Two California researchers said Friday that a U.S. government health publication instructed them to remove data on sexual orientation from a scientific manuscript that had been accepted for publication.
The researchers also said they were told to remove the words “gender,” “cisgender” and “equitable” from their paper, which looked at smoking among rural young adults.
The reason given for the changes was to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump, researchers Tamar Antin and Rachelle Annechino said in a blog post where they included screenshots of the revisions.
Instead of complying, the researchers withdrew their paper from Public Health Reports, the official journal of the U.S. Surgeon General and U.S. Public Health Service.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order directing government agencies to remove “gender ideology” from publications. He has signed other orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The researchers plan to publish their findings elsewhere, Antin told The Associated Press. In the blog post, Antin and Annechino urged other researchers to refrain from publishing in journals published by the federal government to avoid political interference.
“In normal times, this would never happen,” said Antin, director of the Center for Critical Public Health, a California-based research group. “I have never been asked to censor any articles for publication, nor, to my knowledge, have any of my colleagues ever been asked to censor words, word choice, or remove data from a publication in response to an executive order from the White House. This is extremely unusual.”
Screenshots in the blog post show suggested deletions of data in categories labeled “straight or heterosexual,” “gay or lesbian,” “bisexual” and “unknown.” A note says: “Per the Executive Order, we cannot include language surrounding gender.”
Understanding how smoking fits into the lives of rural young adults of all genders and sexual orientations can help tailor more effective public health messages, Antin said. And it is a long-standing practice to include these demographic variables in research.
Antin said censorship threatens scientific integrity and, in this case, appears to violate the policy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which says that scientific findings should not be “unduly suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes.”
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said the agency “is restoring science to its golden standard to protect the integrity of science. All manuscripts published in the Public Health Reports must comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”
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