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replied to petersuber's status

Update. "Top advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [] are asking the agency’s acting director to explain the abrupt removal of information and data from CDC websites, and say when it will be restored. In a sharply worded letter sent Saturday, the group asked Acting Director Susan Monarez what the rationale was for removing the data, if the consequences and legal authority of such a decision were considered, what was being done to safeguard the data sets that were removed, and when access to them would return. The letter asks for answers by Feb. 7."
https://archive.is/SWhYj

The CDC advisory board was disbanded by Trump in 2019 and revived by Biden in 2021. The members "expect to be fired" for asking the agency to explain and reverse the takedowns.

replied to petersuber's status

Update. "Represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group, Doctors for America filed a today [Feb 4] against the Office of Personnel Management (), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (), the Food and Drug Administration (), and the Department of Health & Human Services () for the removal of a broad range of -related data and other information used by health professionals and researchers from publicly accessible government websites."
https://www.citizen.org/news/doctors-for-america-sues-over-removal-of-health-information-from-hhs-cdc-fda-websites/

replied to petersuber's status

Update, on the order directing staffers to retract pending journal articles that use now-prohibited terms like and (earlier in this thread) …

Bravo to the (@bmj_latest) for calling this order "sinister and ludicrous."
https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r253

"This is not how it works. Medically relevant terminology and inclusive language follow evidence based reporting standards or are matters of individual journal style and policy. They do not follow political orders. Similarly, co-authors cannot simply scrub themselves from articles. Authorship gives credit and accountability for the work, and an article’s list of authors does not ghost contributors. If authors wish to withdraw submissions under review at a journal, this process is feasible should all of their co-authors agree. However, if somebody who merits inclusion in the authorship group of an article requests to be removed, even with the approval of the co-authors, this …

replied to petersuber's status

Update. "Staffers with Elon ’s [] entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ()…today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/04/doge-noaa-headquarters

What's the or interest here?

1. "…called for the agency to be 'broken up and downsized', claiming the agency is 'harmful to US prosperity' for its role in science."

2. Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official, "noted it had been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on NOAA data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services."

PS: Rosenberg is right. During the GWBush admin, Senator (R-PA) repeatedly tried to take down NOAA's open weather data, to benefit AccuWeather, the for-profit weather forecaster …

replied to petersuber's status

Update. The isn't the only journal pushing back against the directive that staff scientists should retract pending publications that use Trump-banned words. (Earlier in this thread.)

Kudos to the _American Journal of Public Health_ () for pushing back as well.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/114076

From publisher Georges Benjamin: "We at the American Journal of Public Health have no interest in following the president's prohibitions on language. We will publish things under our guidelines, under our ethical principles." Benjamin acknowledged that the journal may now get fewer submissions from government scientists.

AJPH is published by the American Public Health Association ().

replied to petersuber's status

Update. "White House budget proposal could shatter the National Science Foundation"
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/02/white-house-budget-proposal-could-shatter-the-national-science-foundation/

" 'This kind of cut would kill American science and boost and other nations into global science leadership positions,' [said] Neal Lane, who led the in the 1990s during Bill Clinton's presidency."

PS: I've never liked arguments for funding or fostering science. Science is international. But the admin is putting us in a dilemma. Either we see deep cuts in US science funding. Or we use nationalist arguments to avert those cuts.

There are non-nationalist arguments to fund US science. For example, good science is usually expensive and those who do it well should be funded for the benefit of all. Unfortunately that argument is not likely to work on Trump admin officials. It's not US-specific and applies everywhere, even in China.