Since its inception, the Trump administration has more than amply demonstrated its contempt for science. It’s not hard to fathom why. Science (at least in its pure, intended form) cannot be trained or directed to political ends. It does not conform to consensus, opinion, or ideology. It doesn’t care what you or anyone else thinks about it. When scientific data is manipulated or fudged to achieve the desired result, something called the scientific method exists to keep the science honest, through testing and through established, reliable methodologies.
It’s easy to understand, then, how the very existence of science (the word derives from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") would vex an administration led by a pathological liar whose only real currency in life has been his serial dishonesty. It’s easy to understand why such an administration would do whatever it could to erase “science” completely from all aspects of government, especially those federal agencies under its control whose purpose is to make public policy based on sound science. And it’s easy to see why scientists who used to perform that work for those agencies would be shown the door or muzzled.
Because from the administration’s viewpoint, there is no profit to be made in “helping” or “serving” the American public. Nor is it interested in funding any “knowledge” that might make Americans’ lives better. This administration values its time in office for one purpose and one purpose only—to loot the huge coffers and exploit the immensely powerful tools of our government for private ends, above all those private ends of those who contributed to Donald Trump’s ascent to power. All of the available evidence, all the federal agency rule-making, all of the staffing and court-packing with incompetent, industry-friendly hacks, designed to warp and distort the purpose of those agencies and departments, point to this one, paramount objective. And if science gets in the way of that objective (as it inevitably does), then science and scientific research must be banished from the government whenever possible.
The repercussions of this anti-science attitude to the future public health in this country are ominous, as described in The New York Times.
“When we decapitate the government’s ability to use science in a professional way, that increases the risk that we start making bad decisions, that we start missing new public health risks,” said Wendy Wagner, a professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin who studies the use of science by policymakers.
As 2019 draws to a close, The New York Times has summarized and highlighted the administration’s actions and the probable consequences to Americans as long as this regime remains in power, and for years after it is gone.
WASHINGTON — In just three years, the Trump administration has diminished the role of science in federal policymaking while halting or disrupting research projects nationwide, marking a transformation of the federal government whose effects, experts said, could reverberate for years.
Political appointees have shut down government studies, reduced the influence of scientists over regulatory decisions and in some cases pressured researchers not to speak publicly. The administration has particularly challenged scientific findings related to the environment and public health opposed by industries such as oil drilling and coal mining. It has also impeded research around human-caused climate change, which President Donald Trump has dismissed despite a global scientific consensus.
It’s critical for Americans to understand what’s being done to them, to their families, to their children—particularly since they are the ones paying for it every working day with their tax dollars. For this administration, the abandonment of science translates directly into corporate action—or in most cases, deliberate inaction. A buried study here, the denial of research funds there, all carefully tailored by handpicked corporate lobbyists, lawyers and industry “insiders,” to specific corporate wish-lists designed to increase corporate profits at the expense, maybe, of a few thousand American lives each year cut brutally short or rendered painful and miserable. As Scientific American put it in May of this year:
The Trump administration’s unprecedented record on science will harm people across the country, especially the most disenfranchised. While the sheer number of attacks on science is shocking, what a lack of science-informed policy means for our country is even more shocking. The administration’s rollback of protections from exposure to dangerous chemicals means that more people will become ill, develop chronic diseases or die from encountering these hazardous substances.
In most cases those lost lives won’t be noticed for a long, long time, well after the dirty fingerprints left by those busy, nameless corporate worker bees have faded away. The cancers won’t appear for years, the strange birth defects popping up near the coal ash pit won’t hit noticeable numbers for decades. Long after the men running those energy companies with the constant-changing names have drifted off into comfortable retirements.
That’s the unspoken attraction of “deregulation,” and what it means to this administration: a zero-sum game between what corporations can get away with and what pain, insult, and debasement to their lives American citizens, particularly American citizens with limited political power, are able to endure. And the concerted and deliberate eradication of science by this administration has real-life consequences that have already begun to surface.
[T]he erosion of science reaches well beyond the environment and climate: In San Francisco, a study of the effects of chemicals on pregnant women has stalled after federal funding abruptly ended. In Washington, D.C., a scientific committee that provided expertise in defending against invasive insects has been disbanded. In Kansas City, Missouri, the hasty relocation of two agricultural agencies that fund crop science and study the economics of farming has led to an exodus of employees and delayed hundreds of millions of dollars in research.
The well-documented efforts by the Trump administration to silence research to account for climate change on our food supply is just one example. Lewis Ziska, a 62-year-old plant physiologist who worked at the Department of Agriculture for over two decades, likened it to “something out of a bad sci-fi movie.”
"You have farmers who are looking at climate and weather that they've not seen in their lifetimes,” he said. “It's not your father's climate. It's changing. What does that mean? Does it mean that I'm screwed, or does it mean I have an opportunity? ... What does it mean in terms of soil health? What does it mean in terms of diseases or weeds that might be new to the area?
“This is a fundamental change across all different aspects,” he added. “To ignore it. To just dismiss it and say, ‘Oh that's political.' ... I don't have the words to describe that. It's surreal. It feels like something out of a bad sci-fi movie.”
The insidious quality of the attacks on science on our federal agencies reveals just how abnormal and radical this administration’s actions are. Trump, who once decried the use of Executive Orders by former President Barack Obama as “power grabs” and a “disaster” used the same power to eliminate one-third of the independent scientific boards advising our federal agencies. Independent scientists, in particular, were given the ax, while advisory boards serving private industry were “carved out” and preserved.
And where Executive Orders have fallen short, Trump has sought out a willing cadre of industry-friendly collaborators in his appointees to head those agencies. As the Times article points out, one favored method is to “relocate” key agency research units away from Washington, forcing employees to choose between relocating to barren locations in the Midwest far away from their roots and families or quitting. Most choose to quit rather than uproot their families to unfamiliar and inhospitable locations.
At the Department of Agriculture, for example, two-thirds of 600 employees chose to terminate their employment. These ”relocations” are calculated to hollow out the agencies so they can’t perform their functions of serving the American people (they also serve the purpose of weeding out liberal-leaning African-Americans, many of whom have families in the Washington area, from these positions). These staffing losses have halted research into pest and disease control of fundamental American crops such as grapes, potatoes, and fruit trees.
According to the Times, another method used by this administration is to specifically target any scientific research program that has not been explicitly protected by Congress. Programs to anticipate the impact of climate change were among the first eliminated, but the administration has followed up with attempts to censor, hide or suppress research initiated to assess the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink, all at the behest of chemical companies whose bottom line would be threatened by the research. In 2018 the administration censored a report describing the danger of PFAS, toxic substances linked to birth defects and cancer risk, which had contaminated the water supplies of several military bases around the country.
The Trump administration successfully stopped the publication of a study measuring the health effects of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), a group of hazardous chemicals found in drinking water and household products throughout the United States. In an email exchanges obtained by UCS under the Freedom of Information Act, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Department of Defense (DoD) can be seen attempting to strong-arm the Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) into censoring the report because of a “potential public relations nightmare”.
Other programs cut, cited in the Times article, included a multi-year study in children’s health centers funded by the EPA to determine, among other things, how pollution affects child development, and how flame retardants in furniture affect fetal and placental development.
The impact of this wholesale, purposeful and deliberate rejection of science will have lasting, far-reaching health consequences, no matter who is elected in 2020, simply because those scientists who have seen their efforts marginalized and censored will no longer pursue careers in government. Nor are they likely to return. One researcher who headed the National Institute of Food and Agriculture estimates it would take 5 to 10 years to rebuild that agency due to staff losses. Meanwhile, the years necessary for those same agencies to conduct potentially life-saving research to benefit Americans will have been lost.
It would be nice, and probably just, if the only people who suffered the health consequences of this administration’s attacks and repudiation of science were those responsible for putting it into a position of power in the first place. Unfortunately, however, science doesn’t discriminate. We all are all susceptible to the harm caused by this administration’s war on science and the exodus of scientists and researchers from our federal agencies. And ultimately, in one way or another, all of us in this country will be affected by it, in ways most of us can’t even imagine.