Help us reveal the rest
From political manipulation of COVID-19 research to censorship of weather forecasters who tried to contradict President Trump's false claims about Hurricane Dorian, the Trump years were punctuated by jaw-dropping episodes of scientific misconduct.
Claims of political interference in science are hardly new, and allegations have been made under Democratic administrations as well as Republican.
Immunologist Rick Bright, who headed the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, blew the whistle on the Trump administration's unwillingness to prepare for the coronavirus pandemic and promotion of bogus drug therapies.
Our respective organizations, the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund and Government Accountability Project, provided legal support to far more science professionals than we can disclose, faced threats to science during the Trump administration.
While some felt comfortable enough to publicly report their concerns, the vast majority ultimately decided not to come forward-rightly fearing retaliation and doubting that speaking up would make a difference, particularly during an administration overtly hostile to both whistleblowers and science.
The Trump administration provided a serious stress test, and most scientific integrity policies failed.
Current efforts appear to focus on the Trump and Obama administrations, but we are interested in examples extending both further back and further forward in time to better understand long-term and ongoing issues.
The politicization of science undermines public trust in critical scientific institutions and has devastating consequences for public health and safety, as vividly illustrated by the tragic fallout from the Trump administration's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
By sharing their reports of assaults on scientific integrity they witnessed in the past, employees in and around federal science and across all disciplines can truly help protect the future.
Just as only narrowly avoiding the tip of an iceberg will still crash your boat into what's concealed beneath the waves, if the Biden administration only addresses the breaches of scientific integrity so egregious they couldn't be covered up, we'll still be in dangerous waters.