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Since the George W. Bush administration and under both parties, the White House has focused on scientific integrity. However, Republicans and Democrats have conflicting views on what that means.
For Democrats, scientific integrity centers on protecting government scientists and the science that they conduct from political interference from higher ups. For Republicans — who under President Trump use the phrase “gold standard science” rather than scientific integrity — the focus is on protecting research from career government employees who they believe are improperly shaping research to serve political ends.
These different perspectives are not subtle. In a 2022 report on scientific integrity, the Biden Administration explained:
Scientific integrity aims to make sure that science is conducted, managed, communicated, and used in ways that preserve its accuracy and objectivity and protect it from suppression, manipulation, and inappropriate influence—including political interference.
In contrast, the Trump administration’s 2025 guidance for “gold standard science” expressed a very different focus:
Federally-performed science, and its use in Federal decision-making, must be beyond reproach. This Guidance establishes a proactive approach to ensure science generated and utilized by agencies withstands scrutiny, fosters cross disciplinary collaboration, and remains free from bias or undue influence.
These different emphases are nakedly political.
The Biden administration clearly saw career agency scientists as allies and the Trump administration sees them as enemies, the “deep state.” Data support why these perceptions exist.
The figure below — from Spenkuch et al. 2023 — shows that among federal civil servants, during Trump’s first term registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans by about 2 to 1.
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For government scientists, the partisan divide may be even larger. While recent data is lacking, a 2009 Pew Research survey found that among federal scientists, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 7 to 1.
Of course, a federal agency with an employee base that leans left or right does not mean that these individuals politicize their work or that agencies cannot be effective. All of us have political views. Consider that the U.S. military leans Republican by 2 to 1 (as measured by the views of veterans). A partisan tilt in the Department of Defense is not problematic for the agency to meet its mission, as should be the case with every federal agency.
A close look at the Biden (and Obama) era science integrity policies and those of the Trum Administration reveals a significant degree of substantive overlap in the overarching principles recommended to guide federal science, summarized in the table below.
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However, despite the apparent broad agreement on the substance of scientific integrity, both Republican and Democratic science integrity policies reveal profound tensions between political appointees and career civil servants — exacerbated by intense partisanship.
These tensions are not new. Writing almost 50 years ago, political scientist Hugh Heclo argued of appointees and career government employees:
The relationship is inherently marked by mutual mistrust. Appointees suspect career officials of obstruction and inertia. Career officials suspect appointees of ignorance and recklessness. Each side, in its way, is correct. What remains is the challenge of governing amid these suspicions.
In 2025, the importance of governing may have gotten lost in the hot glare of Democratic opposition to President Trump and the juvenile Republican penchant for “owning the libs.”
Heclo further argued that governing requires establishing trust and following established norms of democratic governance:
The civil service idea in Washington may serve as a counterpoint to strictly political demands, but it rests on slippery foundations. Its effectiveness depends not only on law and procedure but on shared understandings that are vulnerable to erosion.
Like politics, to succeed science also rests upon a foundation of trust. Here at THB over the past years you’ve encountered many examples where politicians and scientists (federal and not) have betrayed our trust on a wide range of scientific issues. It is no wonder that our government today seems at war with itself and the broader public has lost confidence in both government and science.
A further challenge for upholding scientific integrity in government is intra-branch power dynamics. Congress currently has a bill titled the Scientific Integrity Act sponsored by Paul Tonko (D-NY) along with 116 other Democrats and one Republican. Rep. Tonko has introduced this bill, or a version of it, in each recent Congress, but it has gone nowhere.
One reason for the bill stalling out is that it give Congress greater powers of oversight of scientific integrity in the federal agencies. In 2025, a Republican Congress is not going to risk giving the legislative branch more power when there is a Republican president — out of fear that the midterms see Democrats take control— and vice versa when there is a Democratic president.
Scientific integrity legislation will no advance until Congress decides to resume its role as a co-equal branch of government.
In 2019, I testified on scientific integrity policies before the House Science Committee, and discussed an earlier version of Rep. Tonko’s proposed legislation. In that testimony I offered four “take home points”:
Scientific integrity legislation is important and necessary. Careful attention is needed to ensure that such legislation integrates well with existing, related policies;
It is essential to distinguish science advice from policy advice, and both types of advice should fall under scientific integrity policies;
Individual researchers and studies are essential to the process of science, but science best guides and informs policy when it has been assessed by scientific advisory bodies to characterize the current state of knowledge on a particular topic or to present possible policy options – including perspectives on uncertainties, disagreements, areas of ignorance;
Good science and policy advice from experts also results from the upholding of scientific integrity by elected and appointed officials.
In the near term, it is difficult to see discussions of scientific integrity being nothing more than a partisan food fight along predictable political lines. Left-leaning scientists will tear into the Trump administration proposals. Trump officials will rail against the “deep state.”
Until elected officials and civil servants remember that they are all Americans who share a common commitment to the U.S. Constitution, federal science is in for a rough ride. Those of us in the scientific community wanting to rebuild a culture of scientific integrity in the federal government should work to ensure that we uphold scientific integrity in the institutions that we control — univesities, journals, assessments and the like.
We experts can’t control big P politics, but we can get our own houses in order.
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Comments welcomed! How can we restore trust and democratic norms? How can we in the expert community get our houses in order? Thoughts?
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