Researchers Rush to Save US Government Data on Trans Youth—Before It Disappears

On a Friday afternoon in mid-March, a bunch of (presumably) non-hackers showed up to participate in a new kind of “hackathon.” It was Pi Day, so pie was served, but the mood wasn’t celebratory. Students, researchers, and members of the wider public health community were there, in a lecture hall at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and on Zoom, to rescue data. Whatever they could. According to the flier for the Preserving Public Health Data Hackathon, the current Trump administration was trying to undermine research on everything from climate change to systemic racism, and saving data from government websites meant it would be archived and republished in the event federal agencies tried to remove it. The antiauthoritarian theme came up often: don’t obey in advance. Everyone in the room and on the Zoom got a crash course in identifying at-risk information, collecting it, and storing it once they did. Backing up certain pieces seemed critical. For those who work in public he ... Read full article.