The Center for Open Science (COS) has reaffirmed its mission to advance openness, integrity, and reproducibility in research, which it views as fundamental to producing reliable evidence and ensuring that science effectively serves the public interest. In a statement responding to the May 23, 2025, Executive Order titled “Restoring Gold Standard Science,” COS expressed concern that, despite referencing numerous open science practices, the order’s implementation could undermine the very goals it aims to achieve.
COS acknowledged that the Executive Order’s stated objectives—reproducibility, transparency, communication of error and uncertainty, interdisciplinary collaboration, skepticism of findings and assumptions, structuring for hypothesis falsifiability, unbiased peer review, acceptance of negative results, and freedom from conflicts of interest—align in principle with open science ideals. However, COS cautioned that holding any single research study to fully meet all these criteria is unrealistic. According to COS, there is no perfect study; rigorous research is conducted within the limits of available resources, with scientific understanding advancing through the accumulation of evidence, critical examination, and continuous refinement.
The statement highlighted that the Executive Order fails to establish any comparable standards for non-scientific information, potentially allowing policymaking to disregard scientific evidence by holding it to unattainable benchmarks, while permitting ideological or non-scientific considerations to influence decisions without scrutiny. COS argued that responsible policymaking should rely on the best available evidence rather than being constrained by impractical standards.
Of particular concern to COS was the provision empowering political appointees within each agency to determine whether research meets the Executive Order’s definition of scientific integrity, enabling them to label research as scientific misconduct and exclude it from policy decisions. COS contended that this approach undermines the peer review process highlighted in the order’s own gold-standard criteria and conflicts with established scientific integrity standards, which emphasize adherence to professional practices, ethical conduct, and principles of honesty and objectivity.
COS warned that entrusting scientific assessment to political appointees risks politicizing science by subjecting it to partisan interference, effectively centralizing evidence evaluation in the hands of the state. The organization emphasized that science is inherently a decentralized enterprise, with credibility derived through iterative evaluation in a marketplace of ideas, rather than by any single authority. COS pointed to historical examples illustrating the dangers of state control over scientific truth, echoing concerns over past efforts to politicize science through the co-option of transparency and credibility standards.
COS Executive Director Brian Nosek, who previously testified before Senate and House committees to advocate for responsible adoption of open science practices, reiterated that demands for perfect evidence can often be used to stall action and suppress inconvenient findings. The statement stressed that rigorous and reproducible research should not be weaponized to exclude specific fields or perspectives, but rather should serve as tools to enhance science’s inclusivity, accountability, and societal impact.
Recognizing that improving research openness, integrity, and reproducibility is an ongoing process that thrives on collaboration, COS expressed gratitude for the collective efforts of researchers, funders, publishers, institutions, and service organizations advancing open science.
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