New NY Times investigation: The Trump administration's war on science is a targeted one, focused on gutting regulations that will enrich Trump's corporate donors at the expense of the public. 1/
nytimes.com/2019/12/28/cli…
nytimes.com/2019/12/28/cli…
Good research scientists have options. Those who believe that rigorous research is being abandoned will leave the federal government. 2/ 
To give the gutting of science a patina of respectability, orgs like the Heritage Foundation say it can be outsourced. Here is the thing: when you are paying private actors to give you the results you want, they are much more likely to give you the results you want. 3/
All else equal, scientific researchers with civil service protections and whose jobs are not dependent upon providing certain results are more likely to provide research in the public interest. But the Trump admin has being doing plenty to push career researchers out of govt. 4/
The Trump administration is gagging federal scientists that you pay for to stop them from providing information about the services that you use. 5/
Part of what the Trump administration does not get, or care about, is that the US comparative advantage has been built on decades of big investments in science. That advantage is now being pissed away to provide some short term benefits to donors. 6/
Scientists were told to pretend that benefits of regulation were "unquantifiable." This isn't Trump appointees putting their thumb on the scales to get the results they want. They are simply tossing out the scale. 7/
The Trump admin - so deeply opposed to transparency when it comes to its own actions - has imposed a bizarre standard of "transparency" for research that all major scientific associations oppose. Studies that promise participants confidentiality cannot be used. 8/
At the end of the day, science is about the truth. Forget the "deep state" propaganda, who do you trust to tell you the truth? The appointees with no scientific background who worked directly or indirectly for industry, or career research scientists? 9/
