in effect
Executive Order 14303, signed May 23, 2025, directs all federal executive-branch agencies to adopt a defined set of scientific standards — called “Gold Standard Science” — governing how they conduct, use, interpret, and communicate scientific information in their work. It also rolls back scientific-integrity policies put in place between January 20, 2021 and January 20, 2025, reverting agencies to the framework that existed on January 19, 2021 as an interim baseline.
Within 30 days of the order, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) must publish guidance defining how agencies should implement Gold Standard Science — which the order specifies must be reproducible, transparent, falsifiable, free of conflicts of interest, and honest about uncertainty. Once that guidance is published, agency heads must update their own scientific-integrity policies to match, and must report back to OSTP within 60 days on what steps they have taken. Agencies must now make publicly available the data, models, and source code behind any scientific information that could substantially affect major public policies or private-sector decisions, with a narrow exception for enforcement-targeting risk models; they may not invoke the standard FOIA deliberative-process exemption (Exemption 5) to block release of such models without written authorization from the agency head. Employees are prohibited from relying on “highly unlikely” or worst-case scenarios in agency decision-making unless a law specifically requires it, and must apply a “weight of scientific evidence” approach that weighs each study’s design, replicability, and peer-review status. Each agency must designate a senior political appointee to oversee an internal process for investigating alleged violations of the order.
Every federal employee — regardless of job title — who generates, uses, interprets, or communicates scientific information in their official work is directly bound by these rules, as are agency contractors to the extent practicable. Researchers and institutions whose studies agencies rely on for rulemaking or guidance may find their underlying data and methods subject to mandatory public disclosure. Members of the public and regulated industries gain new access to agency models and analyses, but the order creates no private right of action to sue the government over alleged violations.