Academic journals push back on Trump's changes to health data
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The scientific community is showing signs of pushing back against President Trump's blackout and selective changes to federal health websites and datasets.
Why it matters: That data has long been considered the gold standard in public health. But the lack of visibility into to what's been altered is raising questions about the integrity of government reports.
State of play: The American Journal of Public Health will scrutinize research submitted by government scientists or drawing on federal datasets, Georges Benjamin, publisher of the journal and executive director of the parent American Public Health Association, said Tuesday during an interview with MedPage Today.
- The journal isn't changing its standards for what gets published, Benjamin later told Axios. He acknowledged that means federally funded projects may have a harder time getting through the peer review process.
- "The problem comes in when someone submits a paper that doesn't have a demographic [like gender or sexual orientation] that is essential to making the assertion that they've made. And then in that case, peer reviewers are going to have to say, 'Well, what happened to this group?'" he said.
- The American Public Health Association is also suing the Trump administration over its now-rescinded memo to freeze outgoing federal funding.
Context: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials have reportedly required that scientific papers from its researchers under review at journals be withdrawn in order to remove language related to gender from the papers.
- The National Science Foundation is looking through active research projects it funds to see if they violate executive orders issues by Trump to recognize only two genders and end diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, the Washington Post reported.
- The Trump administration last week removed CDC data from federal websites en masse, and started republishing the information without clarity on what had been changed and with notices that information could be further modified.
Zoom out: Other medical and academic journals told Axios they aren't changing their policies to accommodate the Trump administration, either.
- "Our standards have not changed. We will continue to evaluate research for quality of science and reporting as we always have," a spokesperson for the New England Journal of Medicine said, adding that the journal has not received any requests from CDC scientists to withdraw submitted papers.
- The Lancet said that changes to language related to gender in submitted papers prior to publication will only be considered if they do not compromise the integrity of the scientific record.
- "Articles already published in Lancet journals will not be retracted or corrected based on authorship or language — retractions are only considered for cases where there are concerns about scientific validity or integrity," The Lancet Group said in a statement.
What we're watching: The Trump administration's changes could very well result in less scientific research on the health of populations like LGBTQ+ people, Benjamin said.
- Case in point: After Congress passed a law in 1996 that effectively stopped the federal government from funding research on gun violence, scientific inquiry on the effects of guns was reduced by 90%, NPR reported in 2018, shortly after lawmakers repealed the law curtailing gun violence research funding.
