The Trump administration has highlighted a tsunami of budget cuts in federal science programs. There is a large -scale firing in both Department of Health and Human Services And this Education departmentPart of a deliberate Disintegration of research staff Crossing the federal government.
Since January, the administration has systematically cut science funding. Its lowest level in decades And continued floods budget planning And Executive order It is again coming to how the government uses science and supports it.
Some results have been immediate and tragic, including shortage of staff, including cancer. Patient caught During experimental drug tests and delay Covid-19 in approving vaccines.
The limit of these works is unprecedented. Administration for a time Stop all grant money In the National Science Foundation and Suddenly finished Thousands of running projects that do IT funds, as well as those people National Institutes of Health,
As scientists from major research institutes, we have individually observed the impacts of administration policies – including allies abroad and students abroad.
Graduation science internship program has been CancelledAnd graduate programs in many research universities PreventedAs a result, scientists are growing rapidly Demand for jobs abroad,
The administration claims that its goal is to increase efficiency and increase scientific research standards. In fact, thousands of programs and projects have been cut only on the basis of ideological motivated onlySearch keywordsWithout any concern for their performance, design or conduct. It is not efficient.
A trump executive order issued in May underlines the purely political nature of these attacks. Topic “Restoration of gold standard science“The order in every agency puts a hand -elected presidential appointments to review and” right “with any evidence or conclusion, with which they disagree. It is not a scientist.
In addition, many policies of administration effectively punish researchers. Ask displaced questions And punish for institutions Teaching about unpopular thoughts,
Viewed together, these underlines a political strategy towards science that is both systematic and dangerous: a full -scale war on the scientific community, a network of individual researchers in many institutions whose cooperation is necessary for scientific progress.
Despite the media Stereotype of a lone talent in a lab coatScience is actually a communal activity. As Isaac Newton, one of the most important scientists of all time, wrote: “If I have seen further, it stands on the shoulders of the veterans.”
Each research project constructed on founding principles, tested methods and previous research on and produces on sophisticated conclusions.
And each scientist depends on the distributed efforts of a comprehensive community for publication and manuscripts for new research, reviews manuscripts for new research, maintains the equipment required to share and create normal magazines, databases, and equipment and educate the next generation talent that helps to operate their laboratories.
Institutes of Higher Education are traditional hosts for the scientific community in the US, providing an independent platform to develop and refine ideas, to train students an environment and infrastructure for laboratories and shared resources. For more than 80 years, American society has participated with these institutions to promote a healthy scientific community.
Federal funding enables universities to build and maintain the infrastructure required for scientific research and support the most promising students. The scientific community collaborated to evaluate proposals for research in areas, to ensure that resources were directed to the highest quality projects, independent of political and institutional bias.
No system is perfect, but the external scientific community has successfully participated with the government to provide independent guidance – balance the competing interests and perspectives to evaluate proposals, advise agencies who set funding priorities, recognize researchers, reviewing researchers, reviewing, reviewing and publishing research results.
Scientists within the government participate in a large scientific community, strengthening community standards because they move amidst jobs, and scientific questions preserve autonomy to ask and share their conclusions.
The policies of the administration represent three times the attack on the scientific community.
First of all, the administration aims to seize direct control over major community functions supporting scientific freedom: administrative functions have politicized review procedures for fundingNational Institutes of HealthAnd thisNational science foundationCompressedScientific dataAnd withdrew support for the students.
Second, the purpose of the administration is to subdue those universities who make weapons and provide an independent house for the community.Institutional recognitionAndstudent visaThreateningInstituteand theirLeadershipWhen they are slow to align with the ideology of administration.
Third, the administration is separating scientists and scientific works within the government.
It does so Sarcasm Scientific expertise, Firing Full independent expert advisory panel, Cancellation of government access For scientific magazines, Stop government scientists From publication and now, scientific analysis is subject to systematic political Change And Censorship,
The war of government against science is a disaster for both. Without intellectual and political freedom, the scientific community cannot effectively work to discover new knowledge and solve difficult problems.
For politicians it is a magical thinking to expect to get a true answer about the world when they pole to find the most popular answer, they pay to get the answers that they want or ignore the data they dislike. And it is anti -democratic when political leaders determine whether questions, data and conclusions are properly scientific.
Science is needed to deal with complex problems and teach others to do so. Science does not function without a healthy scientific community.
As citizens, we should argue whether problems are necessary. As voters, we should decide which problems are worth the public research fund. As independent people, we should not tolerate political attacks on science and scientific community.
Micah Altman MIT’s Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship is a social and information scientist in MIT Library. Philip n. Cohen Maryland is a professor of sociology at the College Park.
