EPA Pulls Down Updated Scientific Integrity Policy
Erasing over a decade of progress, the EPA move undermines protections for science and puts public health at risk.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has quietly removed its updated 2025 Scientific Integrity Policy from the agency’s website today. No press release or public explanation accompanied the move. The policy’s removal follows the Trump administration’s May 2025 executive order, “Restoring Gold Standard Science,” which directed all federal agencies to roll back scientific integrity policies to the versions in place before January 20, 2021. The “gold standard” executive order was framed by the White House as an effort to reassert “rigor, transparency, and reproducibility” in government science. In practice, it replaced the Biden-era reforms with political oversight, requiring each agency to reevaluate and potentially rescind updated safeguards and operate under older scientific integrity policies.
For EPA, that means reverting from a modernized 2025 policy, issued in January of this year, to its outdated 2012 version. While the 2012 policy was considered strong at the time, the 2025 update represented more than a routine refresh. It reflected over a decade of learning about what works and what doesn’t in safeguarding scientific integrity, as well as a strong framework developed by a federal interagency working group, extensive public comment, and consultation with tribal governments, other stakeholders, and EPA staff themselves.
By discarding the 2025 policy, the Trump administration is not only rolling back stronger protections at the EPA; it is reopening the very gaps that learnings from the last decade were meant to close. The knowledge and experience that went into building the stronger policy, both within EPA and across the federal government, are effectively erased, leaving the agency governed once again by an older, less comprehensive set of rules.
The EPA’s quiet scrubbing of its 2025 policy today is therefore more than just compliance; it’s a signal of alignment with this broader rollback of scientific integrity, which is a dramatic reversal for an agency whose credibility depends on protecting science from political interference.
For EPA staff, the removal of the 2025 policy is not just an abstract regulatory change; it is yet another soul-sucking reversal. Many have spent decades building the scientific foundation that underpins the agency’s mission to protect human health and the environment, from the painstaking research behind the Endangerment Finding to the work of entire offices like the Office of Research and Development, now targeted for elimination. Each rollback erases not only hard-won policy progress, but also the contributions of scientists who devoted their careers to protecting human health and the environment. Yet despite these repeated blows, EPA’s scientists continue pressing forward under increasingly hostile conditions, striving to uphold the agency’s mission even as the guardrails that once protected their work from political interference are steadily dismantled.
A Policy Meant to Restore Trust
EPA released its updated policy on January 16, 2025 as a modernized successor to its original 2012 policy. According to SciLight’s coverage at the time, the policy asserted that EPA would “not suppress, unreasonably delay, or alter scientific findings and products for non-scientific reasons.” It was designed to rebuild trust in agency science after years of turbulence.
Built on the 2023 Federal Framework for Scientific Integrity Policy and Practice, the EPA policy incorporated:
A standardized federal definition of scientific integrity, ensuring consistent application of scientific integrity process and practice across agencies.
Provisions that explicitly protected scientists’ ability to communicate their work publicly.
A detailed process for EPA staff who are “substantively engaged in the science” to submit differing scientific opinions.
A reaffirmation that science would inform—but not dictate—policy outcomes, ensuring independence of evidence while respecting policymaking authority.
I believe it is important to note that the updated policy did not bind decision-makers to a particular outcome. Instead, it established the processes and protections needed to ensure that the best available science would inform the agency’s work. That much has always been true: scientific integrity policies exist to guarantee that science-informed policies, especially those affecting the health and safety of the public, are protected and integral. These policies are not political tools. They are safeguards, ensuring that the decisions shaping people’s lives are grounded in our best and most trustworthy scientific information.
Why This Matters
1. Protections for Scientists Are Weakening
The 2012 policy did prohibit suppression or distortion of scientific work, but the 2025 update went further by explicitly addressing issues like unreasonable delay of scientific information and by tightening guardrails against interference. Rolling back to the 2012 framework reopens those gaps.
2. Transparency Is Eroding
While the 2012 version encouraged open communication, the 2025 policy codified scientists’ rights to engage with the public and the press more clearly and with fewer caveats. Its removal makes it easier for political leadership to reassert tighter control over communications.
3. Complaint Processes Are Uncertain
The earlier framework allowed concerns to be raised but lacked the detailed, structured reporting procedures and dedicated roles that the 2025 policy put in place. That clarity and accountability is now lost.
4. Symbolic and Structural Loss
The 2012 policy was groundbreaking for its time, but the 2025 policy embodied a decade of lessons learned. Scrubbing it from public view signals not only a return to the protections of the past but a retreat from the progress made in building transparency and accountability into agency culture.
This rollback also matters because of what it signals. By discarding a carefully built policy, the administration is making clear that scientific integrity is not a priority. That choice has real consequences. It means government science will be more vulnerable to political interference, and the policies and actions that shape people’s lives will be less protective of public health, safety, and the environment. In eroding integrity, the administration is eroding trust — and ultimately, the very foundation of evidence-based governance.
The Missing Definition
One of the most important contributions of the Biden administration’s 2023 Federal Framework was the creation of a standardized definition of scientific integrity across all federal agencies. This was a breakthrough: until then, each agency defined integrity differently, creating loopholes and confusion, particularly for interagency collaboration or across agencies and their parents (e.g., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its parent agency, the Department of Commerce).
EPA is an inherently interagency actor. Its scientists work with NOAA on climate modeling, with the Health and Human Services (HHS) on environmental health, with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on pesticide regulation, and with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on disaster response. Shared definitions matter. A standardized baseline ensures that “scientific integrity” means the same thing in every agency, allowing cross-government collaboration to operate on a common foundation of accountability.
By removing its 2025 policy, the EPA’s policy that reflected this government-wide definition, EPA is not just weakening internal safeguards. It is also undermining the interagency fabric that allows federal science to function cohesively. Falling back on its narrower 2012 definition risks fragmentation at precisely the moment when coordination is most critical.
A Policy Built Through Broad Input
Another element worth noting is the length of processes through which EPA’s 2025 Scientific Integrity Policy came into being. It wasn’t written behind closed doors. The policy was informed by extensive input from across the agency and beyond:
EPA staff were invited to review and comment during internal consultation periods.
Tribal groups had opportunities to weigh in, reflecting the agency’s responsibility to honor government-to-government relationships in science and policymaking.
Public comments also shaped the draft, ensuring that the policy addressed not just internal procedures but the expectations of the people EPA serves.
This process mattered. It gave the 2025 policy legitimacy, buy-in, and a measure of resilience by incorporating the perspectives of those most directly affected. By scrapping the policy entirely, EPA is not just discarding stronger protections, it is also erasing a document built through democratic and inclusive input.
The result is that EPA scientists, tribal governments, and the public now have less clarity, less accountability, and less voice in how the agency protects the integrity of its science.
Part of a Larger Pattern
EPA’s action is part of a broader cascade:
In March 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) rescinded its newly adopted scientific integrity policy, the first such repeal under the Trump administration.
In April, the administration disbanded the US Geological Survey’s (USGS) first-ever federal scientific integrity advisory committee.
In May, the “Restoring Gold Standard Science” executive order required all agencies to revert to pre-Biden policies, while empowering political appointees to oversee future guidance.
Each of these actions chips away at structures meant to protect science from politicization. Today’s EPA reversal is perhaps the most consequential yet, given the agency’s central role in setting environmental and public health standards.
What to Watch
Several consequences of this rollback are foreseeable:
Uncertainty for EPA scientists. Without clear guidance, staff must decide whether to follow the rescinded 2025 framework, revert to the 2012 version, or await ad hoc directives from political leadership. This ambiguity undermines confidence and chills open communication.
Potential congressional oversight. Lawmakers concerned with environmental policy, public health, science, and government accountability should call hearings or demand clarification on what protections remain for EPA scientists. Let’s watch to see if they do.
Interagency ripple effects. With EPA stepping away from the standardized definition of integrity, coordination with other science-driven agencies may become fractured, weakening federal responses to cross-cutting issues like climate change, pollution, and disaster response.
Public trust at stake. EPA’s credibility has always rested on its identity as a science-driven agency. Without a clear integrity framework, the perception that politics trumps evidence will only deepen public skepticism.
The Hollow Promise of “Rigor”
Supporters of the Trump administration’s approach frame “Gold Standard” science as elevating rigor, but rigor without integrity is hollow. A system may appear methodologically sound on paper yet fail if evidence is ignored, silenced, or politically filtered. True scientific integrity requires both rigor and independence from political interference.
The quiet removal of EPA’s updated Scientific Integrity Policy is not a housekeeping matter; it’s an institutional pivot away from science-led governance. By discarding a policy built to protect against political interference and align with a federal standard, EPA has embraced a broader agenda that centralizes control of science in political hands.
This is not about semantics or bureaucracy. It is about whether the nation’s leading environmental regulator will allow its scientists to speak freely, publish honestly, and inform policy without fear. Today’s action suggests that integrity is no longer the watchword at EPA, and perhaps at many other federal agencies, too. The repercussions for our environment, for public health and safety, will be disastrous. The take-down of this policy today, in short, should alarm us all.
That’s it for today - Thank you so much for reading SciLight!
If you enjoyed today’s post, please like it or share it with others. You can also support the work we do to shine a light on the politicization of science by becoming a paid subscriber!
If you want to share today’s post as a web page with your network, click this button:
If you have suggestions, questions, comments, or want to drop us a line - send it all to scilightsubstack@gmail.com