Editor’s note: Ivan Oransky, MD, ​​Distinguished Journalist in Residence at New York University’s Carter Journalism Institute, cofounded Retraction Watch with Adam Marcus in 2010. The nonprofit site operates paywall-free and, in addition to original investigative science journalism, provides data on retractions and hijacked journals and transparency around misconduct.

ALICE DREGER: Reuters has reported, “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is seeking to withdraw all papers involving its researchers that are being considered for publication by external scientific journals to allow for a review by the Trump administration….The review is aimed at removing language to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order saying the federal government will only recognize two sexes, male and female.”

Put this into some historical context for us. Have we before seen this kind of mass withdrawal of papers being ordered by a presidential administration?

IVAN ORANSKY: I’m not aware of anything even close to this level of sweep. It far eclipses even the first Trump administration’s efforts. As others have noted, government scientists are typically required to have their manuscripts reviewed, but only at a technical level, not for content or language like this. And while I’m sure we could find examples of scientific censorship in every administration and by other politicians, this is clearly on a completely different scale.

I do want to point out, perhaps somewhat pedantically, that these are not retractions in the sense that term is typically used in scientific publication. Retractions can really only happen once a paper is published, and everything I’ve read about this new policy suggests these papers haven’t yet been. I think the use of the term “retraction” in some of the early reports – which is understandable, since the administration used it clumsily – confused matters.

ALICE DREGER: The specific order appears to require not mentioning the terms gender, transgender, lesbian, bisexual, gay, or nonbinary. Coincidentally, in my off-work hours, I’m reading When the Band Played On, a new biography of Randy Shilts, the preeminent journalist of the 1980s AIDS crisis. (Disclosure: The author, Michael Lee, is a former student and friend). I’m now trying to imagine what it would have been like for the CDC to try to have managed the AIDS crisis without mentioning gay men and transgender women. Can you give us some sense of the public health implications of banning names of identities (or identities themselves) from the CDC’s work?

IVAN ORANSKY: I look forward to reading the Shilts biography. My copy of And The Band Played On is quite dog-eared from all the times I’ve read and taught from it.

Real people will be harmed by blocking the flow of information this way – whether directly, by making it impossible to create evidence-based policies and guidelines, and indirectly, by demoralizing and paralyzing scientists pursuing the truth. People who identify a certain way don’t cease to exist just because others want them to, and manipulating the scientific record to eliminate them warps knowledge.

Even for those who are broadly supportive of targeting DEI efforts and agree that there are only two sexes, it’s important to note that the Trump administration’s edicts go far beyond that. We will end up making bad treatment and policy decisions if we exclude or mislabel large segments of the population from research.

ALICE DREGER: As you and I both know from our work, there have been plenty of attempts from the left to censor, silence, and punish researchers working on gender and sex issues (example; example; example; example; example; we could go on and on). What would you say to those on the left who decry what we’re now seeing happening at the CDC and elsewhere with this administration in terms of research and other forms of scholarly work?

IVAN ORANSKY: First, I’d decry this censorship myself. It will cause harm, as I’ve noted. But then I’d ask people to do something that may make many of them uncomfortable, which is to consider whether efforts to block discussion of research that are deemed by some to cause harm make it easier for Trump administration officials to justify this kind of censorship. Put another way, how different are these approaches, really? Once we decide censorship is acceptable because the ends justify the means, anyone can use that rationale. If one group weaponizes retractions to delegitimize studies they find problematic, why shouldn’t another?

Relatedly, I was glad to see that FIRE – which has advocated for freedom of speech on campus in ways that have angered some on the left – is keeping track of the Trump administration’s record on such matters, although, at the time of this writing, the CDC missive is not yet included. Heterodox Academy is of course doing similar tracking.

ALICE DREGER: The Retraction Watch Database is the gold standard for retractions from the scientific literature. Indeed, the Cochrane Library just announced it will use your database to flag retracted papers to make sure they don’t get included in systematic reviews. Does your database make special note of work that was retracted by order of an elected political actor?

IVAN ORANSKY: We’re delighted that Cochrane and others are using the database to try to keep the scientific literature as accurate as possible. That’s much easier now that Crossref has acquired it and made it openly available while committing the resources necessary to maintain it.

The database’s taxonomy doesn’t include censorship of any kind, let alone this kind of specific censorship. The reasons for retraction listed are things like image manipulation, faked data, and use of a paper mill. With the possible exception of the current episode – which, so far, does not seem to involve actual retractions, as noted elsewhere, so these cases would be very unlikely to appear anyway – it would be very difficult to figure out whether a particular case is due to political action. Retractions are complex and not at all standardized. One of the reasons we launched Retraction Watch, in fact, was because retraction notices can be so opaque and misleading – although there are glimmers of hope that’s getting better.

That being said, some journalists and others have done the hard work of revealing when government censorship is at work around the world. We’d love it if more reporters and researchers used the Retraction Watch Database to make more of that work possible.