Data manipulation by the US government

This article investigates recent data manipulation practices within U.S. federal health datasets, focusing on the systematic replacement of the term “gender” with “sex” between January and March 2025. The authors situate these alterations within a politically charged context, following a presidential directive to remove linguistic markers associated with gender ideology in order to “restore biological truth” in federal records. The analysis drew on metadata from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). By comparing current datasets with archived versions from the Internet Archive, the investigators identified 232 datasets modified during the study period. Of these, 114 (49%) were substantively altered, with 93% of changes involving the substitution of “gender” with “sex.” Only 13% of these modifications were documented or logged, raising concerns about transparency. Most alterations (78%) affected classification or categorization fields—such as column headers and stratification...