The writer is a science commentator
An unfamiliar message now sits on the homepage of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It reads: “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s executive orders.”
The executive orders, which crack down on perceived wokeness in government agencies, have thrown American science into chaos since they were signed in late January. One, targeting “illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity”, scraps all diversity and inclusion initiatives, which the president frames as conflicting with federal civil rights laws; another mandates the removal of language concerned with “gender ideology”.
A “pause” on all health funding, in a bid to uncover wasteful spending, has now been lifted but information channels, including some relevant to the current US bird flu outbreak, have started to gum up. Some web pages, data sets, public communications, journal papers and disease reports have vanished, moved or are pending approval before release.
One virologist labelled events a “data apocalypse”, with researchers rushing to archive material before websites went dark. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director, compared the halting of outbreak updates to “finding out that your local fire department has been told not to sound any fire alarms”.
The assault on science and public health is a litmus test for compliance by a regime that seems to care little for either — and researchers must consider carefully how to respond. While it is right to trim profligate spending, it would be wrong for science to remould itself according to ideological whim. Academics must resist the temptation to pre-emptively self-censor to avoid falling out of favour, hard though that is in an intimidatory political climate where dissent can lead to public reprisals. That means those with clout must speak out, as several Nobel laureates, including former US health agency head Harold Varmus, have done.
The American Association of University Professors also urged demoralised colleagues to avoid the trap of “anticipatory obedience”. Some campuses are advising staff to ignore rumours and keep working. The National Science Foundation, meanwhile, is batting grant-holders back to their research offices for clarification.
One problem is that Trump’s executive orders are sweeping and vague, creating uncertainty as to which projects are now verboten. Hunting down words like “bias” and “diversity” in grant paperwork is not a fail-safe: while DEI can no longer affect hiring, does research into ethnic disparities in disease flout the rules?
A case in point: pulse oximeters, gadgets placed on the finger to measure a patient’s oxygen levels, are known to work unreliably on darker skin. Should such investigations cease? Theodore Iwashyna, a critical care physician, recently said he had “spent probably 25 hours . . . talking with my colleagues as we try to understand what these poorly written, obviously immoral and probably unlawful orders will actually mean.” Legal challenges have already begun: the recent funding freeze, which saw labs unable to pay salaries and buy equipment, was halted by judges last week.
It is unclear what happens next but one cannot bet against the bleakly comical spectacle of the Department of Government Efficiency having to painstakingly comb through thousands of grants line by line to establish exactly which projects violate the executive orders. It might not be a prudent use of Doge’s time but at least an officially labelled axe provides a clear line of culpability if good projects are felled.
In any case, all these issues distract from the bigger trick hiding in plain sight: promoting the belief that erasing DEI initiatives from American life restores a meritocracy. That belief is anti-scientific nonsense, argues social psychologist Keon West, author of The Science of Racism, which reveals up-to-date evidence on racial disparities in all walks of life: “The executive order pretends that DEI is subverting meritocracy instead of seeing things how they really are, which is that there is no meritocracy and DEI is an attempt to get closer to one.”
Experiments, West told me, repeatedly show that white people enjoy measurably better outcomes compared with people of colour, whether they are equally qualified candidates chasing a job, equally sick patients seeking medical help or equally culpable suspects navigating the justice system.
In 2021, the CDC agreed — and declared racism a threat to public health. That statement remains true today — but has become that bit harder to find on its website.
By Anjana Ahuja
