On the evening of Friday, May 23rd, 2025, The White House released an Executive Order called Restoring Gold Standard Science. At face value, this order outlines a supposed commitment to federally funded research that is “transparent, rigorous, and impactful” and declares that policy is to be informed by “the most credible, reliable, and impartial scientific evidence available.” However the EO as written will actually undermine scientific rigor and the transparent progress of science. As scientists, we are committed to a discipline that is decentralized and self-scrutinizing. Instead this administration mandates a centralized system serving the political beliefs of the President and the whims of those in power.

We view this Executive Order as an escalation of the ongoing assault on science. The first six sections employ common scientific language to spell out a “gold standard” for science that would not strengthen science, but instead would introduce stifling limits on intellectual freedom in our Nation’s laboratories and federal funding agencies. Notably, the order comes from an administration that has already defunded areas of research they do not agree with, pushed vaccine misinformation despite widespread evidence, lied about the impacts of climate change, and incorrectly defined sex determination as binary, when biology proves it is not, in their own Executive Order. Throughout the document, scientific language is hijacked, and ideas are turned on their heads. Section 7 outlines the selection of a “senior appointee designated” by the head of the every agency to “evaluate alleged violations” of the “Gold Standard Science” edict. This will be the “sole and exclusive means of evaluating and …addressing alleged violations” overseeing the “use, interpretation and communication of scientific information.”

We see through this bad faith appropriation of scientific language and principles.

The Executive Order further consolidates political control over the Nation's scientific infrastructure, co-opting the language of open science to implement a system under which direct presidential appointees are given broad latitude to designate many common and important scientific activities as scientific misconduct, and to penalize those involved accordingly.

History illustrates, in no uncertain terms, the danger of state-dictated 'scientific truths'. The anti-scientific interpretations of genetics by Lysenko in the Soviet Union resulted in famine that killed millions. State-sponsored programs in Nazi Germany based on the “science” of eugenics led to the genocide of millions of Jews, people with disabilities, and people identifying as LGBTQ+ who were deemed to have “life unworthy of life.”

This Executive Order constitutes a Fool’s Gold Standard Science.

We the undersigned, commit to:
1. Affirming our continued pledge to rigorous science, as defined by our field, not the White House.
2. Calling for swift social and legal actions against this illegal Executive Order that represents dangerous overreach into our scientific systems.
3. Demanding freedom of inquiry without governmental influence or interference.

We will fight for science in Congress, in the courts, in the media, and in the court of public opinion. We are Standing Up for Science.