Leaving politics aside

If I have learned anything about scientific writing in my 35-year career, it is that scientists should be careful when writing on matters of politics and public policy. We tend to be too cocksure of our own thinly vetted opinions and present them poorly to boot. David Kramer’s report “The undermining of science is Trump’s legacy” (March 2021, page 24 ) is an unfortunate example.

For starters, facts presented in the piece do not support the title. About a full page in, Kramer admits that funding for science increased 10–20% under Donald Trump. That does not undermine science.

The story quotes representative Bill Foster (D-IL), who has a PhD in physics, on the “searing pain” of the Trump years. A check of Foster’s record shows that in the 2019–20 Congress he voted with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 100% of the time. His credentials as a physicist notwithstanding, his opinion is better understood politically, not scientifically.

The story makes several egregious assertions without any backing. For example, Kramer writes that “Trump sidelined Anthony Fauci … and Deborah Birx …. In their place, he installed Scott Atlas, a radiologist who argued that the virus should be allowed to spread largely unimpeded.” That is a bizarre take on the facts! Fauci, not Atlas, was, and is, the governmental face of the pandemic response. And has there ever been a more aggressive effort to impede the spread of a virus? Most any unbiased individual would applaud Trump for seeking a variety of opinions. The ideas of Atlas—who is much more than “a radiologist” ¹ —were neither flippant nor influential.

Kramer states that “an indisputable legacy of the Trump administration was an unparalleled level of political interference with science—data disappeared, scientists were silenced, ….” Those are serious charges, but the lack of examples to back them up suggests to the thoughtful reader that there are no indisputable examples to give. Kramer’s “most far-reaching example of attempted interference” apparently centers on the Harvard Six Cities study on pollution and health and its reliance on confidential raw data. That controversy started in 2009 and extended through the Obama years; ² it is hardly a Trump-era issue.

In fairness to Kramer, the Six Cities study was reviewed by an independent panel that agreed with its results. In fairness to Trump, the principle of transparency should be praised and the data used in formulating public policy should be made public, even if it requires redaction. That is especially true for medical science, where evidence shows that a significant number of classic studies cannot be reproduced. ³

Most people act in good faith. Those whom you dislike are rarely as evil as you might want them to be. Give credit where it is due. And back up criticism with your own transparency. That is the way of science.