Trump administration promised 'gold standard science.' Scientists say they got fool's gold
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When President Trump announced Robert F.Kennedy Jr.
as his pick for Health and Human Services secretary, he declared that the appointment marked the return of “Gold Standard Scientific Research” in the U.S.In May 2025 Trump signed the “Restoring Gold Standard Science” executive order.Agencies including NASA and the Department of Energy filed reports on how their science met the official White House “gold standard.” Administration figures peppered public remarks, publications and social media posts with the phrase.On paper, the administration’s nine-point definition for “gold standard science” reads like a list of fundamental research integrity principles that any scientist would endorse: science that is reproducible, transparent, forthcoming on error and uncertainty, collaborative, skeptical, built on falsifiable hypotheses, impartially peer reviewed, accepting of negative results and free of conflicts of interest.In practice, critics say, the phrase has become shorthand for science in which preferred outcomes outweigh inconvenient evidence.“This use of ‘gold standard science’ is deceptive.
It sounds really good on its face.It’s advocating for things that are normative in the scientific community,” said Jules Barbati-Dajches, an analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group.The same executive order that turned the term into a policy rolled back all scientific integrity policies established during the Biden administration, Barbati-Dajches pointed out, making it harder to pursue and publish scientific findings without threat of political interference.“It undercuts all of the values and standards and principles that were already being prioritized and implemented in federal agencies,” Barbati-Dajches said.The executive order describes a decline in public trust in science that began during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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