{"id":3995,"date":"2025-02-26T08:29:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T08:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=3995"},"modified":"2025-02-26T08:29:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T08:29:00","slug":"goodbye-american-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=3995","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye, American Science"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By KIM BELLARD<\/p>\n

Many people don\u2019t realize it, but a hundred years ago America was something of a scientific backwater. Oh, sure, we had the occasional Nobel laureate, but the center of science was in Europe, particularly Germany. Then in the early 1930\u2019s the Nazis decided that \u201cpurity\u201d \u2013 of political ideas, of blood \u2013 was more important than truth, making life uncomfortable at best and deadly at worst for their scientists. So hundreds of them fled<\/a>, many of them ending up in the U.S. And \u2013 voila! \u2013 American science came of age and hasn\u2019t looked back.<\/p>\n

Until now. Now, I fear we\u2019re going to suffer what Germany did, a brain drain that will bode well for some other country\u2019s scientific fortunes.<\/p>\n

Once of the first chilling announcements from the Trump Administration was that it was freezing NIH grants in order to ensure they were in compliance with Trump\u2019s executive order banning DEI-related efforts. That froze some $1.5b in grant funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Piling on, the Administration announced<\/a> that NIH grants would limit indirect costs to 15%. Sounds reasonable, you might say, but the vast machinery of U.S. biomedical research uses these \u201cindirect\u201d costs to fund the infrastructure that makes the research possible. Numerous state Attorney Generals immediately filed a lawsuit to block the cuts, claiming<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This research funding covers expenses that facilitate critical components of biomedical research, such as lab, faculty, infrastructure and utility costs. Without it, lifesaving and life-extending research, including clinical trials, would be significantly compromised. These cuts would have a devastating impact on universities around the country, many of which are at the forefront of groundbreaking research efforts \u2013 while also training future generations of researchers and innovators.<\/p>\n

Oh, and on top of all this, as many as 1,500 NIH employees are in line to be laid-off<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Katie Witkiewitz, a professor at the University of New Mexico, lamented to The New York Times<\/em><\/a>: \u201cThe N.I.H. just seems to be frozen. The people on the ground doing the work of the science are going to be the first to go, and that devastation may happen with just a delay of funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Universities are similarly frozen, not sure when or how much money they can expect. The University of Pittsburgh has paused<\/a> all<\/em> Ph.D. admission, until it can better understand its funding future. One has to suspect it won\u2019t be the only such program to do so, and we may never know how many would-be Ph.D. students will simply decide a future in U.S. science is too bleak to risk.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The effects of all this will be long lasting. Bita Moghaddam, a behavioral scientist at Oregon Health & Science University, warned The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>:<\/em> \u201cThings aren\u2019t going to get slowed down for six months \u2014 they may get slowed down for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe discoveries that aren\u2019t made \u2014 you can\u2019t point to them, because they will never be made,\u201d Jeremy Berg, a former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, told WaPo<\/em><\/a>. \u201cThe hard part is you don\u2019t know what you missed until years later, when something doesn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just NIH and not just biomedical research at risk. The National Science Foundation laid off some 10% of its workforce. \u201cThese arbitrary firings and failure of leadership directly impact the agency\u2019s ability to evaluate and fund good science,\u201d Mary Feeney, a public policy researcher at Arizona State University, said to NPR<\/em><\/a>. \u201c[It] is demoralizing for those who remain at the NSF, and will negatively affect the government\u2019s ability to attract talent to public service in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

NSF research funding could also be cut by half or more<\/a>, as well as more staff cuts. \u00a0The cuts disproportionately impact young scientists, the future of our science. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a missing age class of researchers that will reverberate for years,\u201d one federal scientist fears<\/a>, reports Katie Langin in Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t even get me started on RFK Jr. and his advocacy of junk science<\/a>.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me started on how federal agencies are purging datasets<\/a> in order to meet vague DEI demands either; short-sighted and stupid.. Don\u2019t get me started on climate change denialism, with the Trump Administration doing its best to kill<\/a> participation by U.S. researchers on the next major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).<\/p>\n

Science is under attack. \u201cEveryone is in a panic right now,\u201d Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, the director of health for St. Louis, told Katherine Wu in The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>. \u201cAnd when researchers don\u2019t know what they\u2019re allowed to do, science is not going to get done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you believe that innovation is important to economic development, then throwing a wrench in one of the most sophisticated and productive innovation machines in world history is not a good idea,\u201d Deborah Seligsohn, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, told Karen Ho in MIT Technology Review<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>\u201cThey\u2019re setting us up for economic decline.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Ho predicts:<\/p>\n

For starters, the purging of tens of thousands\u2014and perhaps soon hundreds of thousands\u2014of federal workers is removing scientists and technologists from the government and paralyzing the ability of critical agencies to function. Across multiple agencies, science and technology fellowship programs, designed to bring in talented early-career staff with advanced STEM degrees, have shuttered. Many other federal scientists were among the thousands who were terminated<\/a> as probationary<\/a> employees<\/a>, a status they held because of the way scientific roles are often contractually structured.<\/p>\n

She believes that talent will flow elsewhere \u2013 such as to China, to Canada, and even, ironically, to Germany. According to a report<\/a> from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), over the past decade or so, Chinese universities have made \u201csignificant gains\u201d in listing of world universities, driven largely by research productivity. U.S. universities remain among the best in the world, but number in the top 500 has dropped. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

One can only imagine what such a listing will look like in a few years.<\/p>\n

Things aren\u2019t frozen everywhere. Ms. Ho points out: \u201cChina has made a remarkable ascent to become a global peer in scientific discoveries. By some metrics, it has even surpassed the US; it started accounting for more of the top 1% of most-cited papers globally, often called the Nobel Prize tier, back in 2019<\/a> and has continued to improve the quality of the rest of its research.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not worried, read Ms. Hao\u2019s The foundations of America\u2019s prosperity are being dismantled<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Read Ms. Wu\u2019s The Erasing of American Science<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Read Ms. Langin\u2019s U.S. early-career researchers struggling amid chaos<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Then tell me you\u2019re not worried.<\/em><\/p>\n

Science will go on. Scientists will continue to invent the future. But it doesn\u2019t have to be here, and, if we\u2019re not careful, it won\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

Kim is a former emarketing exec at a major Blues plan, editor of the late & lamented\u00a0<\/em>Tincture.io<\/em><\/a>, and now regular THCB contributor<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By KIM BELLARD Many people don\u2019t realize it, but a hundred years ago America was something of a scientific backwater. Oh, sure, we had the occasional Nobel laureate, but the center of science was in Europe, particularly Germany. Then in the early 1930\u2019s the Nazis decided that \u201cpurity\u201d \u2013 of political ideas, of blood \u2013…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}