Data scientist Jonathan Gilmour on the scramble to recover US federal datasets
Robbie Morrison
Hello all
This article in The Guardian today is worrying:
- Gilmour, Jonathan (21 April 2025). "The Trump administration is sabotaging your scientific data". The Guardian. London, United Kingdom. ISSN 0261-3077.
The byline for Jonathan says he is a data scientist at Harvard's TH Chan School of Public Health, a fellow at the Aspen Policy Academy, and coordinator at the Public Environmental Data Partners.
Two quotes caught my eye:
"Much of this data remains out of sight to those who don't use it, even though they benefit us all. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has brazenly attacked our scientific establishment through agency firings, censorship and funding cuts, and it has explicitly targeted data the American taxpayers have paid for. They're stealing from us and putting our health and wellbeing in danger – so now we must advocate for these federal resources."
And:
"A common refrain of the saboteurs is that if these functions that they are targeting are important enough, the states or the private sector will step in to fill the gap. While some of these functions of the federal government are replicable outside of government, privatization will render them less accessible, more expensive and subject to the whims of the markets."
A similar refrain, albeit in a more nuanced form, is sung by the
European Commission too, whose preference is to commodify public
interest data. Under a different paradigm from the current White
House, of course, but not much less problematic for open science.
The Public Environmental Data Partners project is here, with a running log of its recovered datasets:
- Public Environmental Data Partners (ongoing). Data + screening tools. Data + Screening Tools. Website.
And Catalyst Cooperative are partners too, I see (well done).
best, Robbie
-- Robbie Morrison Address: Schillerstrasse 85, 10627 Berlin, Germany Phone: +49.30.612-87617