The Center for Open Science (COS) exists to increase the openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research. Advancing these principles is foundational to producing trustworthy evidence and ensuring that science can effectively serve the public good.
The Executive Order issued on May 23, 2025, Restoring Gold Standard Science, references several open science practices championed by COS and the open science and metascience communities more generally. Ordinarily, such prominent promotion of these practices would be cause for COS to celebrate advancement of its mission. Unfortunately, their application in this Executive Order is counterproductive for open science’s purpose to accelerate discovery, advance treatments, and create knowledge.
The Executive Order says:
“For the purposes of this order, Gold Standard Science means science conducted in a manner that is:
(i) reproducible;
(ii) transparent;
(iii) communicative of error and uncertainty;
(iv) collaborative and interdisciplinary;
(v) skeptical of its findings and assumptions;
(vi) structured for falsifiability of hypotheses;
(vii) subject to unbiased peer review;
(viii) accepting of negative results as positive outcomes; and
(ix) without conflicts of interest.”
The Executive Order suggests that research must achieve these criteria to be considered research done with integrity and to be useful for policymaking. This fails to recognize that achieving all of these in any single study is rarely, if ever, achieved. There is no perfect study. Good research is conducted as rigorously as possible given available resources. Progress is made in research by acquiring evidence, critiquing that evidence, and pursuing additional evidence to address the weaknesses and alternative explanations. Understanding is gained across the accumulation of evidence from many studies.
The Executive Order does not provide any standards for non-scientific information. As a consequence, this Executive Order is positioning policymaking to ignore scientific evidence by holding it to unachievable standards, and to use ideology and non-scientific information by holding it to no standards at all. Responsible policymaking uses the best available evidence.
The Executive Order empowers a political appointee at each agency to make their own assessment of research through that agency based on this standard. They can designate research as scientific misconduct and dismiss its use. This approach undermines the peer review process called out in the Executive Order’s gold-standard criteria itself. It is also antithetical to scientific integrity standards that federal agencies define as "the adherence to professional practices, ethical behavior, and the principles of honesty and objectivity when conducting, managing, using the results of, and communicating about science and scientific activities. Transparency and protection from inappropriate influence are hallmarks of scientific integrity."
Enforcement by political appointees risks introducing partisan and ideological interference in how science is evaluated and used. Moreover, this process centralizes assessment of evidence as an activity of the state. Responsible policymaking would recognize and support science as a decentralized enterprise. Scientific claims are evaluated iteratively in a marketplace of ideas. There is no central authority to determine truth, and historical examples highlight the dangers of empowering the state to determine scientific truths.
These concerns echo previous efforts to politicize science by co-opting standards of transparency and credibility. COS Executive Director Brian Nosek testified before a Senate committee in 2017 and a House committee in 2019 to promote responsible adoption of open science practices and highlight the importance of using the best available evidence for policymaking. History shows how calls for “sound” or “transparent” science have at times been leveraged not to strengthen evidence, but to suppress it, particularly when findings challenge political interests. Science always involves uncertainty, which is why it is so important that research credibility is derived from the scientific community of experts, rather than delegated by political appointees.
Demanding perfect evidence before action can be taken is often a way to avoid using evidence at all. Framing reform around a rigid “gold standard” risks repeating that pattern. Rigor and reproducibility should not be weaponized to gatekeep certain fields or findings. Instead, they must serve as tools to make science more inclusive, accountable, and impactful for society.
Improving openness, integrity, and reproducibility of research is an iterative, never-ending process for the scientific community. It benefits from inclusion of many perspectives and all interested parties. We are grateful to be part of the diverse and proactive community of researchers, funders, publishers, institutions, and service organizations that are advancing open science. Productive, responsible engagement of government, both in the U.S. and globally, is essential for translating openness into impact. The scientific community must continue to advocate for meaningful, principled efforts to promote openness and earn trust. COS remains committed to building, sustaining, and supporting the infrastructure, policies, and partnerships necessary to ensure science can continue improving and delivering on solutions for society’s greatest challenges.
###
About COS
Founded in 2013, COS is a nonprofit culture change organization with a mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. COS pursues this mission by building communities around open science practices, supporting metascience research, and developing and maintaining free, open source software tools, including the Open Science Framework (OSF).
Media Contact: pr@cos.io
Related News
6218 Georgia Avenue NW, Suite #1, Unit 3189
Washington, DC 20011
Email: contact@cos.io
Unless otherwise noted, this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.
Responsible stewards of your support
COS has earned top recognition from Charity Navigator and Candid (formerly GuideStar) for our financial transparency and accountability to our mission. COS and the OSF were also awarded SOC2 accreditation in 2023 after an independent assessment of our security and procedures by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA).
We invite all of our sponsors, partners, and members of the community to learn more about how our organization operates, our impact, our financial performance, and our nonprofit status.
