQ+ people, and quickly took down much of it — from surveys on obesity and suicide rates to real-time reports on immediate infectious disease threats like bird flu."
- https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/399319/trump-cdc-health-data-removed-obesity-suicide
- #Censorship #Medicine #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "The White House has designated Mr. #Musk’s office, United States #DOGE Service, as an entity insulated from public records requests."
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-musk-doge-foia-public-records.html
- In Nov 2024 before Musk joined the #Trump government, he wrote on X / Twitter: "There should be no need for FOIA requests. All government data should be default public for maximum transparency."
- https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1853079605596340235
- #FOAI #Secrecy #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- I've signed this Declaration To #DefendResearch Against US Gov #Censorship and hope you will too. (Disclosure: I was on the drafting committee.)
- https://tinyurl.com/2dyadwzr
- #ScholComm #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "Court Orders #CDC, #FDA to Restore Scrubbed Webpages, Data"
- https://www.medpagetoday.com/washington-watch/washington-watch/114177
- "A federal judge on Tuesday ordered government agencies to restore public access to health-related webpages and datasets that they removed to comply with an executive order by President #Trump…The scrubbed material includes reports on HIV prevention, a CDC webpage for providing clinicians with guidance on reproductive healthcare, and an FDA study on 'sex differences in the clinical evaluation of medical products.'"
- #Censorship #DefendResearch #Litigation #Medicine #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "As the US government removes health websites and data, here’s a list of non-government data alternatives and archives"
- https://journalistsresource.org/home/as-the-us-government-removes-health-websites-and-data-heres-a-list-of-non-government-data-alternatives/
- "There’s no perfect alternative to the government databases, but some non-governmental organizations have their own datasets, which can be useful to journalists. Several #journalism associations have also been downloading government data and making them available to their members. To help journalists with their continued reporting, we have curated a list of non-government websites that have health data, although some use government data to create their reports. We’ll continue to update this list. If you have a suggestion for a database, please email us."
- h/t @kdnyhan@social.esmarconf.org
- #Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #OpenData #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. From @hildabast@mastodon.online: "What if We Can’t Rely on PubMed?"
- https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2025/02/14/what-if-we-cant-rely-on-pubmed/
- "#PubMed is incredibly reliable…That said, between the risks of an exodus of key personnel, understaffing, or goodness-knows-what vandalism when a goon squad arrives at NIH, it’s not paranoid any more to think ahead to the once-unthinkable. What would PubMed enshittification look like? Could PubMed go down more often, and for longer? Might services no longer be free? How else could the #quality and #reliability of its services be degraded?"
- #Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- #Vance in Munich: "To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, [European regulation of speech] looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion."
- https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5145376-vance-scolds-europe-mass-migration/
- #Trump in Washington: Taking down web sites and scientific research that use banned words.
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/02/04/national-science-foundation-trump-executive-orders-words/
- #Censorship #DefendResearch #FirstAmendment #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. From #HaroldVarmus, "I Used to Run the #NIH. Here’s What Worries Me."
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/opinion/trump-public-health-funding-nih.html
- "I’ve spent over five decades as a scientist in academia and the federal government, including as director of the NIH. Never before have I seen my profession so politicized as it is now under the #Trump administration…For baffling reasons, the executive branch is now waging war on America’s scientific enterprise. This assault includes nominating leaders hostile to science and unqualified for their roles; issuing a barrage of executive orders that disrupt research by restricting meetings, publications, travel and grant making; censoring ideas and even certain words from scientific discourse; and trying to withhold billions of dollars from universities and other research institutions that help pay the costs of research."
- PS: In addition to being a former NIH director, Varmus is a Nobel laureate (1989 Medicine) and co-founder of @PLOS@mstdn.science.
- #Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics
- Update. "The Trump Administration Is Targeting Science. The Scientific Integrity Act Could Help Protect It."
- https://blog.ucsusa.org/kellickson/the-trump-administration-is-targeting-science-the-scientific-integrity-act-could-help-protect-it/
- "The Scientific Integrity Act (#SI Act) is a bipartisan bill re-introduced on February 6th in the US House of Representatives… [It] would include language prohibiting scientific or research misconduct; preventing intimidation or attempted coercion to alter or censor scientific or technical findings; and allowing public dissemination of scientific and technical findings…It would ensure that scientific conclusions are not made based on political considerations but based on the best available science."
- #Censorship #DefendResearch #Legislation #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics