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#takedowns

3 posts3 participants0 posts today
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Update. "Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency. White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted."
science.org/content/article/tr
(#paywalled)

"President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to end nearly all of the #climate research conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (#NOAA)…The administration is also preparing to ask for deep cuts to #NASA’s science programs."

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Update. "Mississippi libraries ordered to delete academic research in response to state laws"
mississippitoday.org/2025/04/0

"A state commission scrubbed academic research from a database used by #Mississippi #libraries and public #schools — a move made to comply with recent state laws changing what content can be offered in libraries. The Mississippi Library Commission ordered the deletion of two research collections that might violate state law…One of the now deleted research collections focused on “race relations” and the other on “gender studies.”

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Update. "Marks Says He Was Forced Out of #FDA for Trying to Protect #Vaccine Safety #Data"
medpagetoday.com/publichealthp

"Shortly before he was forced to resign, the nation's top vaccine regulator says he refused to grant #HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s team unrestricted access to a tightly held vaccine safety database, fearing that the information might be manipulated or even deleted."

www.medpagetoday.comMarks Says He Was Forced Out of FDA for Trying to Protect Vaccine Safety DataTop vaccine regulator denied RFK Jr. full access to and editing of safety database
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Update. "#SciOp is part of Safeguarding Research & Culture (#SRC). The bits must flow: let us resurrect the ancient art of #Bittorrent to ensure that our cultural, intellectual and scientific heritage exists in multiple copies, in multiple places, and that no single entity or group of entities can make it all disappear."
sciop.net/

sciop.netSciOp - Public Information PreservationPreserving Public Information
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Update. "The White House Frames the Past by Erasing Parts of It"
nytimes.com/2025/04/05/technol

"Thousands of…govt web pages [have] been taken down or modified, including content about vaccines, hate crimes, low-income children, opioid addiction and veterans, before a court order temporarily blocked part of the sweeping erasure. A Justice Department database tracking criminal charges and convictions linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was removed. Segments of data sets are gone, some of the experts who produced them were dismissed, and many mentions of words like “Black,” “women” and “discrimination” have evaporated…“This is not a cost-cutting mechanism,” said Kenny Evans, who studies science and technology policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and runs the White House Scientists Archive at the school. 'This slide toward secrecy and lack of transparency is an erosion of democratic norms.'"

The head of the National Archives, which has been described as “the custodian of America’s collective memory,” was fired by President Trump in February.
The New York Times · The White House Frames the Past by Erasing Parts of ItBy Tiffany Hsu
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Update. "Massive, Unarchivable Datasets of Cancer, Covid, and Alzheimer's Research Could Be Lost Forever"
404media.co/nih-archives-repos
(#paywalled)

"Almost two dozen repositories of research and public #health #data supported by the #NIH are marked for “review” under the #Trump administration’s direction, and researchers and archivists say the data is at risk of being lost forever if the repositories go down. “The problem with archiving this data is that we can’t,” Lisa Chinn, Head of Research Data Services at the University of Chicago…Unlike other government datasets or web pages, downloading or otherwise archiving NIH data often requires a Data Use Agreement between a researcher institution and the agency, and those agreements are carefully administered through a disclosure risk review process."

404 Media · Massive, Unarchivable Datasets of Cancer, Covid, and Alzheimer's Research Could Be Lost ForeverDays before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that 10,000 HHS staffers would lose their jobs, a message appeared on NIH research repository sites saying they were "under review."
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Update. "US Weather Agency to Preserve Research Websites in Reversal"
bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

"The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency [#NOAA] will preserve access to websites tied to its research division, after previously moving to cancel a cloud web services contract that supports many of its pages. Bloomberg News had reported earlier that the service contract for NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — known as NOAA Research — had been set to terminate this week, jeopardizing access to most of the office’s public-facing websites. But in an emailed statement Friday, NOAA said that the sites will be preserved."

Bloomberg · US Weather Agency to Preserve Research Websites in ReversalBy Lauren Rosenthal
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Update. "Patient Safety Network Abruptly Cut by Trump Administration"
medpagetoday.com/opinion/faust

"The #Trump administration suddenly cut all funding for the Patient Safety Network (#PSNet) on Friday…PSNet is an influential and respected project within #HHS that has been dedicated to decreasing medical errors through research and knowledge dissemination. The endeavor has been credited with saving lives by helping change the culture by which clinicians learn from mistakes, thereby improving care."

Here's PSNet today.
psnet.ahrq.gov/

And here it is in the Wayback Machine.
web.archive.org/web/2025040214

www.medpagetoday.comOpinion | Patient Safety Network Abruptly Cut by Trump AdministrationThe project helped protect Americans from medical errors
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Update. "More than 1,900 scientists write letter in ‘SOS’ over Trump’s attacks on science"
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/m

"More than 1,900 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine [#NASEM] signed an open letter warning Americans about the “danger” of the #Trump administration’s attacks on science. The letter comes amid the administration’s relentless assault on US scientific institutions which has included threats to private universities, federal grant cancelations and ideological funding reviews, mass government layoffs, resignations and censorship."

Here is the letter itself.
docs.google.com/document/d/13g

The Guardian · More than 1,900 scientists write letter in ‘SOS’ over Trump’s attacks on scienceBy Jessica Glenza
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Update. Speak up to help #AED reduce the odds that valuable public US govt datasets will be taken down.
essentialdata.us/

"Demonstrating the broad real-world value of federal data is the most strategic path to ensuring its continued flow. The goal of America's Essential Data is to make it easy for: … federal agency data stewards and their leadership to better understand the true value of their data, especially as it relates to administration priorities. Do you use a federal dataset that delivers important benefits for the American people? Help us tell the story of that dataset!"

essentialdata.usAmerica's Essential DataHighlighting examples of how our essential public data serve the American people.
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Update. "Global Science in Danger"
blog.scielo.org/en/2025/03/26/

"Recently, the government of the United States of America (USA) has frightened the scientific community…by censoring terms used in scientific communications and funding proposals…The idea that this is just relevant to American scientists or scientists from elsewhere working in America is not correct; with researchers the world over being affected. In the Netherlands, for instance, some researchers monitoring the state of forests…have received email messages, ostensibly from the #USGS (United States Geological Survey) and labelled “High Priority”. A list of questions was attached with the request to respond with answers within a week of receiving the email. The USGS indicated that sending these messages had been ordered by the United States Office of Management and Budget (#OMB)."

SciELO in Perspective · Global Science in Danger | SciELO in PerspectiveThe current American government is curtailing science in several ways. Certain terms are censored in scientific reports and publications, communications and collaborations between scientists are limited or even proscribed, and funding is withdrawn. The implications for scientific research in the US are vast, but the long arm of the American government has undesired effects on the global science community as well, particularly on the numerous ways scientists elsewhere collaborate with their American colleagues. The preeminence of American science seems truly being shattered.
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Update. "‘Breathtakingly Irresponsible’: Former Workers Decry Decimation of #Education Dept.’s #Data Warehouse"
chronicle.com/article/breathta

"More than 160 contracts measuring educational progress across the nation’s schools and colleges were suddenly halted. Probationary workers were fired, employees were blocked from accessing information on their computers, and a national center that dates to the time of Abraham Lincoln was effectively decommissioned overnight. Employees worked late into the evenings downloading data that had taken decades to compile, according to interviews with more than a dozen people fired from the Institute of Education Sciences (#IES), an independent and nonpartisan agency within the U.S. Department of Education [#DOE], and its National Center for Education Statistics (#NCES)…IES, which had 173 employees before the cuts, was left with just over a dozen after Elon #Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency swept through the Education Department early last month. The crippling of the office was so swift and haphazard that it left serious doubts about how much of the educational data that has informed higher-education policy and practice will continue to be available."

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Update. "As the Trump administration purges web pages, this group is rushing to save them"
npr.org/2025/03/23/nx-s1-53265

"After President Trump's inauguration in January, some federal web pages vanished. While…were removed entirely, many came back online with changes that…officials said were made to conform to Trump's executive orders to remove "diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility policies." Thousands of datasets were wiped — mostly at agencies focused on science and the environment…Information about climate change, reproductive health, gender identity and sexual orientation also have been on the chopping block…The #InternetArchive [@internetarchive] is among the few efforts that exist to catch the stuff that falls through the digital cracks, while also making that information accessible to the public. Six weeks into the new administration, #WaybackMachine director Graham said, the Internet Archive had cataloged some 73,000 web pages that had existed on U.S. government websites that were expunged after Trump's inauguration."

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Update. "Center for Open Science (#COS) Statement on U.S. Executive Orders and the Future of Open Scholarship"
cos.io/about/news/cos-statemen

"Recent executive orders and shifts in U.S. federal policy pose significant concerns for the research community, including the removal of publicly available data, changes in research governance, and uncertainties around funding. While some policies claim to promote transparency, their selective application risks undermining scientific integrity. True openness must apply across all research domains —not just where it aligns with political agendas. COS remains steadfast in its commitment to protecting and promoting open scholarship. Ensuring long-term access to research data is essential to maintaining scientific integrity. Our Open Science Framework (OSF) remains a reliable resource for researchers seeking to preserve and share their work, ensuring that public knowledge remains accessible despite policy uncertainties."

www.cos.ioCOS Statement on U.S. Executive Orders and the Future of Open ScholarshipAt the Center for Open Science (COS), our mission is to advance openness, integrity, and rigor in research. Scientific progress depends on a foundation of transparency, accessibility, and trust—principles that ensure research remains accountable, reproducible, and independent of political influence.
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Update. "US anti-terror legislation must not be weaponised against libraries"
timeshighereducation.com/opini

"Scholars have attempted to safeguard their work by turning to sites deemed to be beyond the reach of the US government…However, even these safe havens may be at risk if a seemingly innocuous tax bill completes its course through Congress. H.R. 9495, the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act”, was passed by the US House of Representatives in November 2024 and is currently before the Senate. It proposes…to strip non-profit status from organisations deemed to be “supporting terrorism”. But its broad language, lack of evidentiary requirements, and potential for political weaponisation should send a chill down the spines of all higher education professionals. After all, who is to define terrorism? History is filled with examples of liberation movements and resistance groups initially labelled 'terrorists' by powerful states. And who is to define 'support'?"

Times Higher Education (THE) · US anti-terror legislation must not be weaponised against librariesThe terror financing bill’s broad language may require international efforts to defend academic freedom, says Caroline Ball
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Update. From @kfitz: "Digital Preservation in a Time of Disorder"
about.hcommons.org/2025/03/19/

"#KnowledgeCommons has applied for a significant grant from Lever for Change to build, implement, and sustain a digital preservation network that will be free from the US government’s, and any other single government’s, interference…KC is a #nonprofit, community-governed, #OpenAccess platform for creating and sharing knowledge world-wide…But, in the present moment, our US-centeredness is a significant threat to that mission. We propose to establish three linked but independent nonprofit public-benefit companies incorporated in the US, Europe, and South Africa, all dedicated to the social and technological processes of gathering, preserving, and ensuring the public accessibility of academic research."