This piece was co-authored with Izzy Pacenza, a project coordinator at the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative.
It’s been one year since the White House’s Office of Science Technology and Policy (OSTP) published guidelines for agencies to institute President Trump’s “Restoring Gold Standard Science” executive order. In the past year, federal agencies have invoked this amorphous and highly discretionary “gold standard” as justification for removing scientific information from public access, sowing doubt in established science, and using political preference to dictate the fate of research findings. Agencies have also leaned on “gold standard science” to dismiss scientific expertise, disband federal science offices and advisory boards, and consolidate research under political appointees, all of which is likely to accelerate the suppression and misrepresentation of science to the public.
The Trump administration has also engaged in unprecedented information suppression across taxpayer-funded federal websites. These sites are the primary means of communication between the federal government and the public, and the information they present influences peoples’ understanding and actions. The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), where we work, has documented over 1,000 instances of information suppression by the second Trump administration, spanning information on environmental justice, climate change, public health, clean energy, and more. Here, we trace the administration’s use of “gold standard science” across agency websites to remove, undermine, and manipulate scientific information for the public, and to commandeer scientific oversight in service of an unbridled deregulatory agenda.
Scaling back and censoring science
For 15 years, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s flagship climate science communication platform, climate.gov, provided authoritative, accurate, and accessible information about climate change to the public and policymakers. However, in June 2025 NOAA abruptly discontinued climate.gov and redirected users to noaa.gov/climate, with a banner stating: “In compliance with Executive Order 14303 (“Restoring Gold Standard Science”)… you have been redirected to NOAA.gov.”
The Trump administration hasn’t provided any information about how or what part of “gold standard science” climate.gov violated. Science integrity scholar Jacob Carter details how climate.gov actually epitomized the longstanding scientific values of transparency, reproducibility, and peer review that are cited in the executive order. Rather than encouraging high quality science, the Trump administration is disingenuously invoking “gold standard science” as a means to suppress it.
Sowing doubt in science
Under the guise of scientific rigor, the Trump administration is pushing the false narrative that the “gold standard” for science is absolute certainty, which not only dismisses the care and specificity scientists use to interpret their findings, but also holds scientific research to unattainable standards. Comparing real scientific findings to unrealistic expectations of certainty would allow the administration to rebuke nearly every scientific conclusion ever made.
A striking example of the Trump administration invoking “gold standard science” to decrease confidence in rigorous research can be found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. Since at least 2024, the CDC’s webpage for “Autism and Vaccines” has stated clearly that vaccines do not cause autism, and prior to being sworn in as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS, which contains CDC), Robert F Kennedy, Jr. committed to not remove this language. However, since November 2025, the page’s header “Vaccines do not Cause Autism” has been surrounded by statements that undermine it. The page reads, “…the statement ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim. Scientific studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines contribute to the development of autism.” The page goes on to call into question epidemiological evidence because it “cannot prove causality.”
These statements are all egregiously misleading; the conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism is based on decades of rigorous scientific research. Because actual high-quality research requires measured and nuanced hypothesis testing and interpretation, studies do not definitively “prove” or “rule out the possibility” of all possible factors; they build a body of evidence and carefully discern findings. For more than half a century, epidemiologists have agreed on and iteratively refined guidelines for how to evaluate evidence to infer causation, which is at the heart of epidemiology as a field of study. To claim that it is not “evidence-based” to state that “vaccines do not cause autism” is a gross misrepresentation of the scientific record.
Political determinants of science
The Trump administration also has used “gold standard science” as a means to select which science to lift up, and which to dismiss. For example, in March 2026 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed to significantly weaken ethylene oxide (EtO) regulations “to ensure consistency with the law and gold standard science.” In a fact sheet about proposed EtO regulation changes, the EPA describes the scientific evidence showing the highly toxic nature of EtO as “outdated,” and in a section titled “Trump EPA’s Commitment to Gold Standard Science,” it implies that new epidemiological studies discredit the studies underpinning the Biden EPA’s strict regulations on EtO.
However, what goes unsaid is that the handful of newer studies that suggest EtO is less toxic were conducted by chemical industry consultants and funded by the American Chemistry Council, Vantage Specialty Chemicals, and the opaquely funded Center for Truth in Science. Many other recent studies affirm EtO as a carcinogen, and still more shed light on its mechanisms of toxicity. This misrepresentation of the scientific record on EtO coincided with pervasive information suppression about the issue. EDGI documented the removal of more than 60 federal webpages related to EtO, which housed information about its toxicity, its risk to communities, EPA’s regulation of the chemical, and more.
The Trump administration’s EPA again espoused “gold standard science” to dismiss scientific findings about the toxicity of formaldehyde, and hand-pick statements and industry-funded studies to weaken formaldehyde regulations. In a hypocritical move, the EPA describes its efforts to consider the peer review record of the existing formaldehyde risk evaluation to conclude that it needed to develop a new risk calculation, while simultaneously asserting that peer review is not necessary for its new draft risk calculation.The Trump administration is leveraging its uncurtailed discretion to dismiss and discount valid research and usher in politically motivated science.
Instituting political interference
These patterns of suppressing and manipulating scientific information are likely to escalate as the Trump administration’s extensive reorganization of federal science offices and boards take effect. In February 2026, the EPA dissolved its Office of Research and Development (ORD), the agency’s main research arm. EPA spokesperson Carolyn Holran stated it was a “science-centered decision” that was “based on gold-standard science.” This doublespeak betrays the reality of a move that undermines the EPA’s role as an independent scientific authority. ORD was replaced with the Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions (OASES), with roughly 1,200 fewer employees than ORD. While ORD was an independent office, OASES is housed under political appointees, within the Office of the Administrator. An EPA memo about OASES’ “Science Actions and Deliverables” states that scientific research and projects “must be supported by appropriate political leadership,” a statement that corroborates many experts’ concerns about an uptick in political interference in agency science under the banner of “gold standard science.”
The Trump administration has significantly reduced independent scientific oversight at federal agencies as well. An analysis by Nature reveals that the administration has dissolved over 100 science advisory committees, groups of independent subject matter experts tasked with supporting agency decision-making with the best available science. The administration has also reduced the transparency and independence of the committees that remain. The Department of Energy (DOE) has been significantly targeted, for example, through shuttering its subject-area scientific advisory committees and centralizing them into a single Science Advisory Committee. A news release by the agency cites “gold standard science” as the impetus for the change and frames it as a stride toward evidence-based decisionmaking. However, the move in fact weakens scientific oversight by transferring specific expertise-based input to a more general board and reducing scientific advisory board members from around 150 to 22. Gesturing to “gold standard science,” the DOE is reducing critical oversight on the science the agency produces and relies upon for its work.
The entrenchment of ignorance
By removing scientific research findings, sowing doubt in established science, and manipulating the scientific record in accordance with its political agenda, the administration is weaponizing “gold standard science” to undermine credible science now and into the future. While these methods have largely been discretionary, piecemeal, and inconsistent, the problem becomes more deeply embedded in our governance systems as the administration dismisses and disbands scientific expertise and establishes political approval as a prerequisite for science across the government.
Perhaps most concerning of all, a recent proposed rule by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) threatens to codify attacks on science by granting political appointees power to reject science not in line with the administration’s priorities.
We are all producers and consumers of evidence-based scientific information, and we all lose when it’s deprioritized and politicized. This proposed rule is open for public comment until July 13, and we encourage you to write a comment to help defend high-quality, independent science and research. The Trump administration’s “gold standard science” undermines and suppresses the real, robust science that forms the foundation of our lives. It is imperative to protect the science that protects us.