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Things are improving, but there’s still a lot President Biden can do to restore the role of science in federal policy, write Lauren Kurtz, our director, and Romany Webb, senior fellow and associate research scholar at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

Find out about our AGU events, how we're working to restore scientific integrity, and more in our November 2020 newsletter.

We’re relieved that a politician with a pro-science agenda was elected president of the United States. But bitter political divides remain, with widespread disinformation campaigns and anti-science sentiment. These rifts mean our work is far from done, and we need your help to rebuild, revamp, and enforce protections for scientific integrity

Our model scientific integrity policy will help federal agencies and other research institutions adopt strong, comprehensive policies that protect science and scientists.

We created guides for these agencies because each one conducts, funds, or relies on scientific research. They all provide crucial information to the public and formulate policy. And they are all involved, to some degree, with climate research or climate policy. There are also cases of political interference and science being sidelined at each of them.

Lauren Kurtz, our director, is quoted in The New York Times on the challenges of combating attacks on science. Our pro bono client Maria Caffrey, a climate scientist who was forced out of her job at the National Park Service in 2019, was also interviewed.

We’re one of the dozens of organizations working to advance good government, public health, and environmental, consumer, human, and civil rights, who today collectively released Restoring Science, Protecting the Public: 43 Steps for the Next Presidential Term. This series of memos provides concrete steps the next administration can take to restore a culture of scientific integrity across the federal government.