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#takedowns

6 posts4 participants1 post today
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Update. "U.S. climate data websites go dark"
science.org/content/article/us

"U.S. scientists, state policymakers, farmers, and others who depend on up-to-date #climate data on Thursday confronted an information blackout from federal regional climate centers across much of the country. “Unfortunately, all data and services offered under the base contract, including this website, will be unavailable unless and until funding is resumed,” a statement on the Southern Regional Climate Center’s website read…The disruption appears to be a temporary paperwork bottleneck within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (#NOAA), rather than a policy decision by agency leadership, officials at several of the centers say. The centers are managed by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. But they are housed chiefly at #universities operating under 5-year agreements. The contracts for payment are approved each year. The last annual cycle ended on 16 April."

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Update. "Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More"
propublica.org/article/trump-d

"The data collection efforts that have been shut down or are at risk of being curtailed are staggering in their breadth. In some cases, datasets from past years now sit orphaned, their caretakers banished and their future uncertain; in others, past data has vanished for the time being, and it’s unclear if and when it will reappear. Here are just a few examples."

PS: What follows is one of the best lists of deleted or endangered datasets so far published.

ProPublicaTrump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More
More from ProPublica
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Update. "With the recent announcement that numerous datasets — such as those from #NOAA — are scheduled for decommissioning in May, #PANGAEA has opened its archive to help safeguard these valuable resources. If you become aware of any endangered datasets, please don't hesitate to contact us. PANGAEA data!"
pangaea.de/

pangaea.deData Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science
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Update. Bad news from the #NEH for #KnowledgeCommons (and the rest of us).
about.hcommons.org/2025/04/17/

"On April 2, 2025, we received notification that our NEH Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant, awarded in 2020, was terminated effective immediately…On April 10, 2025, we received further…notification that our contract to provide the NEH’s Designated Public-Access #Repository was also being terminated…This loss is devastating…both for the financial impact it represents…but also for the unceremonious end to a goal we’d set for ourselves years ago…Not to mention the bigger picture here: that designated public-access repository is no longer needed, because it is assumed that the NEH will no longer be funding research, and thus there will be no results of research to make publicly accessible."

PS: All the agencies covered by the #OSTP #NelsonMemo must designate #OpenAccess repositories for their OA content. NEH was the only agency to designate a repo not hosted by the govt. All the other agency repos will be hosted by the govt, where they will be subject to political censorship or takedowns.

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Update. "#CDC's #STD Lab Shuttered by #Trump Layoffs"
medpagetoday.com/infectiousdis

"A critical laboratory for surveilling sexually transmitted diseases (#STDs) in the US has been lost in the Trump administration's mass layoffs…One of its most remarkable projects is a one-of-its-kind repository of 50,000 isolates of gonorrhea used to monitor antibiotic resistance, which is quickly becoming a global health concern. The lab has been doing this work for nearly 40 years -- but will now, at best, have a gap in data."

Also see the public statement by the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association (#ASTDA).
astda.org/statement-from-astda

www.medpagetoday.comCDC's STD Lab Shuttered by Trump LayoffsImplications of lab slashing 'makes me sick to my stomach,' former employee said
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Update. "Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency. White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted."
science.org/content/article/tr
(#paywalled)

"President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to end nearly all of the #climate research conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (#NOAA)…The administration is also preparing to ask for deep cuts to #NASA’s science programs."

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Update. "Mississippi libraries ordered to delete academic research in response to state laws"
mississippitoday.org/2025/04/0

"A state commission scrubbed academic research from a database used by #Mississippi #libraries and public #schools — a move made to comply with recent state laws changing what content can be offered in libraries. The Mississippi Library Commission ordered the deletion of two research collections that might violate state law…One of the now deleted research collections focused on “race relations” and the other on “gender studies.”

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Update. "Marks Says He Was Forced Out of #FDA for Trying to Protect #Vaccine Safety #Data"
medpagetoday.com/publichealthp

"Shortly before he was forced to resign, the nation's top vaccine regulator says he refused to grant #HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s team unrestricted access to a tightly held vaccine safety database, fearing that the information might be manipulated or even deleted."

www.medpagetoday.comMarks Says He Was Forced Out of FDA for Trying to Protect Vaccine Safety DataTop vaccine regulator denied RFK Jr. full access to and editing of safety database
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Update. "#SciOp is part of Safeguarding Research & Culture (#SRC). The bits must flow: let us resurrect the ancient art of #Bittorrent to ensure that our cultural, intellectual and scientific heritage exists in multiple copies, in multiple places, and that no single entity or group of entities can make it all disappear."
sciop.net/

sciop.netSciOp - Public Information PreservationPreserving Public Information
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Update. "The White House Frames the Past by Erasing Parts of It"
nytimes.com/2025/04/05/technol

"Thousands of…govt web pages [have] been taken down or modified, including content about vaccines, hate crimes, low-income children, opioid addiction and veterans, before a court order temporarily blocked part of the sweeping erasure. A Justice Department database tracking criminal charges and convictions linked to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was removed. Segments of data sets are gone, some of the experts who produced them were dismissed, and many mentions of words like “Black,” “women” and “discrimination” have evaporated…“This is not a cost-cutting mechanism,” said Kenny Evans, who studies science and technology policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and runs the White House Scientists Archive at the school. 'This slide toward secrecy and lack of transparency is an erosion of democratic norms.'"

The head of the National Archives, which has been described as “the custodian of America’s collective memory,” was fired by President Trump in February.
The New York Times · The White House Frames the Past by Erasing Parts of ItBy Tiffany Hsu
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Update. "Massive, Unarchivable Datasets of Cancer, Covid, and Alzheimer's Research Could Be Lost Forever"
404media.co/nih-archives-repos
(#paywalled)

"Almost two dozen repositories of research and public #health #data supported by the #NIH are marked for “review” under the #Trump administration’s direction, and researchers and archivists say the data is at risk of being lost forever if the repositories go down. “The problem with archiving this data is that we can’t,” Lisa Chinn, Head of Research Data Services at the University of Chicago…Unlike other government datasets or web pages, downloading or otherwise archiving NIH data often requires a Data Use Agreement between a researcher institution and the agency, and those agreements are carefully administered through a disclosure risk review process."

404 Media · Massive, Unarchivable Datasets of Cancer, Covid, and Alzheimer's Research Could Be Lost ForeverDays before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that 10,000 HHS staffers would lose their jobs, a message appeared on NIH research repository sites saying they were "under review."
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Update. "US Weather Agency to Preserve Research Websites in Reversal"
bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

"The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency [#NOAA] will preserve access to websites tied to its research division, after previously moving to cancel a cloud web services contract that supports many of its pages. Bloomberg News had reported earlier that the service contract for NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — known as NOAA Research — had been set to terminate this week, jeopardizing access to most of the office’s public-facing websites. But in an emailed statement Friday, NOAA said that the sites will be preserved."

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Update. "Patient Safety Network Abruptly Cut by Trump Administration"
medpagetoday.com/opinion/faust

"The #Trump administration suddenly cut all funding for the Patient Safety Network (#PSNet) on Friday…PSNet is an influential and respected project within #HHS that has been dedicated to decreasing medical errors through research and knowledge dissemination. The endeavor has been credited with saving lives by helping change the culture by which clinicians learn from mistakes, thereby improving care."

Here's PSNet today.
psnet.ahrq.gov/

And here it is in the Wayback Machine.
web.archive.org/web/2025040214

www.medpagetoday.comOpinion | Patient Safety Network Abruptly Cut by Trump AdministrationThe project helped protect Americans from medical errors
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Update. "More than 1,900 scientists write letter in ‘SOS’ over Trump’s attacks on science"
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/m

"More than 1,900 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine [#NASEM] signed an open letter warning Americans about the “danger” of the #Trump administration’s attacks on science. The letter comes amid the administration’s relentless assault on US scientific institutions which has included threats to private universities, federal grant cancelations and ideological funding reviews, mass government layoffs, resignations and censorship."

Here is the letter itself.
docs.google.com/document/d/13g

The Guardian · More than 1,900 scientists write letter in ‘SOS’ over Trump’s attacks on scienceBy Jessica Glenza
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Update. Speak up to help #AED reduce the odds that valuable public US govt datasets will be taken down.
essentialdata.us/

"Demonstrating the broad real-world value of federal data is the most strategic path to ensuring its continued flow. The goal of America's Essential Data is to make it easy for: … federal agency data stewards and their leadership to better understand the true value of their data, especially as it relates to administration priorities. Do you use a federal dataset that delivers important benefits for the American people? Help us tell the story of that dataset!"

essentialdata.usAmerica's Essential DataHighlighting examples of how our essential public data serve the American people.
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Update. "Global Science in Danger"
blog.scielo.org/en/2025/03/26/

"Recently, the government of the United States of America (USA) has frightened the scientific community…by censoring terms used in scientific communications and funding proposals…The idea that this is just relevant to American scientists or scientists from elsewhere working in America is not correct; with researchers the world over being affected. In the Netherlands, for instance, some researchers monitoring the state of forests…have received email messages, ostensibly from the #USGS (United States Geological Survey) and labelled “High Priority”. A list of questions was attached with the request to respond with answers within a week of receiving the email. The USGS indicated that sending these messages had been ordered by the United States Office of Management and Budget (#OMB)."

SciELO in Perspective · Global Science in Danger | SciELO in PerspectiveThe current American government is curtailing science in several ways. Certain terms are censored in scientific reports and publications, communications and collaborations between scientists are limited or even proscribed, and funding is withdrawn. The implications for scientific research in the US are vast, but the long arm of the American government has undesired effects on the global science community as well, particularly on the numerous ways scientists elsewhere collaborate with their American colleagues. The preeminence of American science seems truly being shattered.