{"id":5557,"date":"2025-05-06T06:34:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T06:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=5557"},"modified":"2025-05-06T06:34:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T06:34:00","slug":"welcome-to-the-u-s-science-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=5557","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the (U.S. Science) Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n<\/div>\n

By KIM BELLARD<\/p>\n

I\u2019m starting to feel like I\u2019m beating a dead horse, having already written a couple times recently about the Trump Administration\u2019s attacks on science, but the hits just keep on coming. Last Friday, for example, not only did the Administration\u2019s proposed 2026 budget<\/a> slash National Science Foundation (NSF) funding by over 50%, but Nature <\/em>reported<\/a> that the NSF was ceasing not only making new grants but also paying out on existing grants.<\/p>\n

Then this week, at an event called \u201cChoose Europe for Science,\u201d European leaders announced a 500 million euro ($566 million) program to attract scientists. It wasn\u2019t specifically targeted at U.S. scientists, but the context was pretty clear.<\/p>\n

Sudip Parikh<\/a>, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, called the proposed budget cuts \u201ca crisis, just a catastrophe for U.S. science.\u201d Even if Congress doesn\u2019t go along with such draconian cuts and grant approval resumes, Dr. Parikh warns<\/a>: \u201cThat\u2019s created this paralysis that I think is hurting us already.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

One NSF staffer fears<\/a>: \u201cThis country\u2019s status as the global leader in science and innovation is seemingly hanging by a thread at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nature<\/em> obtained an internal NSF April 30 email that told staff members \u201cstop awarding all funding actions until further notice.\u201d Researchers can continue to spend money they\u2019ve already received but new money for those existing or for new grants are frozen \u201cuntil further notice.\u201d Staff members had already been told to screen grant proposals for \u201ctopics or activities that may not be in alignment with agency priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

NPR<\/em> reports<\/a> that some 344 previously approved grants were terminated as a result, as they \u201cwere not aligned with agency priorities.\u201d One staffer told Nature<\/em> that the policy had the potential for \u201cOrwellian overreach,\u201d and another warned: \u201cThey are butchering the gold standard merit review process that was established at NSF over decades.\u201d Yet another staffer told<\/a> Samantha Michaels of Mother Jones <\/em>that the freeze is \u201ca slow-moving apocalypse\u2026In effect, every NSF grant right now is canceled.\u201d<\/p>\n

No wonder that NSF\u2019s director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, resigned last week, simply saying: \u201cI believe I have done all I can.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you think, oh, who cares? We still have plenty of innovative private companies investing in research, so who needs the government to fund research, then you might want to consider this: new research from American University<\/a> estimates that even a 25% drop in federal support for R&D would reduce the U.S. GDP by 3.8% in the long term. And these aren\u2019t one-time hits. \u201cIt is going to be a decline forever,\u201d said Ignacio Gonz\u00e1lez, one of the study\u2019s authors. \u201cThe U.S. economy is going to be smaller.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t believe AU, then maybe you\u2019ll believe the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which estimates<\/a> that government investments in research and development accounted for at least a fifth of U.S. productivity growth since World War II. \u201cIf you look at a long period of time, a lot of our increase in living standards seems to be coming from public investment in scientific research,\u201d Andrew Fieldhouse, a Texas A&M economist and an author of the Dallas Fed study, told The New York Times<\/em>.<\/a> \u201cThe rates of return are just really high.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no wonder, then, that European leaders see an opportunity.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cNobody could imagine a few years ago that one of the great democracies of the world would eliminate research programs on the pretext that the word \u2018diversity\u2019 appeared in its program,\u201d President Emmanuel Macron of France said<\/a> at the Choose Europe event.<\/p>\n

President Macron went on to add:<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one could have thought that one of the largest democracies in the world would erase, with a stroke of the pen, the ability to grant visas to certain researchers. No one could have thought that this great democracy, whose economic model relies so heavily on free science, on innovation and on its ability to innovate more than Europeans and to spread that innovation more over the past three decades, would make such a mistake. But here we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, we see today that the role of science in today\u2019s world is questioned. The investment in fundamental, free and open research is questioned. What a gigantic miscalculation,\u201d said<\/a> Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.\u00a0 She wants to \u201cmake Europe a magnet for researchers\u201d over the next two years.<\/p>\n

Here we are indeed, and, yes, what a gigantic miscalculation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the United States, once a paradise for researchers, academic freedom is being challenged. The line between truth and falsehood, between fact and belief, is being weakened,\u201d Elisabeth Borne, France\u2019s education minister, said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first priority is to ensure that science in Europe remains open and free. That is our calling card,\u201d Ms. von der Leyen explained. President Macron echoed this: \u201cWe call on researchers worldwide to unite and join us \u2026 If you love freedom, come and help us stay free.\u201d<\/p>\n

America was supposed to be the land of the free, right?<\/p>\n

We need to keep in mind that, while all this is going on, President Trump is waging war on major U.S. research universities<\/a>, ostensibly in the name of fighting DEI or antisemitism. The New York Times<\/em> estimates he has targeted some 60 in all, especially Ivy League institutions. Over 200 colleges and universities have signed on to a statement<\/a> decrying the attacks:<\/p>\n

As leaders of America\u2019s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education\u2026We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding.<\/p>\n

The statement warns: \u201cThe price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert N. Proctor, a historian at Stanford University, told Reuters<\/em><\/a> that Trump was leading \u201ca libertarian right-wing assault on the scientific enterprise\u201d that had been years in the making. \u201cWe could well see a reverse brain drain,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just to Europe, but scholars are moving to Canada and Asia as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week Dr. Francis Collins, former head of the NIH, pointed out: \u201cWhen you mix politics and science, you just get politics.\u201d Starting with WWII, U.S. universities made a devil\u2019s bargain with the federal government about research funding. That bargain served both parties, and the country, well over these past many decades, but we\u2019ve never seen politics and ideology play such a role in what and who gets funded.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Administration claims it values science, but only certain kinds of science and especially not \u201cwoke\u201d science. It\u2019s fair to question levels of federal funding, but when the political considerations outweigh the scientific ones, we run the risk that \u201cAmerica First\u201d won\u2019t be true of U.S. science anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

By KIM BELLARD I\u2019m starting to feel like I\u2019m beating a dead horse, having already written a couple times recently about the Trump Administration\u2019s attacks on science, but the hits just keep on coming. Last Friday, for example, not only did the Administration\u2019s proposed 2026 budget slash National Science Foundation (NSF) funding by over 50%,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5557","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\/5557"}],"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=5557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}