‘Follow The Science’ Is Easier When The Science Is Actually Good
- June 8, 2025
Michael Chamberlain, Daily Caller
“Follow the science.”
That phrase was invoked endlessly during the last several years. Unfortunately, far too often it was employed to justify unprecedented and sometimes draconian policies. Worse, it was used to censor, silence, and smear skeptics and dissenters. It was even utilized to advance some decidedly unscientific concepts for making major policy decisions, including one the Trump administration is working to repeal.
In what could be considered the first implementation of President Trump’s Restoring Gold Standard Science executive order, the Department of the Interior (DOI) declared it was beginning the process of reversing a Biden administration policy that cut off about 13 million acres of land in Alaska from oil and gas leasing. One of the justifications then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and the Biden team had used for revoking leases in these regions of Alaska was the “recognition of the Indigenous Knowledge of the original stewards of the area.”
The Biden administration acted early in its tenure to “formally recognize” and incorporate “indigenous knowledge” into federal research, policy, and decision making. This allowed it to pander by explicitly denigrating “Western science” and its “methodological dogma” (AKA “the scientific method”) as “a tool to oppress Tribal Nations and Indigenous Peoples.” With respect to the Alaska decision, they chose to elevate the indigenous knowledge of those who supported the administration’s position over the indigenous knowledge of the Native Alaskans who opposed it.
Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) responded to this application of the very unscientific concept of indigenous knowledge as a basis for such a profound policy change by filing a scientific integrity complaint with both the Department of the Interior and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, one of a dozen such complaints PPT filed during the Biden years.