‘An assault on science:' Harvard researchers sue Trump administration for erasing their work.
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Researchers in Massachusetts are particularly vulnerable. The state ranks sixth for per capita federal funding of diversity and equity-oriented research, according to a Globe analysis of federal data. In 2024, the state received $33.1 million for such research, up from $23.2 million in fiscal year 2020.
Among the papers removed from PSNet, the patient safety network, was one on suicide risk. According to the law suit, it was taken down because it included
a sentence about heightened risk in LGBTQ communities.
The other was about endometriosis, an often-painful condition
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That paper was from 2020, which was why
Three days later a follow-up email from the editor, who is a government contractor, explained that the 5-year-old article ran afoul of Trump's executive orders.
'When a paper that is specifically intended to address misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis is taken down because of a phrase that this diagnosis should be considered in all people, including trans and gender non- conforming people, you're limiting the way that people might think about approaching diagnosis,' Royce said.
'It's the idea that we're preventing people from thinking or limiting the way that they think, and how is that going to affect the next generation of physicians, or the current generation of physicians who are out there practicing right now,' she said.
The other paper was by Dr. Gordon Schiff,director of quality and safety at the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care.
Like Royce's paper, Schiff's was not focused on gender or equity issues, but noted in a single sentence that LGBTQ people are at higher risk of suicide.
'Suicide is a huge public health issue, which you don't deal with by suppressing science or discouraging people from writing about it,' Schiff said in a Globe interview last month. 'People are going to die as a result of censorship like this.'
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the government's actions of removing or altering from its public websites and social media accounts speech that promotes 'gender ideology' by private individuals unconstitutional and unlawful. And it asks that the government be barred from taking such actions in the future.
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It also asks that PSNet, the government's patient safety network, be ordered to restore all articles and information related to LGBTQ and non-binary individuals it removed after Trump was inaugurated.
Lawyers at ACLU believe there may be at least 20 other articles out of a database of more than 18,000 that were removed from the PSNet site for similar reasons, but they are still trying to identify those papers and authors and may eventually include them in the suit.
Davidson, the ACLU lawyer, said removing articles that even hint at LGBTQ concerns will hurt everyone.
'We're...seeing that it's spilling out into all of society, and the harms are going to be really widespread if we're removing scientific literature wholesale from public websites,' Davidson said. 'The implications are going to be potentially really broad. And I think it's terrifying.'
Compared to the hundreds, if not thousands, of researchers across the country whose work and government funding are in the Trump administration's crosshairs, the articles pulled from PSNet are a 'tiny tiny drop,' Royce said.
'But I feel like, if we don't fight back for our fundamental rights, we'll lose them and whatever I can do to contribute to that, I want to do,' she said. 'I want to stand up for people's rights.'
Material from previous Globe articles was used in this story.
Kay Lazar can be reached at
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