How a War on Science Could Hurt the U.S.-and Its Citizens
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The discipline of science is one where the facts, once they are peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals, are fixed. They’re not open to interpretation, or at least not much. In that sense, it’s the opposite of politics, in which nearly everything can be negotiated. But as the first days of the Trump Administration have shown, many of those seemingly settled scientific facts–the ones that have informed countless policies from previous U.S. Administrations–are once more up for debate.
Within hours of President Trump’s Inauguration, the White House website was stripped of any mention of climate change or the effort to fight it. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was ordered to temporarily freeze the grants it issues–a move by a new President that has happened before but one that some officials said went further than previous Administrations. Employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture were forbidden to release any “public-facing documents,” according to a leaked internal email. And before taking office, Trump repeatedly cast doubt on the safety of vaccines.
Taken together, this is worrisome to scientists.
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