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>Fixed that subject line for you.
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>I hope somebody kills everyone who works for that retard rag.
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Science undermines right wing ideology and religious superstition which
is why undereducated and uneducated rightists regard it with suspicion,
believing those with degrees in science to be untrustworthy compared to
Trump, who has convinced them that he is the bastion of all truth.

There is no place for science in a Trump administration, especially since
he promises to bring back the good old days when science was ignored and
religion replaces it.

Righists believe in silencing scientists because the majority of what
scientists say is not what rightists want to hear.

Politics v. science: How President Trump's war on science impacted public
health and environmental regulation

Abstract

During his campaign for president, Joe Biden vowed to �end the politics
and follow the science� when dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and other
public health and environmental crises. He was immediately criticized by
then President Trump, who cast �listen[ing] to the scientists� as
something only a fool would do, and warned that it would result in a
�massive [economic] depression.� It is hardly surprising that Trump would
take that position. After all, the Trump administration routinely
prioritized economic interests, and worked tirelessly to remove what it
viewed as unnecessary regulatory burdens on economic activity. The Trump
administration regularly suppressed, downplayed, or simply ignored
scientific research demonstrating the need for regulation to protect
public health and the environment. The Biden administration has vowed to
reverse course, but faces challenges in doing so due to the widespread
assault on science led by former President Trump.

The Trump administration's efforts to undermine science are documented in
the Silencing Science Tracker, an online database, which records anti-
science actions taken by the federal, state, and local governments.
Drawing on more than four years of tracker data�from Trump's election to
Biden's inauguration�we show that the Trump presidency fundamentally
changed how federal government agencies perform, use, and communicate
scientific research. While the Biden administration has taken initial
steps to undo some of those changes, it still has significant work to do
to restore the role of science in federal government decision-making. Its
task is made more difficult by the public distrust of science engendered
by the Trump presidency.
Keywords: Climate change, Science, Biden, Trump
Go to:
1. The Silencing Science Tracker

The Silencing Science Tracker is a joint project of the Climate Science
Legal Defense Fund1 and Columbia Law School's Sabin Center for Climate
Change Law.2 The tracker records reported attempts by federal, state, and
local government actors to restrict or prohibit scientific research,
education, or discussion, or the publication or use of scientific
information (�anti-science actions�). According to the tracker, 346 anti-
science actions were taken by the federal government between President
Trump's election and President Biden's inauguration (i.e., from November
8, 2016 to January 20, 2021). During the same period, a further 156 anti-
science actions were taken by state and local governments, but those
actions are not discussed in this chapter.

Federal actions recorded in the tracker are categorized as follows:

1.
government censorship;
2.
self-censorship;
3.
budget cuts;
4.
personnel changes;
5.
research hindrance; and
6.
bias and misrepresentation.

Within the above categories, the tracker records actions taken by the
federal executive and Congress, except legislative proposals. Many
tracker entries involve multiple types of action or actors. For the
purposes of this analysis, those entries were separated into their
component parts, resulting in 428 unique instances of anti-science
behavior, each of which involves one type of action (i.e., from the list
above), performed by one actor (e.g., a specific executive agency). The
figures shown below were calculated based on that total.. There is reason
to believe that many anti-science actions were not reported and thus are
not captured in the tracker, and therefore the total represents a
conservative estimate of anti-science actions taken between November 2016
and January 2021. In a survey conducted by the Office of Inspector
General for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), nearly 400 EPA
scientists said they had observed violations of the agency's scientific
integrity policy in the second half of 2018, but did not report them due
to �fear of retaliation, belief that reporting would make no difference,
perceived suppression or interference by Agency leadership, and belief
that politics and policy outweigh science.�3 Given the Trump
administration's widespread and continued attacks on science, similar
concerns were likely also held by scientists at other federal agencies
throughout the second half of the Trump presidency. It is, therefore,
reasonable to assume that a large number of anti-science actions went
unreported.
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2. Anti-science actions under Trump

During his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to
�ensure... total [scientific] transparency and accountability without
political bias.�4 That was a promise he didn�t keep. As detailed further
below, during his four years in office, former President Trump led a
concerted effort to undermine federal scientific research, particularly
research relating to climate change. The Trump administration's attacks
on climate science dovetailed neatly with one of the former President's
key goals: to roll-back climate regulations that scientific research
shows would advance public health and environmental quality. Faced with
this contradiction, the Trump administration sought to restrict access to
scientific information or cast doubt on its veracity, thereby limiting
public understanding of the issues and reducing possible opposition to
the administration's plans. Those actions created a culture of fear among
federal scientists, leading some to voluntarily suppress or distort
information at odds with former President Trump's agenda. Many of the
scientists who did speak out were removed from their positions, while
others were prevented from conducting further research on topics deemed
�controversial,� such as climate change.
2.1. Censorship and self-censorship

During President Trump's time in office (including the transition
period), there were 154 documented instances of federal government
censorship of scientists, and 19 instances of scientists engaging in
self-censorship. Approximately 72% involved the suppression of
information about climate change. This began even before President Trump
took office. In November 2016, staff at Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) deleted content discussing the relationship between
climate change and human health from at least four webpages, reportedly
to �avoid drawing the new president's ire.� Similar changes were made to
other federal agency websites after President Trump took office. In
total, during the Trump administration, climate change and other
scientific information was removed from the websites of twelve federal
bodies, in most cases at the direction of administration officials.5 This
made it more difficult for Americans to educate themselves about climate
change and other scientific issues, which may, in turn, have made it
easier for the Trump administration to act on those issues by allowing
them to �fly under the radar� or obscuring the consequences of
administration action.

The Trump administration also removed scientific information from
regulatory documents. For example, in or around August 2018,
administration officials deleted information6 on the local health effects
of climate change from regulatory documents supporting the weakening of
greenhouse gas emissions controls. Again, this helped the Trump
administration advance its deregulatory agenda, including by casting
doubt on the need for climate regulations. Trump administration officials
also attempted to suppress information that could lead to demands for
stricter regulation (e.g., because it shed additional light on the
impacts of climate change or demonstrated the inadequacy of that existing
attempts to address it).7 This could have lasting consequences, making it
more difficult for the current and future administrations to take
regulatory action, due to a lack of information or sense of urgency.

This type of scientific censorship was widespread during the Trump
administration, having been documented at 20 federal bodies�more than any
other type of anti-science action. Notably however, the number of
documented instances of government censorship declined slightly over
time, falling by 26% from 2017 to 2018, a further 18% in 2019, and 10%
more in 2020. This is not necessarily good news; it may simply reflect
the fact that less science was done because of personnel changes, budget
cuts, and other anti-science actions taken by the Trump Administration.
There is also reason to believe that the attacks on science created a
culture of fear among federal employees and led some to self-censor. A
survey conducted in 2016�before President Trump's election�found that 72%
of EPA scientists felt they could �openly express scientific opinions
about the Agency's scientific work without fear of retaliation.�8 That
number dropped to just 57% in a repeat survey conducted in 2018�almost
two years into Trump presidency.8 In the 2018 survey, over 600 scientists
said their �management chains do not consistently stand behind scientific
staff who put forth scientifically defensible positions, including those
that may be controversial.�8 It is, then, hardly surprising that some
scientists would choose to self-censor. However, while understandable,
such behavior could undermine public trust in science by creating the
impression that scientists �pick and choose� what to disclose and
regularly �hide� information. Both self- and government censorship may
also cause the public to question whether research conducted or overseen
by federal scientist is truly impartial and lead some to belief that such
research is inherently political and thus untrustworthy.
2.2. Personnel changes