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How is Trump's executive order redefining the language permissible in scientific research, and what does it mean for academic freedom?
 

Today, we examine the complexities surrounding scientific research under shifting political landscapes with Ivan Oransky, a seasoned medical journalist and co-founder of Retraction Watch. Oransky discusses the implications of President Trump's executive orders and how it has sent ripples throughout the scientific community, causing researchers to reconsider their work amidst existential uncertainties.

Oransky explores the nuanced relationship between government funding and scientific inquiry. This episode unpacks the historical precedents of government involvement in research, tracing back to the 1940s, and examines the mounting challenges faced by scientists under the recent policy changes. Oransky provides a critical analysis of how such directives potentially stifle open inquiry and drive talented researchers away, ultimately impacting the future landscape of scientific discovery.

In This Episode:

• Implications of Trump's executive orders on scientific research
• Historical context of government funding in scientific research
• The impact of political climates on scientific inquiry and transparency
• Challenges of anticipatory obedience within research communities
• Ivan Oransky's insights on sustaining open and rigorous scientific dialogue

About Ivan:

Ivan Oransky, MD, is the co-founder of Retraction Watch, the Editor in Chief of The Transmitter, and a Distinguished Journalist in Residence at New York University’s Carter Journalism Institute, where he teaches medical journalism. He has held leadership positions at Medscape, MedPage Today, Reuters Health, Scientific American, and The Scientist. A former president of the Association of Health Care Journalists from 2017 to 2021, Oransky earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard and an MD from NYU School of Medicine. His contributions to biomedical communication have earned him accolades, including the John P. McGovern Award and commendation from the John Maddox Prize judges for his work at Retraction Watch.

Find out more about Retraction Watch: https://retractionwatch.com/

Check out The Transmitter: http://thetransmitter.org/

Read HXA's newsletter Free the Inquiry: https://heterodoxacademy.substack.com/

Episode Transcript

John Tomasi: Ivan Oransky, welcome to Heterodox Out Loud.

Ivan Oransky: Great to be here.

John Tomasi: So you're a journalist, a medical journalist. Our listeners may know you as the co-founder of Retraction Watch. Tell us a bit about Retraction Watch.

Ivan Oransky: Sure, so Retraction Watch is a site, a blog, actually, it's how it started in 2010 with my good friend and colleague, Adam Marcus, about scientific fraud, obviously about retractions, which are often due to scientific fraud. We're a journalism site that covers pretty much every day, sometimes more than once a day, a case or a story or something going on, whether it's in scientific publishing, some things going usually badly, but sometimes well in scientific publishing. Again, fraud, retractions, and some other larger issues. We also have a database of retractions, the most comprehensive database of retractions that is now public and anyone can take a look at.

John Tomasi: Yeah, it's a real, it's an amazing asset that's a huge, a huge visiting place for our Heterodox Academy members. You were an undergrad at Harvard. You did your MD at NYU School of Medicine.

Ivan Oransky: Correct.

John Tomasi: And I heard that at Harvard, you were also involved in the Crimson.

Ivan Oransky: Yeah, I spent probably, and now I can admit this, the statute of limitations is ended, John, but I spent at least as much and probably more time at the Crimson, where we used to come out and print six nights a week or six mornings a week. And I just, I loved it. And that's where I learned how to be a journalist. But I was also a pre-med and of course, ended up going to medical school as well.

John Tomasi: Let's begin. Let's begin. On January 20th, President Trump passed an executive order, which stated that the government recognizes two genders, male and female. I was reading last night that a poll that said that that issue and that executive order is Trump, is President Trump's most popular issue. It's the item on which the strongest majority of people approve of him so far. And in part, I think, because it seemed to be part of a fight against gender or transgender ideology that many people have been talking about. But I also understand that Trump's executive order, President Trump's executive order has caused disruption in research. And we're going to talk about that disruption together. That'll be our main topic today. I just wonder if you can start just in a word. How serious is this disruption caused to research by this executive order? Just briefly, we'll come back to it. But just start us off with a teaser, if you would.

Ivan Oransky: Yeah, I would say two things quickly. One is that it has caused a lot of people very quickly to scramble to sort of scrub their papers, in fact. And part of, I don't know if it was exactly part of the executive order, but it was part of a related sort of suite of orders and sort of rulings, if you will. And researchers who use certain language, including language that you would use to describe, you know, people who identify as trans and what have you like that, had to withdraw any manuscripts that were under consideration. And that, you know, that, to me, at a high level, means that inquiry is being quashed or at least limited. And then the anticipatory obedience of what people are doing, even if it's not related directly to that, I think that's a big problem. I think, though, that, you know, just to put this in perspective a little bit, again, briefly, is that this is part, the EO, the executive order, was part of a suite of what a lot of people are seeing as an attack on science. It's an attack on, whether you want to call it an attack on inquiry or just an attack on research and researchers and their budgets and their work, that even if all of it gets rolled back, which seems unlikely, but even if all of it would get rolled back, whether it's court order or they roll it back because it is not, is no longer the most popular part of what he's doing, et cetera, it's causing such consternation and such, you know, honestly, existential dread among scientists. And so they are leaving the field or deciding not to do something that, to me, hard to measure, but pernicious and probably a bigger problem.

John Tomasi: We're going to loop back to that issue and discuss it. It's a fascinating topic. I want to, I want to, before we move to that, I want to now to go backwards in time a little bit and frame some of these issues about the relationship of government funding to science. For our listeners, when we do that particular, when we pose this particular question, we can have that background. And as I understand, the movement of government funding into research at universities is a relatively new phenomenon. In the 1940s, for example, my understanding is that most universities were reluctant to take funding from government on the research side because they wanted to have their own independence. I think academic freedom in those days was thought to be perhaps threatened by new funding sources from government, perhaps presciently, but it's a complicated issue as we'll be finding out. Can you just say a little bit about that? I mean, my understanding was that, and Vannevar Bush, I think, is really an important figure that you and I were talking about before we came on the show in this process. So, how did government start funding research in science, and what were some of the issues when that happened?

Ivan Oransky: Yeah, so I'm going to, for 30 seconds, take us even further back and just sort of set the stage a little bit.

John Tomasi: Please, please. I love going back further. Stepping back is my favorite thing to do, so step back.

Ivan Oransky: Just not off the cliff.

John Tomasi: Not off the cliff, exactly.

Ivan Oransky: Just, I'm glad we both went there.

John Tomasi: Maybe I'm disturbed we both went there.

Ivan Oransky: I think, because, and the reason I want to do this is a couple of trend lines. Like, one trend line is how much money it actually costs to do research. And, you know, we can talk about, and I think we will talk about, you know, that there's fraud and there's various things, you know, problems in that, inherent in any human endeavor. However, there's really no denying that it has become much, much, much more expensive to do research today than it was in, you know, the 1940s when we're talking about Vannevar Bush, and I want to get back to that in a second. But let's go back 400 years or even 500 years. It cost, I don't want to say nothing, but like relatively nothing to do fundamental work. How much, you know, investment did Isaac Newton need? Now, he needed some, but there were sort of patricians who could support basically what we needed. I'm being over, I'm oversimplifying here and probably maybe even unfairly. But there's no question that the cost of research, it's buying lab equipment, it's buying reagents, it's buying mice that, you know, that transgenic mice that are, you know, bred to sort of have a certain disease or not have it. Things like that that are, or building telescopes, right? Probably you spend as much building a world-class telescope on top of a mountain now as maybe the entire budget of whatever year in the 1900s. So the reason I want to just push on that a little bit is that the money has to come from somewhere if you want science. Now, if we as a society or as a government or hopefully a government that is reflecting the will of society, at least, decide we don't need that and they can go do it however they want, that's a decision. It's one I vehemently disagree with. I think that science and research, when done well, which a lot of it is, is the best way, maybe the only good way to understand the world better. And therefore, whether you want to talk about applied knowledge and coming up with new, you know, vaccines and drugs, or just knowing how stuff works, which is pretty damn important and fascinating, like there's no other way to do it other than to have funds for it. So if we can't, and there may be people who disagree with me on that and say not so much that it wouldn't cost money, but we shouldn't prioritize that. I respect that, again, disagree with it, but if you therefore then sort of track that historically against the trend line of government involvement in or in funding, right, it tracks. Because what was happening in the 1940s, right, it was a bit pre-Sputnik, right, so obviously, but- Manhattan Project. Manhattan Project, exactly. There were needs that scientists, or at least that people felt scientists, and I would agree, were uniquely positioned to fill. So therefore, to fulfill. So therefore, you had a need for funding. Now, you had a need for structure. You had a need for all sorts of things, but you had a need for a workforce. And so it was not purely a competitive play at that time. It became one, right? And so, you know, you could have started the NIH or, you know, sort of created what is now the NIH in the 1940s, and then nothing else really happened, and it kind of went along. Well, now it's, you could argue, a behemoth. It's looking at, give or take, a $50 billion budget. And so one of the things that happened there was that not only did they say, well, we should fund, you know, research grants, we should fund specific research. We should also fund what are known now as indirect costs, right, overhead costs, the costs of, you know, heating a building at a university or of hiring administrative staff or doing things that you need in order to actually manage this process, which is the sort of unsung heroes in many ways of what goes on. And over time, so Bush himself actually sort of, he was, sort of emotions in his head, but he was actually a bit frustrated, maybe surprised that universities at that time said, well, we don't really want that. Like, they were more open to the idea of funding, but the sort of indirect costs, like, we don't want our, you know, our sort of core needs to be funded by government, because then the government will have too much control over it. Which I think is fascinating, because that is an argument you hear a lot from, I would argue, the right.

John Tomasi: Yes, of course.

Ivan Oransky: You don't hear it much from the left.

John Tomasi: It's most famous with Hillsdale College, who refused to take federal funding so that they could have autonomy in a whole variety of ways. And you also see people say, well, the reason why climate change research sort of always seems to point in a particular direction is because of the need to, you know, seek funding from agencies like EPA or from NSF and also NOAA that, you know, sort of go a certain way, if you will.

Ivan Oransky: And I think, or at least have, and I think, but if you sort of couple that with, well, not couple it with, but if you then go through history again a little bit, I'll just do this somewhat briefly. Over time, that notion of indirect costs, which is a direct, which are being directly attacked right now by the Trump administration, this notion of indirect costs has swung pendulum-wise over time, sometimes probably for good reason, other times in reaction to something bad that happened. So, for example, scandal in the really sort of late 80s, early 90s about it being, you know, some of these funds being misused and sort of used on what they really shouldn't have been, or at least people didn't think they should be.

John Tomasi: For example, the yacht.

Ivan Oransky: For example, a yacht at Stanford University so that they could attract big donors who also like yachts, right?

John Tomasi: I like yachts.

Ivan Oransky: I've only been on a few, but.

John Tomasi: And I was telling you before we came on that I was teaching at Stanford at the time when that whole scandal was breaking it. It was front page news and the local papers.

Ivan Oransky: So things swung back. And then, again, as you might expect, Congress and what have you said, well, that's terrible. We've got to, you know, pull these things back. They then crept that back up. And then there were some other times when they also, again, shrunk. It's sort of a cycle. And then a couple of years ago, and this is what people are pointing out as this sort of, as these Trump comments and sort of orders start to come out, is that Congress, I think probably in anticipation of what might happen, essentially enshrined a certain overall rate of indirect costs, but also more importantly said it's an act of, like it requires an act of Congress to change that. You can't just do that next president, whoever you might be. Well, guess what? He's trying to do that. Again, all of this is my way of saying funding for research, I would argue, is critical. And the problem is that if you say, well, we're not going to fund it, the government shouldn't fund it or should fund it less. Someone else is probably going to come in and, you know, sweep in and actually replace that. And in the case of clinical medicine and clinical research, that's almost exclusively industry. So it's a bit of careful what you wish for or harm reduction, if you want to think. In other words, there are a lot of people who object strenuously to industry funding research, and yet they're the only ones who can afford to do it in clinical trials. So if you're saying, let's remove all government funding, you're only going to have more of that. Or you're, I guess, going to get rid of science, which I hope not.

John Tomasi: And one of the pieces you've written for HXA, it may have been the interview that you did in our Substack, Free the Inquiry. You talk about, as I recall it's there, you talked about in the 40s that because universities were reluctant to take direction and research money from the government, they required overhead, indirect cost rates of around 50%. At a time when industry, private industries who were being enlisted into various government projects were requiring even more, they were requiring 100%, for example. So there was an early phase, and we know now it's become more complex and there's a variable rate to different universities. They pay different amounts. What I wanted just to mention and get your thoughts on is that things are dramatically changed from a period where universities are reluctant to take federal money. We recently did a podcast with Open the Books, which is a transparency organization, where we went through a lot of the data on the scale and scope of federal funding for universities. And one of the findings that a lot of our listeners were surprised about was that in the Ivy League in recent years, the Ivy League schools make more money, more revenue from their government grants than they do from tuition dollars by quite a large number. That doesn't even include the benefits to universities from the tax exemptions, but just straight up on the grants, they make more than tuition, which raises sort of these questions about what universities and researchers who care about our research most of all, care about our scholarship and our teaching, hopefully care about that most of all, what we owe to the public who's funding it all. And, you know, there's a question about legitimacy, like with President Trump as the executive order, which is causing a lot of consternation in the scientific community. You know, as we know, President Trump was democratically elected. He has, as the head of the executive branch, he has certain constitutionally designated powers. Those powers, the parameters of those powers are contested and are being decided now in courts and so forth. But there is this fact that the executive branch has significant control granted to them by the public to think about these things and to act on them in various ways. There's a long history of presidents being involved in science, but the legitimacy depends on the choice of the people, not on whether the policy is good or bad for science. That's an obvious fact, but I think sometimes in these discussions, people think that if they can show that something, or if they have to have a discussion even, like we're about to have, of whether an order is good or bad for science, they are ipso facto, or perhaps in a closet way, in a Trojan horse way, just saying something with the legitimacy of the governing agency. Those are probably two separate issues. There may be some connections within them. If we find that an executive order is bad for science and we think science is good for society, then we might think this executive order is bad for society. But that's just a complicated nexus of things there. Background political theory, I suppose, I just want to keep in mind before we launch into the executive order. Do you want to say anything more about that?

Ivan Oransky: Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, I just want to say that I am very, very far from being a political theorist. And so what I'm about to say is sort of a layperson's view on this, I think, having followed policy a bit, of course. I think that it gets to this tension of what do you believe or do you prioritize, I should say, free inquiry? Or do you prioritize sort of only certain kinds of inquiry? And so in other words, if you, again, don't think that government should be funding research, then I mean, again, I would disagree with it. But that's the end of the discussion because it's sort of like, well, it doesn't matter what the government, what the executive says, you can or can't say or you can or can't study. But I think that most people, and if you look, for example, historically at the popular, one of the reasons why the NIH budget, although sometimes presidents and even Congress sort of, well, mostly presidents, threatened to cut the budget. It very rarely really gets cut. Now, it may stay flat, which is an effective cut. Okay, fine. Details. Point being, it is enormously popular. It has the word health in it, right? And even if there are problems in it, which honestly, that's what Retraction Watch reports on a lot, at its core, it is a popular idea. So I think there's another layer here of, I don't know how to articulate this exactly, but there's another layer here of what people think is actually happening and what maybe an executive says is happening, right? And that's a whole sort of bunch of discussion of propaganda and what have you, but on both sides. But I think it is complex, I guess, is sort of the answer. I'm reminded of, John, this may not be a relevant sort of analogy, but I'm reminded of a case that I know about someone who was being sued by a doctor who was being sued because there had been a bad outcome in the pregnancy. The grandmother, who was actually taking care of the baby, sort of recognized that, in fact, she was the one suing because somebody, a lawyer had said, you should sue, and you might get money and the rest of it. She said, every time she came to that doctor's office, she would say, you saved my grandson's life, which is true. There was a bad outcome that was utterly unavoidable, which is what the court eventually, or the jury eventually decided. So it's sort of like, well, what are you actually, what are you prioritizing?

John Tomasi: Nice. Nice. I'll mention that I was listening to some videos last night, just catching up on news broadcasts. This was how I'm very nerdy about my nightlife in New York, but I was watching a series of videos of Trump appointees' announcements about how they're running their various agencies. I spent a lot of time listening to some talks by Robert Kennedy about his role at the Agency of Health. And one of the things he kept, the main point he kept making is that to make America healthy again, we need to make American science healthy again. And what he said was that when his uncle was the president of the United States, and what he sees as sort of the heyday, the high point of American power and prestige in the world, that prestige of American science depended upon this idea that American science was unusually transparent and unusually committed to open inquiry. And he says he wants to restore those ideals to science. Now, whether that's true and what we make about that, I don't really know. But I was so struck, you know, from my perspective at HXA, hearing this person go on at some considerable length about the importance of transparency that science relies upon the exchange of ideas. So, I wanted that as even some more background. Now, I'm going to move to the main.

Ivan Oransky: Can I comment briefly on that? I think, look, it's very interesting. And Adam, again, Marcus and I, he's my co-founder of Retraction Watch, we published a piece in The Atlantic just last week about, that really started riffing on RFK's, RFK Jr.'s nomination, you know, his Senate confirmation hearings. And the fact that he kept, you know, talking about this research by this one researcher. And there's a sort of, if you will, I think superficial and maybe even certainly genuine desire to have more transparency. I think, though, that some of that has been, if not weaponized and maybe co-opted by people who, including RFK Jr., who use that to sort of point to any one bit of evidence, which may be flawed anyway, but any one bit of evidence that, you know, well, it's not being published or it finally got published and here it is. That's what he was doing at the hearings. This is about vaccines and autism, not surprisingly. And what they do, though, is a sleight of hand. And I want to, I think we need to call people to account for this because saying transparency is great. I'm all for it. We say that all the time. And I doubt that you would disagree, John, right? But transparency also requires responsibility. I mean, science requires responsibility. And claims require evidence. And part of that evidence has to be all of the evidence that contradicts what you're claiming. And since it's so overwhelming in the case of autism and vaccines to continually point. So it's a case where I'm concerned about not too much transparency, but about a complete lack of filter, right? Because at the end of the day, some science is going to hold up and some isn't. And some of it, we may learn more about it, even if it's wrong. But transparency is great, but it's got to come. It's like with great power comes great responsibility. With great transparency comes the need to filter and be, you know, skeptical of things that you disagree with.

John Tomasi: Let me ask you about the executive order of January 20th that the government now hereby recognizes only two genders, male and female. And they don't say sex. They say genders, which is relevant, as we'll see in a moment. Just help me understand the pathway from that executive order, that declaration, to claims that I'm hearing from some of our members and some of my team members as well, I'll add, that the executive order seems to require that there be no mentioning of terms such as gender, transgender, lesbian, bisexual, gay. And I could even add more terms, non-binary, but also terms like exclusion and other terms I could add in addition to that. What's the pathway between an executive order saying that there are two genders, which I think is meant to be part of the fight back against transgender ideology in a broader cultural context. What's the pathway from that to research and how has research been affected by that order? It's the big question.

Ivan Oransky: It is the big question. So here we are. And so I think one of the things to just point out, it's not the major point here, but one of the things to just point out is that the United States, and again, I'm not a political scientist, we recognize certain countries exist, right? We recognize that China exists, we recognize there is a place in the world called Taiwan, we recognize that there's a place in the world, you know, different places that are contested, let's call it that. Now, it's one thing to say, this is our official position, but you want to have a conversation about any of it, go for it. Like, we may disagree with that position. As the State Department, we won't do X, Y, or Z, but you want to have that conversation. That's what's not happening is the second half of that. So it's one thing to say, we recognize, and I'm not here to argue for against recognizing two genders. It's such a complicated issue that, you know, I just, I don't claim to be a good student of it, you know, a trained student of it. However, what I do see is beyond that, you can't talk about it. You cannot have a discussion of whether or not, you cannot include, as you pointed out, certain words that would at least imply, if not directly endorse the idea, that we're wrong about that, or that there are, there is more than, there are more than two genders or two sexes, right? And that's where, that has a particularly, I think that has a very pernicious effect on science. A, just in the sense of, like, literally, now we have to, they have to scrub things the way, you know, Stalin or Lenin would have scrubbed, you know, texts they didn't like. But also because it, therefore, it basically means you can't study that, or you can't publish anything if you're a government employee or government funded. You can't publish anything about that. Why would you want to shut down inquiry like that? And I think that, and again, as part of the larger set of orders and the larger set of statements and pronouncements, this is basically saying to scientists, you now, you can only do what we want you to do. It's going to drive a lot of people, I think, smart, talented, hardworking people, who might come up with the next big idea or big treatment or what have you, away from it. Because why deal with that?

John Tomasi: Let me, let me ask you a question that may seem, may seem and actually be simple minded. So, there's an executive order saying that the government recognizes two genders, male and female. If I'm a scientist, could I write a paper that says, that argues for that position? That says, in fact, there are no other genders than these two? The order seems to allow that. When I asked you, what I keep hearing from people is that the order seems to require that there not be mentions of terms such as gender, transgender, lesbian, blah, blah, blah. But is that what the order, is that the way the order is being received and the impact or is that required by the order? Is this a misunderstanding of the order? Because I'm not sure it's better to say you can only have research on this question if you argue in a particular way. That seems highly directive on the part of the government and very anti-open inquiry in a whole variety of ways. But that's different than saying these terms can't be mentioned. Which world are we in?

Ivan Oransky: And again, this is where the particulars are critically important. And so what I understand is that the order itself is really just, obviously, only for government, not funded, but government employees. So Center for Disease Control, CDC, et cetera, NIH, what have you. NSF, it would be less relevant there, but certainly relevant. So you could argue, well, that's a limited number. It's a pretty large number, and I would argue that it's still an important group of people. You could have that discussion somewhere else if you're not, I mean, and I think where it's a little bit unclear is funded by. So in other words, if you have an NIH grant, are you allowed to sort of use these words or will those be pulled back too? So, but I would say that you could, you could not have, you could not make an argument. Well, you could make an argument. It would be not a very good argument. I mean, how do you argue for something without acknowledging what other people think, right? This is basic argumentation sort of rhetoric. At least taking that into account. So, for example, you know, if you say, these are the things that I think are wrong, but you're not allowed to use those words, that's pretty bad. Now, again, if you're completely out of that system, if you're not funded by government, you don't have to think about that. Theoretically, you could still publish whatever you wanted. What I'm seeing, though, is that everyone is interpreting this as when you do that, you will be targeted in some way. Maybe they will audit your university. Maybe they'll audit. I mean, this is starting to happen. And so that's where I think, even if it's not officially in the, it is important to know what the EO says, because if people are going to fight it in courts and legislation, well, it's critically important. On the other hand, the effect on behavior, like the actual effect, I think it's a, you know, it's a pond and the ripples are really pretty significant. And people are calling this anticipatory obedience and they're very concerned about it.

John Tomasi: And I know, again, from talking to a lot of members about this, that anticipatory obedience can have sort of two different flavors, I suppose, I believe. One flavor is people being obedient in anticipation of likely outcomes, likely negative outcomes. The other flavor is people exaggerating the effects of the order because they dislike the order itself.

Ivan Oransky: Yes.

John Tomasi: So there's some of that both going on.

Ivan Oransky: Absolutely. Because we're as complicated humans with different kind of motivations, different political priors. People are reading these orders in different ways.

John Tomasi: I want to ask you about the CDC. As I understand it, the CDC is, I think, has issued an order that all papers being considered for external review be withdrawn. So papers are out for external review, the normal process of science, science evaluation. And they're being, there's an order saying that they be, those papers under review, be withdrawn from external review and be given, being required to pass through a pre-review by someone in the Trump administration or some agency. Is that roughly right?

Ivan Oransky: It is right. And just to be clear, because this is the argument that some people are making saying, well, this is actually just sort of okay. And I would disagree with that. But papers do, if you talk to someone at, again, NIH or CDC or anywhere, all papers actually have to go through someone before they are published somewhere. And that's kind of, you know, you can argue about that, but it's really purely an administrative, like, did you report the affiliations of everyone? Did you report the funding? Did you report any conflicts of interest? Like, very sort of administrative. It's not about the content.

John Tomasi: So it's a formal content neutral.

Ivan Oransky: It's totally content neutral. Right. But it is, but in this case, it is not content neutral. And I'm not even sure they're interested in all those administrative issues. They're interested in making sure that certain words aren't in these papers.

John Tomasi: We keep on moving to the words. I'm still just puzzled by that because as I read the executive order, and I'm not a lawyer, but I read it a couple of times to sort of see what I could make of it. I didn't see them saying you can't speak certain words. Am I misunderstanding this?

Ivan Oransky: That, well, again, what they're doing it in a couple of different ways, right? So they, I don't, I'd have to go back and look, you know, and I'm not disputing what you're saying at all. I'm saying I want to fact check it for myself. I need to go back and look at what the executive order actually says in terms of words. But I don't think it's unreasonable, I guess. And this gets back to whether it's anticipatory obedience or just interpretation. I don't think it's unreasonable to sort of triangulate some of what is coming out of the administration and saying this is what they're after. And maybe that's as best, maybe that may, that may be the best evidence we have. And again, I don't rely on people taking screenshots and posting them on social media of this thing coming out.

John Tomasi: Sure.

Ivan Oransky: I think we need a better level of evidence than that.

John Tomasi: People are, are acting, scientists are acting as though the order does ban naming of identities or identities themselves from research. What impact does that have on, on, on scientific research in these areas?

Ivan Oransky: You know, and again, let me say that has there been, you know, there, there's even evidence that there's been sort of overreach on that, that, that in fact, some of the way that, and I mean, in terms of research in the past. In other words, the way that people have described particular populations or self-described maybe has made things more confusing for research. So I want to just be upfront about that because, again, simply, you know, you, you need to agree on terms or at least understand terms if you're doing research. And so now I don't, I think this is a, if that's the reason that they're sort of making these statements and new regulations and new policies, I think that's way overreaching. I mean, there are other ways to do with that that are less, well, certainly not political. So I, I think that, so the problem is you have groups of people who describe themselves a certain way. and, and by the way, it's not just, you know, and again, you, you discuss, you know, trans ideology and things like that. It's not just even in that realm. I mean, I think there's, there's actually some questions about whether you can sort of talk about, I saw one thing sort of whether you can talk about like women as underrepresented in research, which they are sometimes for structural, well-intentioned, but eventually bad reasons. like pregnancy and, and sort of basically calling every woman, you know, below the age of 55 or something, you know, potential, in birth, child rearing years and basically excluding them from research for that. And that, that's all bad. Like that, that was just overreach itself, maybe well-intentioned, but if you.

John Tomasi: I'm sorry, when you, when was this happening?

Ivan Oransky: Oh, this was happening until it's still, in some ways it's still happening, but, there are, if you look at the exclusion criteria.

John Tomasi: Before January 20th.

Ivan Oransky: Oh, way before, no, this is something going back to the sixties, maybe earlier when you had clinical trials. My point is like some, is there, is there something that needed to get fixed? I guess is what I'm getting at. And that is something that I think actually has been slowly getting fixed, but still could use some work, but that wasn't the, that doesn't seem to be the sort of purpose of this. So this is sort of getting us to a point where you can't differentiate people, in a lot of different ways. Now, maybe they can, it's okay to differentiate, height. So you, you're tall, you're taller than I am, John. So there'll be a table on it. If we're both in a clinical trial, that's okay. But can we talk about anything else about, in terms of identity? And if you severely limit, right, no matter where that line is. And I take your point that, you know, is it in the EO? Is it, you know, important questions, but there is some limitation. And if you limit the populations that you can talk about, then you therefore limit the populations that you can study. effectively. And you end up with, I mean, a lot of research is too overgeneralized as it is. In other words, we say that the same thing will work for you and me. And then like 12 other people here in Times Square who are totally different from we are at different genetics. So already we're doing that. And now we're going to make that problem even worse because we're basically going to say, well, there's kind of one study subject, kind of study subject, and everything's going to work for them.

John Tomasi: So, let's continue on this politicized elements, if we can, for a moment. I know people who are extremely upset about this executive order. I know other people who are extremely happy about it. Part of the culture wars that are going on and people have good reasons to have strong feelings on both sides of that issue, it seems to me. There's been a lot of strange things and, controversies and squelching of viewpoints for some time now. And we're seeing it now associated with this executive order where the people on the political left, to speak broadly, being most alarmed. But it wasn't so long ago that people on the political right were the ones who were extremely alarmed. Can we talk, can you talk, talk a little bit about that? What, is this a, is this an equal opportunity, error of government involvement in science? Can you say something about the, the, the, the structure or the nature of that, how it is that claims start limiting science? What's the, what's the power? What's the, what's the talisman, if there is one, that allows people's worries about these issues or political ideologues, their political worries about these issues to find their way into science and to effectively constrain it? What's, what's the, what's the power source?

Ivan Oransky: Fascinating, right? So, and I think this gets back to the USC meeting, the, you know, you referred to and where we met, right? The USC meeting in early January on censorship and science, which is available online. You should check it out. It's a great YouTube video. and I think, yeah, well, I'm, I'm part of the, people should watch and maybe argue about and disagree with, with my, my talk too. It's available there. I, I think that this is where, where this is interesting to me and, and problematic. And that's where, why I think we need to explore it and be transparent about it is that there are, it's a form of censorship. I mean, and in, in, in this case, it's literally censorship because it's the government. Like we talk about censorship a lot and people sort of go to that. Oh, well, if it's not the government, it's not censorship. I'm not sure how useful that argument is, but let's just call it censorship with a lowercase C. So, for, for many years, you've seen cases, many of which we've covered at Retraction Watch, of papers being, for example, retracted, because basically, and not basically, there are, there are journals that say this is what they're doing. Well, there's nothing wrong about the results, right? Nothing scientifically wrong about the results. Nothing scientifically incorrect. and, and every paper has flaws, or humans, and, and you want that because, not that you want flaws, but you, you don't want people to wait until everything's absolutely buttoned down.

John Tomasi: Of course.

Ivan Oransky: Because, other than the law of gravity, there aren't too many things like that. So.

John Tomasi: And, and even that's.

Ivan Oransky: Even.

John Tomasi: But, but go on.

Ivan Oransky: See, this is physics, but I shouldn't have even said that, John, because I know somebody is probably going to, point taken. The, the point is that, they were being retracted because the results, while, you know, as robust as any other results, might do harm, right? that's not a great reason to retract a paper or to, and, and by the way, again, just term of art or, or sort of detail here, retraction doesn't actually mean removing from the world. It shouldn't, it means stamping it as retracted. You should not trust this or, you know, rely on it. So you're not, you know, removing it from creation. You're just, again, making it, you're labeling it. But the problem is that when you retract something for harm or sort of say, don't trust this because it might produce harm, even if it's true, you, you, that's, that's a problem. And I would argue that, and so that's been happening to people, you know, like Michael Bailey, who spoke at the meeting as well. And who, try and study, you know, what they're studying in, in trans like biology or, or in sort of some of these issues and what have you, in other fields too, abortion. and I want to, well, and so I would argue that what's happening now in terms of whether the executive order or what the, the effect of the executive order and the languages is the same thing. They're saying it would be harmful to allow this kind of conversation and to allow that there are more than two genders, sexes. And so therefore we're going to shut it down. Right. And, and I, the reason I push on that is because I want people to see that no matter where you are on the political spectrum or on what you believe in, in science or, or, or trust or what have you, if you are shutting down inquiry, if you are shutting or sort of saying, let's not trust this result. Because it could be dangerous, harmful, you're engaged in the same activity. Now, if you want to do that, I think that's bad, but if you want to do that, at least be consistent. So if you're someone who was shutting things down, say again, broadly speaking on the left for that, well, that's true, but it could be dangerous. And some of those papers, by the way, are actually flawed and should be retracted, but a lot of them is just because of the harm. Well, then you should actually be saying, okay, I see what you're doing over there because you're sort of, you've aided and abetted. I want to give an example.

John Tomasi: You mean, sorry, what are you doing over there with this new executive order you're saying?

Ivan Oransky: Yeah, exactly. That's the analogy. You should recognize the behavior. You should recognize the strategy and maybe either agree with it, which I wouldn't argue for, but sort of recognize that in it, recognize that you have, I would argue, aided and abetted that strategy by making it okay to squelch in some way discussions, findings, research that you thought would be harmful. Because the people who agree, I don't want to obviously overgeneralize or read their minds, but I would imagine that they're among the people you described who sort of say, I'm for this, like we should only talk about two genders. They're probably thinking, and maybe in a sort of well-intentioned way, doing anything otherwise harms people. So therefore, let's stop doing it, even though it's not reality. And so I want to give a quick example, which has nothing to do with any of this, but I think.

John Tomasi: When you say it's not reality, you mean there was actually no harm. Is that what you mean?

Ivan Oransky: Well, no, I mean that what you're claiming is or isn't true. There's no reality to that. In other words, not no reality, but it's just, it's wrong. The facts of it, like there are two genders or whatever, it's definitely more complex than that. If it's as complex as a lot of people would claim, maybe not, but it is more complex. Alice Dreger actually wrote a whole book that involved this. I would say, I want to give an example that's sort of removed from this. So bear with me because it's probably going to seem unrelated for a second. But I think it gives a sense of one way forward. So in the 1980s, the New England Journal of Medicine published this very brief letter, right, from this very august, you know, Harvard Hospital researcher, you know, physician, saying essentially that he saw that when he was wandering around the hospital and talking to people who had chronic pain, like I think it was due to cancer in this case. I'm pretty sure that, and they were on opioids, right, they didn't develop dependence, okay? Now, that's a pretty, like, that's a happy news story. It's a horrible story because there are people in pain. But in terms of like, it's a positive thing, like, good, okay, so we don't have to worry about those people getting addicted to opioids. Let's make them comfortable. Okay, that's the message. And guess who really liked that message, right? Pharma, you know, in particular, the Sackler family and Purdue love that message. They got that message into the hands of everyone they could, every doctor who could prescribe it, et cetera, for decades. And at some point, and really after a lot of what the Sackler family was about and Purdue was about became evident, New England Journal of Medicine, again, decades later, this is, I want to say, less than 10 years ago, they put a note at the top of that paper saying, listen, this isn't actually wrong because it was his perception. He wasn't claiming he had done some massive study. This isn't wrong, and we're not retracting it, but we're putting this sort of editor's note on it saying, you really shouldn't cite it because it's totally misleading. In other words, it's, we now know so much more. We barely knew anything. Here's what happened because of it. And I actually give him credit for that. Maybe it's too late. You could do it differently. But there's something about, like, having a discussion in the pages of the journal, maybe right on top of it, and flagging it not as, like, oh, my God, it's going to maybe harm someone. Because it did harm people. But, and it says that, but not retracting it from the world or saying, you can't talk about this. That doesn't go anywhere good.

John Tomasi: And so I'm hearing you say that the key concept that unites some of the censorship from the left in recent years through federal funding for science to what we may now describe as censorship from the right on research and science, federally funded research and science. The underlying concept is something like the concept of harm. And, again, just dipping a little bit into the history, I suppose that people could talk about the Scopes trial as being to do with harm. We could talk about Galileo's trial as being to do with harm. So there seems to be a long, long history of this question. On the one hand, there's something like scientific, I think there's something like a drive towards scientific, I'm going to call it scientific integrity, or maybe a scientific autonomy. I think scientists think that integrity and autonomy are closely connected concepts, but only insofar as they're allowed to freely, as the experts, be the ones to decide for themselves which topics should be discussed, which ones should not be discussed. And they face the rigors of peer review and criticism, and no one gets a free pass in that world. It's a very, well, it's generally a very competitive world.

Ivan Oransky: I'm giving you a look, John, about peer review, but go on.

John Tomasi: I caught that, I caught that. But that's an idea of science. But again, going back to something I was saying at the start of this conversation, we live in a world where, in an era where the federal government and state governments are heavily involved in funding these projects. And the people in a democracy have some voice in what gets funded and what doesn't get funded. If we think about the reason why the public funds are used for science, one answer is it's purely for the good of science. We want to know things. We want to know how many stars there are. We want to know how many leaves are on trees. We want to know all different kinds of things as people interested in the world, interested in, let's say, significant facts about the world. Leaves on trees might not count. But they want to know things like how many stars there are. But then there's also a part of it which says that we fund science for the good of society, for the good of our world, for the good of the people. And so it's just an interesting little connection in there, right? Where there's harm to the people doesn't seem completely alien to the underlying ideal, the underlying rationale for there being public funding at all. It's almost so there needs to be some kind of a, maybe a necessary facing of this dilemma that harms can be defined in different ways by different people when they're in power. We want science to go on in some sense, having some sort of autonomy. I don't know what the answer is here at all. It's sort of the issue gets more complicated for me the more I'm learning about it. Do you have any thoughts about that tension?

Ivan Oransky: Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. And then I'm also going to just preface it by saying I don't have the answer either. What I have, I think, is some examples or cases or case studies where people have grappled with this, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. One I'm thinking of is what are known as institutional review boards. So these are, you know, roughly speaking, people call them ethics committees. They're not exactly that, but they're in charge of, and they're federally mandated for any human subjects research. If you want to do a trial, clinical trial, or do anything involving people, you've got to go through this IRB. And so one thing that happened that was interesting, and now this is pretty standard, but in the 60s when there were riots, you know, in Newark in particular, but obviously in other places, these were, you know, based on race issues and things like this and protests. And one of the things that came out of that was actually that the hospital, the major academic hospital there, started requiring that a member of the community be on the IRB, which really hadn't happened before. And so, you know, if you put this in the context of, and this actually came out later, but now the Tuskegee experiments that were, you know, really quite awful ethically, to put it mildly. You start to sort of say, okay, well, there's a way that you can have representation and talk about the harms of, potential harms of research, not so much in terms of what the findings would be, but literally people in a trial being harmed. So, again, everything's a little different. That still allows autonomy, right? And it still allows inquiry. That isn't to whitewash, you know, IRBs and their issues, but, you know, at a high level, there's something about that. The other thing I would mention is historical. We keep going back to history. We must both like history, John. And that is the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. And the reason I mention that is not so much because it solved anything. It was trying to solve a problem, which maybe it partially solved. But, again, it gets back to funding. So, basically, in 1980, the, you know, the sort of universities needed funding. The government saw that all of this potential intellectual property was coming out of them, whether it was technology. Or drugs or what have you. And they said, okay, you should go here. You're free now to commercialize that. Like, there had been a lot of reluctance to sort of both, I don't know, morally, but also legally on universities and who owned the intellectual property. And especially if it was federally funded. And so, that unleashed massive, I mean, the whole industry of people who do that kind of work and all sorts of things. But if you look again at how science is funded now, universities are, you know, I think that the right may look at, oh, you know, well, I don't want that much funding for research. And if it is, it's got to be in certain areas. But if you look at the overall dollars, industry is responsible for massive amounts. I mean, look at who's naming buildings. And, yes, of course, it's individual wealthy people. But it's also companies, corporations. You have universities that are kind of almost embedded or industry companies that are embedded in universities. Whether it's Google, whether it's, you know, Mallinckrodt is a sort of chemistry company, if you will. That's pretty interesting. And, again, I don't have an answer for it. But it just, what I think it does, John, is sort of, you know, remind people, hopefully, that there is a complexity to this. And that, you know, whacking one mole, three other moles are probably going to come up, that we have to look at holistically. The problem right now is, whether it's, you want to say it's Steve Bannon's flood the zone kind of approach or whatever, nobody has. I don't have. I mean, we're sitting here talking, and it's like, I'm like, I should read every one of these documents four times. And that's what I would normally try and do. I haven't done that. I mean, A, I have two day jobs. But, B, even if I had, like, there's so many of them.

John Tomasi: Believe me, I'm aware of this. I'm spending a lot of my time reading them. I want to close. This has been a great discussion. I want to close by just going back at the end here, too, talking about President Trump and this executive order. Many people have said that President Trump is widening or opening the Overton window to the political possibilities. What do you think about that? And especially with respect to science, is the window being opened? How do you see that? And what I also want to be sure you ask you about is that you haven't said anything here that I've heard you say elsewhere, especially in your piece for Inquisitive, I believe, about the scale of the disruption of science caused by this administration's order compared to some previous forms of disruption. Can you say something about how this order and this administration's actions affect science in terms of scale compared to others?

Ivan Oransky: Yeah, and that's great question. We were talking about the Overton metaphor, if you will. I think in many ways, and I think this is not controversial, President Trump has, over the years, widened the Overton window in a number of ways. And I would argue probably the most important or biggest is just sort of the things he's allowed to say about sort of other people and about even foreign leaders and what have you, and language he's able to use and sort of attacks that you just wouldn't see from presidents, at least not publicly. So I think that we should just note that. It's not subject of our discussion, and I'm not an expert, but we should note that. On the other hand, I think that his administration has, in many ways, closed other parts of the Overton window. Like, that's what I see is kind of, again, the details of which we want to both go back and check, but this sort of clear, at least, intent and sort of, whether it's anticipatory obedience or even overreaction that's happening, of things you can't talk about and you can't study. And again, whether it's NEO or not is definitely happening. And so I think that there's like, it's like a, maybe it's a moving of the Overton window. And so, but again, if on the left, you had people trying to close other parts of the Overton window, like you can't talk about this because it might cause harm. I think, again, it's all pretty consistent. In terms of the scale, you know, again, it's, it's hard as we sit here, you know, what are we, I think today is the 20th. So we're a month into this, this administration. It's hard not to just point at it and say the scale of it. Now, and what do I mean? Well, as we were talking about. It's hard to say the scale of it. What? It's hard not to sort of look at the scale and say, this is bigger and different than it's been and on a different, on a different scale. And, and one area, which you've already talked about is sort of, you know, the sort of what you can put in papers or what you're allowed to study, but just the massive firings of people. Remember, so yes, everyone's looking at every agency, trying to keep track of people who are being fired is basically impossible at this point, best I can tell. I'm sure someone's doing it, but you know, a lot of these people are scientists. Look at what he, what, what they're doing at the CDC, you know, other agencies or the FDA, these are, and it's not necessarily about research. Research per se, right? This is what we're talking about, but just in terms of scientists and science, these are, these are employees or federal employees whose job is, and you can argue about whether they do well or not, but it is clear that if no one's doing it, no one does. Protecting us from, you know, using science, using evidence, using research from, you know, threats, whether it's, you know, E. coli or drugs that are contaminated or pollution and what have you, those are all being gutted. And so that to me is, again, separate from research, but that shows you the scale, that the scale is just, it's much greater than we've seen before.

John Tomasi: Interesting. Let me, let me just suggest a metaphor. I'm going to change your metaphor a little bit and see if you would accept this, this, this suggestion. So when I think about the Overton window, it does refer to things like the, the kinds of rhetoric that are available and acceptable. But I think Overton window is being more essentially about, a measure of the, the range of political possibilities. That are open to discussion and active consideration. When a politician opens or shifts the Overton window, they shift the range of topics that now can be discussed. And many people think that a widening of the window can be a positive thing because it puts more, puts more things on the table. A lot of everyone agrees with that for harm-based reasons. But that's one might say, I think that Trump administration politically is in some ways shifted the Overton window rhetorically, as you pointed out, but also has widened it in a variety of ways. To include a whole bunch of political solutions on a whole range of topics that were not even being considered or talked about, before. But here's a little twist I want to add to you, add for you in the realm of science. Would you, would you accept the idea? What do you think of the idea that we might say that Trump administration is perhaps shifting and maybe opening the Overton window, but it's also putting up a screen. It's putting a screen in the window that's now preventing a whole range of. Words and concepts even being discussed, even though the window may be more open in other areas.

Ivan Oransky: I don't want to do the thing where I say, but well, let's pick apart the metaphor precisely. I, I, I see what you're saying and I think I see where it's helpful. I would say though that I, I see it as more of a blackout shade, on certain parts of it because a screen and in the summertime you like screened windows because they keep out the flies, but the fresh air is still stays in. And so what, one thing we didn't talk about today, is sort of what screening and peer review is actually, you know, happening. And, and we talk, I talked briefly about RFK junior and sort of, you know, being very selective about what you cite and what you refer to. So I, I, I actually maybe, and I would probably have to think about the, so I don't want to be sort of, held to this, you know, quote in a minute, you know, later on.

John Tomasi: You won't be held to it.

Ivan Oransky: No, no, no, I understand. No, no, no, I mean, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a context, three ways, what I mean, like I'm not opposed to screens, right. because I don't think screens, you know, I think if properly used screens can actually separate again, flies from fresh air. I like the fresh air. I'm not crazy about the flies, not being in my house anyway. And so again, peer review is sort of supposed to be a screen of some kind. so I, I guess what I'm saying is I think that what they're doing, what the Trump administration is doing in terms of shutting down inquiry is, is more dramatic than a screen. I think if we had an entire Overton window with the screen, it'd probably be okay. I may regret saying that at some point because of how people construct that screen. but I don't, I don't think that's where they're going here.

John Tomasi: So we want a screen, we might say for inside of a research, you want screens, strong, thick screens for merit, for, for excellence, for contributions and the search for truth and understanding. But we're skeptical, or at least we have some worries about screens that are politicized in some way. Even though the whole building is in some sense, a liberal democratic society that's funded by the people and is for the people in some ultimate sense.

Ivan Oransky: I think that that works. I would add sort of things like, rigorous methodology to things we want, and we're screening in, if you will, we're screening out the bad methodology. But I think again, right now, a lot of that is actually getting in other parts of the Overton window that are wide open because again, peer review is so flawed because we have put so much effort into it. But that's a whole other subject.

John Tomasi: thanks, thanks for this conversation. I'd like to, I want to remind listeners that if you're interested in Ivan's work, please check out Retraction Watch, which you, which he works on with his co-founder, Adam Marcus. I also encourage you to look at the issue of Inquisitive, the first issue of Inquisitive, with a great piece. I'm sorry, the second issue of Inquisitive, which is forthcoming. First issue for me. The first issue for Ivan. and also there's a Q and A with Alice Dreger, with Ivan in, HXA's blog, Substack blog, Free the Inquiry. Ivan Oransky, thank you so much for being with us today.

Ivan Oransky: Thanks so much. Really a pleasure. Wonderful conversation.

John Tomasi: It's been a pleasure talking with you.