Protecting science in a critical election year

On Sunday, former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump and other speakers made headlines for their disturbing remarks at a rally at Madison Square Garden. However, one comment went largely unnoticed. Trump pledged to “let [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] go wild on health… on the food… on the medicines.” That’s the same Robert F. Kennedy who said last year, “There is no vaccine that is safe and effective,” despite the wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary, and who has embraced and elevated conspiracy theories, like chemtrails.

Former President Trump’s embrace of RFK Jr. shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, during his first term, Trump and his allies regularly undermined science for political gain. Their actions have had lasting consequences—sowing confusion, eroding trust in science, and leaving Americans vulnerable to disinformation, with devastating real-world consequences. The deliberate suppression and distortion of facts has also eroded the scientific foundation necessary to address existential threats like climate change and pandemics.

We believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant. During the first Trump administration, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) created the Silencing Science Tracker, a database to systematically document and bring attention to the staggering number of attacks on science by federal, state, and local governments across the country.

In light of the upcoming election, we are again highlighting the myriad ways government attacks on science have real—and sometimes fatal—consequences.

As of October 2024, the Silencing Science Tracker has documented 543 cases of government anti-science actions. Information suppression, funding cuts, political interference, censoring or altering research findings, and other tactics have all been used to silence science and scientists. This has had a chilling effect on scientists’ ability to conduct and publish their vital research and has eroded public trust in science. In turn, this has impeded the government’s ability to effectively respond to crises.

In January 2020, for example, then-President Trump dismissed scientists’ and biodefense experts’ warnings about the risks of COVID-19, telling his Secretary of Health and Human Services to “stop panicking” and asserting that it was “going to be just fine.” In September 2020, the Trump administration pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to edit or delay the release of the weekly COVID-19 “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports,” coinciding with President Trump’s suggestions to use unverified and dangerous so-called cures like hydroxychloroquine or injecting bleach.

While such misinformation poses an immediate danger to those who take it as fact, there is the added consequence of “brain drain.” Over 1,600 federal scientists left within the first three years of the Trump administration, a 1.5% decrease in the total federal scientific workforce.

The Silencing Science Tracker has also documented the termination of advisory committees, the disbanding of scientific panels, and significant budget and funding cuts to research studies and programs such as the EPA’s Children’s Health Research Program. Funding cuts have continued to a lesser degree under the Biden administration, including proposed cuts to NOAA’s research and educational programs in the proposed FY2025 budget.

At the state level, bills have been introduced or passed that prevent discussion of the realities of climate change and the urgent need to address it. The Health Department in Florida has actively contradicted public health guidelines for vaccines, while Texas has published pamphlets falsely suggesting that abortions cause breast cancer. Several state legislatures have passed laws that force doctors to wrongly tell their patients that medication abortions can be reversed. Science education in K-12 schools has also been attacked, with several states introducing and passing bills that promote the teaching of “intelligent design” or downplay the human impact on climate change.

This disregard for scientific reality has real and devastating consequences. People whose homes have been destroyed by increasingly devastating hurricanes caused by climate change, who have experienced reproductive health emergencies that have gone untreated, or who have lost loved ones to COVID-19 have suffered the real-life consequences of the government prioritizing political gain over scientific realities and the well-being of its constituents.

Access to accurate scientific information is fundamental to a healthy, well-functioning society. Scientists must be able to conduct critical research on the issues that touch every aspect of our lives, from climate change to public health to reproductive healthcare. And they must be free to share their findings with the public without interference, censorship, or intimidation.