Trump Signs Order Telling Federal Agencies to Engage in ‘Gold Standard’ Science

The order defines the science as reproducible and clear of conflicts of interest.

US President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on May 23, 2025. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald Trump on May 23 signed an order that directs federal agencies to engage in what the White House described as “gold standard” science.

The order requires agencies to make sure the science on which they rely is reproducible, transparent, and subject to unbiased peer review, the White House said.

The research in question must also be free of conflicts of interest, officials said.

“In recent decades, we’ve seen a decline in disruptive research, disruptive scientific patents and papers, diminishing returns on investments in biomedical research, and serious cases of irreproducibility fraud, and misconduct in the scientific enterprise,” Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told reporters in a call. “In addition, policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and woke DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] initiatives have seriously damaged the American public’s trust and confidence in our scientists and the way taxpayer money funds their important work.”

A senior White House official told the same call that “our federal research institutions have an opportunity now to align their work with gold standard science, which will help not only bring back the confidence to the American people, but also create a foundation for accelerated scientific breakthroughs.”

The Make America Healthy Again Commission said in its report this week that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should launch an initiative to “confront the replication crisis, investing in reproducibility efforts to improve trust and reliability in basic science and interventions for childhood chronic disease.”

Nearly three-quarters of 1,630 researchers in a survey released in 2024 said that there was a reproducibility crisis in biomedicine, with the leading identified cause being a “pressure to publish.”

NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told an agency council in April that he intended to “restore replication and reproducibility of research as the core idea of what is seen as true in science,” in part to address the increase in confirmed and suspected research fraud.

That includes directing each institute to establish standards for replication in the fields with which they deal, the director said.

NIH is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on CNN that up to 20 percent of the institutes’ budget would focus on replication, and that early work from researchers working on the agency’s new autism project would be devoted to replicating research that has already been done.