How Trump's 'Gold Standard Science' is Dangerously Undermining Global Research Integrity
The President is threatening US scientific credibility and global cooperation, reports Paul Dempsey
US President Donald Trump has intensified the MAGA assault on science by seeking to impose ‘Stalinist’ oversight on government-funded research. A new executive order (EO) empowers political appointees to validate research outcomes, overriding independent expert review.
The order, ‘Restoring Gold Standard Science’, could suppress domestic science and block collaboration with international partners such as the UK, Germany, and 45 other members of the EU-led Horizon Europe research programme.
It has arrived amid broad Trumpian attacks on science, including staff and funding cuts, visa denials, and project cancellations. The US is historically the world's largest funder of basic research but has been losing credibility since this President’s return. Its National Institutes of Health alone previously invested $48bn (£36bn) annually.
“Peer review is unbiased but what does this EO mean?” asks Colette Delawalla, executive director of a growing anti-MAGA movement, Stand Up for Science.
“It means a Trump appointee can look at any peer review and say, ‘Oh well that actually was biased, and therefore this is research misconduct, and the research is eliminated.’ They even have a section allowing them to punish the researchers.
“There’s ‘bad Trump’ and there’s ‘sneaky Trump’; this was sneaky Trump.”
Opponents of the order believe the move affects all US public research but highlight three areas as most endangered: climate change (which Trump denies), health and medicine (given Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s fringe beliefs) and artificial intelligence (where Congressional Republicans are already trying to pass legislation reserving regulatory power for the federal government alone).
Delawalla and others believe the result will be the reverse of ‘America First’ – Trump’s industrial and ideological ‘clients’ aside.
“In the last 100 or so years, we’ve gone from the light bulb to the internet, delivered huge medical advancements and led in scientific research. This takes those achievements and likely hands the power to China – America last,” she says.
Lysenkoism
The order has sparked a furious response partly because it resembles the early stages of ‘Lysenkoism’ in the former USSR under Josef Stalin. Trofim Lysenko, the Soviet agronomist and biologist, promoted pseudoscience over settled genetics as a senior government official. Scientists were progressively intimidated, silenced, purged, imprisoned and, in some cases, executed for not toeing the party line even though much was based on spurious crop theories which contributed to millions of deaths during the Holodomor famine in Ukraine and famine in China during the Great Leap Forward.
US scientists drawing parallels with Lysenkoism under Donald Trump cite the defunding of politically inconvenient research and the portrayal of mainstream science as an anti-Trump liberal cabal. The potential use of charges of ‘scientific misconduct’ is further seen as akin to Stalin’s persecution of Lysenko’s opponents.
“This [EO] is one of the most sinister documents I have seen,” says Dr Arthur Caplan, Professor and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, who is a leading US researcher in bioethics.
“It threatens to close down the world’s largest science infrastructure. Others need to step up, but this will seriously damage global capacity in institutions, labs, even the number of post-docs available to carry out research. And it attacks basic research – the kind that the private sector does not do but builds upon.
“It leaves an enormous vacuum and is an explicit politicization of science on top of everything else we have seen from Trump. Is it out of malice or incompetence? Probably both. It does recall Lysenko.”
Dr Jennifer Jones, director of the Centre for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, takes a similar view.
“Each one of Trump’s steps to sideline science so far has been just another step towards authoritarianism,” she says. “Now people are just beginning to realise how disastrous this document is. This isn’t just a US issue, it’s global.”
Beyond devaluing US projects, the order may have placed an impassable obstacle before other countries joining Washington-backed work because political oversight directly conflicts with their emphasis on peer review.
The UK, Germany and the European Union provide examples of how far-reaching the order is. Many countries prioritize peer review as best practice, but these have enshrined it in law.
UK
Research undertaken by UK Research and Innovation, a funding body overseen by Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle, must comply with The Haldane Principle. More than a century old, the principle underpins experts’ independence.
The Higher Education and Research Act 2017 defines Haldane:
“Decisions on individual research proposals are best taken following an evaluation of the quality and likely impact of the proposals (such as a peer review process)."(Provision 103 (3))
Other ministries, including Health and Energy, are not required by law to observe Haldane but still apply it for ethical reasons.
“There was a battle to have Haldane put into the Higher Education and Research act, and there would be major pushback from the community if there were attempts to weaken that,” says Professor Malcolm Macleod of the Neurology Department at the University of Edinburgh.
Germany
The situation in Germany is clear cut. Article 5(3) of its constitutional basic law – the Wissenschaftsfreiheit – states “Arts and sciences, research and teaching shall be free.”
Enacted in 1949 as a safeguard against any repeat of the Nazis’ scientific abuses, it outlaws government intervention in any research – which will make collaboration between German and US researchers all but impossible.
“Given the historical reasons for putting that in the constitution, and how sensitive Germany remains to the horrors of that time, I can’t see any way around it,” says Dr Caplan.
European Union
Horizon Europe, with 47 participants including the UK, is strongly shaped by Germany, its largest funder. It is governed by EU Regulation 2021/695, which requires “independent external experts” for project assessment (including plans for the release of any findings).
It also mandates compliance with GDPR data privacy law. This conflicts with a requirement in Trump’s order for absolute data transparency.
Consequences
Professor Macleod was already wary of collaborations with US institutions. “Now,” he adds, “I would say it is highly unlikely. What we see here from Trump is something you simply cannot work with.”
Dr Paul Conway, Associate Professor at the University of Southampton, and an expert in the psychology of morality agrees.
“I wouldn’t engage now. This EO is insane. It’s Newspeak. It’s the Ministry of Truth. I can’t see how my American colleagues will bring themselves to work within it – it’s a direct challenge to their integrity,” he says.
American researchers believe the damage may be hard to repair. Their view is that the big winner stands to be China. It has the scale to fill the vacuum as the US retreats from global science. Professor Macleod and Dr Conway say they are comparatively comfortable with that.
“I’ve collaborated with Chinese post-docs and, while I’m no fan of the Government there, I’ve never felt a hand on my shoulder. With the US, I now do,” adds Professor Macleod.