U.S. government’s historic role as trusted information source is under threat
The covid.gov website says covid-19 most likely originated in a Chinese lab, although scientists are in fact deeply divided over its origin. A widely read report posted on energy.gov/topics/climate concludes that humans’ impact on climate is relatively small, a finding sharply at odds with the scientific consensus.
On DHS.gov, the government informs Americans that nearly 2 million undocumented migrants have “self-deported” this year, an assertion that mystifies researchers. And cdc.gov/vaccine-safety dismisses the conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism as not “evidence-based.”
Researchers and activists increasingly fear that under the Trump administration, the U.S. government is abdicating its historic role as a clearinghouse for reliable information — a momentous shift for what has been the world’s foremost producer of widely accepted data for everyone including academic researchers, local governments and ordinary citizens. Despite sharp swings in the worldview of successive presidents, most agencies have maintained their reputation for evenhanded information.
That may now be under threat.
“Federal agencies, especially the ones that have historically been nonpartisan, have done historically a pretty good job of maintaining credibility across administrations,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California. “What we have seen in the last few months is the complete and total collapse of that credibility.”
The issue arose again Thursday when the Labor Department announced a surprisingly low inflation figure of 2.7 percent for November. Economists immediately noted quirks that could have artificially lowered the rate: prices were not gathered until the second half of November, when Thanksgiving discounts kicked in, and no increase was shown in housing costs, though they clearly went up.
Skeptics, revisionists and conspiracy theorists have long challenged facts and figures supplied by the U.S. government, sometimes with more justification than others. Now doubters oversee much of the government’s vast research and information machinery, while it is outsiders who are scrambling to preserve and promote scientifically accepted data. [Continue reading…]