Australia's Chief Scientist Alan Finkel has compared US President Donald Trump's move to censor environmental data with former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's control of science in the USSR.

Speaking at a Chief Scientists' roundtable discussion at the Australian National University on Monday, Dr Finkel made his comments saying he was "going off topic" as "science is literally under attack".

Dr Finkel said: "The Trump administration has mandated that scientific data published by the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] must undergo review by political appointees before they can be published."

In the first week of his presidency Mr Trump's administration informed the EPA it could not send out press releases and no blog messages could be published. The EPA was also told "no new content can be placed on any website".