Over the past 18 months, we’ve watched with growing concern as the Trump administration has moved to censor and undermine research and expertise in the United States – from the deletion or alteration of around 400 federal datasets to the illegal firing of 24 National Science Board members. Individually, these stories are alarming. But it’s all too easy to write them off as isolated incidents rather than recognise them as part of an intentional pattern.
That’s why we’re proud to be an organisational signatory of #DefendResearch, and why we’ve partnered with them to help move the conversation from anecdote to evidence e – starting with one of the areas most immediately at risk: public health and epidemiology.
What we’re doing
We’re conducting a rigorous, evidence-based study into the aggregated impact of U.S. government censorship, with an initial focus on public health and epidemiology – an area of significant, immediate concern. The methodology is fully preregistered on the Open Science Framework, and has been designed to be reproducible and expandable to other domains and fields. Every search string, every coding decision, and every quote we rely on will be documented and open to inspection, and domain experts are providing peer review at each stage of the work.
We believe this will be the first rigorous, citable baseline study of its kind – giving advocates, journalists, policymakers, and researchers an evidence base they can point to, rather than a series of individual stories. The results will be published in October, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, alongside a set of visuals and other outputs designed for use in news reporting and advocacy.
Why this matters to us
Rob Johnson, our Managing Director, explains our involvement like this:
“The events that we’ve seen unfolding in the US since early 2025 seem to me to run directly counter to the realisation of our vision, and I believe we may well see similar developments in the UK and Europe over the coming years. I immediately identified with the work being done by #DefendResearch to resist the growing censorship of knowledge and research in the United States, and wanted to find ways that we could help.”
We conducted the initial proof-of-concept phase pro bono – developing and testing the methodology – and have kept going at our own expense since. It’s part of a wider practice of giving back that includes – but this project felt like a natural extension of our mission: to create a future where knowledge is valued and used to benefit society.
How you can help
This is not our usual line of work, and asking for support isn’t something we take lightly – but the scale of what’s needed means we can’t get this over the finish line alone. If you share our concern about what’s at stake, there are two ways to help:
- Contribute to the crowdfunding campaign. Together with #DefendResearch, we’re inviting supporters to help us raise $25,000 towards the cost of completing this study – full details of where your money goes are on the campaign page.
- Spread the word. Join Rob for a free webinar on the study on 15 September at 11:00am ET – register here – or simply share the campaign with your networks.
You can find full details of the study, the campaign, and how to get involved on the #DefendResearch website.
We’re enormously grateful to #DefendResearch for the opportunity to contribute to this work, and to everyone who chooses to support it.
