The Obama White House planted an interesting time capsule on its way out the door Wednesday: A seemingly innocuous eight-page memo issued by the Department of Energy simply title "Scientific Integrity Policy."

"It's part of establishing the environment that allows scientists to do their work, to stay with us, and to recruit new people," outgoing Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced during a speech at the National Press Club.

The DOE policy document is hardly bland, and it could define a battle that will rage inside the incoming Trump administration for years to come.

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Thousands of scientists who rely on DOE and other science-based federal agencies for guidance and research support are now watching the incoming Trump administration warily. The president-elect routinely dismisses experts and scientists, on issue after issue, in favor of either conspiracy theories or fringe beliefs. Trump transition teams at science-based federal agencies have tried to identify scientists in civil service, a move many believe might target them for discrimination because they either fund or study scientific research topics Trump or incoming senior White House officials disagree with.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known anti-vaccine proponent, announced this week that Trump asked him to run a presidential vaccine safety commission to study links between autism and vaccines – a link that is non-existent and thoroughly discredited. Trump's campaign denied the report, saying the president-elect is considering setting up a panel to study autism, but no final decisions have been made. But the perpetuation of the myth that vaccination actually harms children, even simply by meeting with someone who strongly believes this, only causes harm because many parents choose not to immunize their children because of fears about the non-existent link.

In fact, Trump and his senior staff have shown such a disregard for experts and policymaking based on evidence and facts - including cybersecurity findings presented by members of the U.S. government's intelligence community – that scientists inside and outside of government are wondering how key decisions will be made.

Moniz, who is a physicist, touched on that when he announced the new integrity policy. DOE uses peer-reviewed science to make critical decisions about nuclear security. If important national security decisions aren't based on the integrity of those experts and a common set of science-based facts, then what will they be founded on?

In the middle of highly sensitive negotiations between the United States and Iran regarding the fate of Iran's nuclear weapons program, for instance, all of DOE's laboratories were assisting with critical input for the negotiations.

"Seven of our laboratories were providing near real-time support to our negotiating positions in a highly technical negotiation," Moniz said, "and I certainly needed correct answers, stated clearly, as opposed to anything that somebody may have thought was the answer I wanted. That would not be helpful."

That, in a nutshell, is the heart of the innocuous new DOE scientific integrity policy. Science isn't based on myths, conspiracies or gut beliefs – it's based on painstaking study and constant questioning to make sure that something is real and true, or that it isn't.

"Science and technology lie at the heart of the Department of Energy's mission," the new scientific integrity policy reads. "Given the importance to the nation of the DOE's research portfolio and the breadth of responsibility DOE bears for the nation's continuing progress in science and technology, DOE is obliged to uphold the highest standards in the sponsorship, management, and conduct of research. Among these standards is the core value of scientific integrity."

The scientific process can be messy. It involves raising questions, and then replicating studies to see what's true and verifiable and what isn't. But it also works. When the science community has essentially reached a consensus that something is real or a threat – like it has with climate change, for instance – then the public can accept their findings as basic truth. How leaders act on that scientific truth, however, is an entirely different question.

In the case of the nonexistent link between vaccines and autism, for instance, it was that rigorous science process that showed there was, in fact, no basis to the myth. An initial study showing a possible link to autistic children was later discredited through the science process, allowing medical professionals to remain confident that vaccines were not, in fact, causing autism.

Yet, despite the science consensus ruling out a vaccine-autism link, "anti-vaccers" remain in America – just like "birthers" who didn't believe that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States. The most prominent "birther" over the years is now the president-elect.

Since Trump also tends to believe other conspiracies and myths, in the face of a wall of scientific proof or facts, it has profoundly unsettled the scientific community. That's why DOE leadership felt compelled to issue an eight-page scientific integrity policy memo on the way out the door.