In a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel — and in an opinion piece in The Washington Post — Clement accused Zinke of illegally trying to force career staffers to quit.

“That incident was a case study in them going after the people who do the science,” Clement, who now works at a philanthropic foundation, said in an interview. Ultimately, Interior’s internal watchdog found no written communications from Zinke that supported the allegation.

In April, the Office of Personnel Management finalized a rule that will allow federal employees to keep their existing job protections and right to due process, including the right to appeal a reassignment or firing. The rule overturns a Trump directive, known as Schedule F, that allowed his administration to force out thousands of career employees by changing their status to at-will workers who could be fired without due process.

NOAA leaders and observers said the agency is better equipped to withstand the sort of pressure scientists faced when Hurricane Dorian was approaching the U.S. coast in 2019, and Trump used a marker to extend the hurricane forecast cone to include Alabama.

His warning prompted a quick clarification from NOAA forecasters that Alabama was not, in fact, in the likely path of the storm, and then a statement from agency leaders reaffirming Trump’s incorrect assertion. An investigation found undue political influence led to the release of that statement, violating NOAA’s scientific integrity policy.

The agency has since updated that research policy — in January 2021 and again this March, said Cynthia Decker, NOAA’s scientific integrity officer.

The policy includes guidelines on how scientists should conduct themselves, and asks them to articulate their findings openly and clearly to the public. It establishes that “credible allegations of fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and interference with or undue influence on accurate public reporting of science” can result in “personnel actions” and even referral to the inspector general’s office.

An extension of those policies to cover the Commerce Department is expected in the coming months, Decker said. It would include a mechanism by which even political appointees could be subject to allegations that they violated the integrity policy, something that could lead to a review or investigation and potential discipline, Decker said.

These updates are important because they set “that moral and intellectual compass to remind people where the curbs are in the road,” said Craig McLean, a 40-year veteran of NOAA who served as the agency’s acting chief scientist during the Trump administration.

But as strong as the policies may be, they aren’t permanent, some critics note. Legislation introduced in the two most recent sessions of Congress would have codified a requirement that federal agencies adopt scientific integrity policies and could establish legal penalties for violating them.

With such a law in place, “the next president can’t say, ‘No, I don’t care,’” when violations of scientific integrity arise, said Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official and a senior adviser at the Center for Ocean Leadership at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Daniel Weiner, director of the elections and government program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, said government scientists will inevitably face pressures from on high.

“There are always going to be political concerns pushing back on the science,” Weiner said. “I would expect that regardless of who wins the election.”