Why Trump‘s ‘Gold Standard’ Executive Order is Essential to Restoring Truth in Science
by Tilak Doshi 20 June 2025 11:00 AM
President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled ‘Restoring Gold Standard Science’ on May 23rd 2025, aiming to overhaul research-integrity policies and ensure that federal government-sponsored science is “transparent, rigorous and impactful”. The order sparked concern among scientists who fear it could lead to political interference in scientific research and undermine independent scientific inquiry.
Thus, STAT News – owned by Boston Globe Media, operating as a for-profit media outlet focused on health, medicine and life sciences and funded by Big Pharma and biotech firm ads – claimed that “Trump’s ‘gold standard’ order is a blueprint for politicising science”. According to the New York Times, the executive order puts Trump’s 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.
In an open letter boasting 9,700 signatures (of which 2,700 chose to keep their information private), a group called ‘Stand Up for Science‘ compared President Trump’s executive order to the Lysenko affair – which condemned millions to starvation by conducting bogus genetic research in the Soviet Union – and the ‘science’ of eugenics in state-sponsored programmes in Nazi Germany which led to the genocide of millions of Jews, people with disabilities and homosexuals.
In the no-holds-barred confrontation between President Trump and his detractors, starting even before his first term in office, comparing him to Hitler and Stalin is par for the course and should elicit no surprises among observers. But in a hyperbolic and highly charged political climate, President Trump’s latest executive order may go down as one of the most consequential policy interventions in defence of scientific integrity.
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/06/20/why-trumps-gold-standard-executive-order-is-essential-to-restoring-truth-in-science/
