For many years, Donald Trump is not a champion of science. As president and on the campaign trail, he called climate change “hoax“Supervised; rollback Over 100 environmental policies. instructed the agency Reduce expert guidance; pushed Unproven coronavirus treatments;withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement (and I vowed to do it again); and claimed, without evidence, that the noise was from wind turbines. cause cancer. Ahead of his next assignment in the Oval Office, he’s: Nominated vaccine denier Committed to overseeing the Department of Health and Human Services; eliminate federal agencies Of potentially tens of thousands of career staff, I’m about to release the shutter Ministry of Education.
“Trump is basically waging a war against science and scientists,” said Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a nonprofit science advocacy group. “He said,” he said.
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And that “war” is probably not limited to researchers within the federal government. To better understand how scientists feel about their work under Trump 2.0, I spoke with several researchers at public and private universities. students, postdocs, and startup founders. Many expressed concerns about losing funding, avoiding terms like “climate change” on federal grant applications and other paperwork, and losing access to federal datasets. Some even feared for their own safety. Others believed their research would be isolated from a future Trump administration because of their field. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid further jeopardizing their research.
Their testimony by no means provides a comprehensive picture of the scientific community’s position on Trump, but it does give some insight into how some researchers feel about the next four years and what is keeping them at night. It gives some light as to what is keeping you awake. As a doctoral student, a student from California frankly said: “There are many days when I just want to quit everything.”
Here are some ways the new Trump administration could complicate their jobs.
Funding and federal research priorities may change
In academia, funding could be difficult to find with or without a Trump presidency. Researchers often need multiple grants to cover their salaries, but grants are highly competitive and may only cover a few years at a time. “Essentially, you’re building a track as you go down the track,” said Oliver Bear Don’t Walk IV, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington who studies Indigenous health. They said President Trump’s promise to overhaul federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health “could add further uncertainty to an already highly uncertain process.”
Not a single researcher I spoke to expressed concern about what they would lose. the current Even with funding under the Trump administration, the future was a different story. “I’m already taking advantage of this existing grant, so I’m already funded for the next few years,” said the California Ph.D. said the student, a NASA-funded ecologist who studies tree health and drought. But “what happens next is a big question mark for me.”
Funding for areas related to climate science, equity, and diversity efforts may be particularly vulnerable. Inside higher education reportTrump supporters, including Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and tech billionaire Elon Musk, annually approach researchers for grants related to gender, race, social and environmental justice, and more. It criticizes the National Science Foundation, which provides billions of dollars in federal funding. Cruz discussed these “questionable projects” as follows: October reportessentially “leftist ideological crusadeAnd, in Musk’s words, “corruption of science”
Currently, researchers do not know what kind of funding they can rely on. Eldrick Miralles, co-founder and CEO of Illuminant Surgical, a Los Angeles-based medical device startup that aims to help doctors make fewer mistakes during spinal surgeries, said the company’s Some of the current products are as follows. Federal grants provide additional funding to hire employees from underrepresented groups. Before Trump’s victory, Miralles said Illuminant plans to use these funds to hire low-income and rural West Virginians. is located. “We were really excited about it,” Miralles said. “It might be gone next year.”
In Jones’ view, cutting funding to certain areas of research would fit in as part of President Trump’s larger campaign of attacks on scientists. (According to UCS tallies, the first Trump administration 200+ attacks “By threatening to cut subsidies, they are scaring people into silence.”
Researchers fear they will have to avoid controversial buzzwords such as ‘diversity’ and ‘climate change’.
To protect themselves, many researchers I spoke to said they expected they might need to restructure their research to appeal to the new administration.
“I’m finishing up my Ph.D. right in the middle of the early Trump administration,” said the California student. “There’s a postdoc program at NASA that I might be able to apply for, and I’m starting to think about how I might propose to continue my research in non-climate-related ways.” He said the focus could also shift to describing it as addressing “risks”. That’s not ideal, he says, but “there’s a part of me that wants to protect myself from any funding changes that come my way.” [I’d] We are still doing good research, but we also need to protect ourselves. ”
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Other researchers may have an even harder time pivoting. Bear Don’t Walk, a member of the Apsaluk Nation, said: “If talking about health equity becomes taboo, it’s hard to imagine how we would talk about the injustices that have happened to Indigenous people.” . When he first applied for a postdoctoral grant, he made sure to mention how the actions of the U.S. government, including colonization, residential schools, and land dispossession, continue to impact the health of indigenous peoples today. In other words, fairness is at the heart of Bear Don’t Walk’s research. “It was important to me not to mince words. …And now I’m like, ‘Well, okay, do I have to start mincing words?'”
In a sense, some sources say, scientists are constantly tweaking their research proposals to suit institutional demands. That’s just how to write a good grant. But what if the language researchers use influences the research that ends up being done? “If we can’t talk about it, then we can’t essentially move the needle and try to solve some of the problems,” one medical researcher argued. ”
Scientists aren’t sure they have access to federal data and tools
Above all, the scientists I spoke to worried that they would have even less access to information under the new Trump administration. “I rely on a lot of federal data,” said one postdoctoral fellow who studies energy policy. “I think there are a lot of unanswered questions about the quality and reliability and continued availability of federal data,” he said (my colleague), which includes U.S. Census data. As Ari Berman investigates, reported in detailwhich the Trump administration first tried to intervene in), and agencies like the Energy Information Administration, which has provided “best-in-class” data on U.S. energy consumption and production since the ’70s, including data on energy companies. “If it gets compromised,” says the postdoc. ”
“In general, we expect federal transparency and disclosure to be significantly reduced, so it will be very difficult to assess the impact of federal actions,” he said. .
James Hu, co-founder of Millares’ Illuminant, said his company is in the process of getting medical device approval from the Food and Drug Administration. The FDAefficiency” Under Robert Kennedy Jr.’s HHS, the wait time for approval could be shorter. But if FDA scientists resigned en masse in response to Kennedy’s appointment ( the current and former Government officials are reportedly concerned that this could happen, which could slow down the agency’s work. “We’ve spent a lot of time building good relationships with FDA reviewers,” Miralles said. “If they left, it would be really difficult because we would have to start all over again,” he said.
Good scientists may leave the field, be forced out, or not participate at all.
Some researchers have told me they fear for their safety and that of their colleagues, especially in red states. The California student, who is transgender, said he has no plans to move to “a good half” of the state after earning his Ph.D. Because of hostility towards transgender people. “I was planning on leaving science before I moved to Florida. I was planning on moving into the private sector and getting an industry job or something, long before I moved to Missouri or Tennessee.”
UCS’s Jones, who was a professor of environmental studies at Florida Gulf Coast University, was selected by the university to become the director of the Center for Environmental and Social Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University, but due to the wishes of Governor Ron DeSantis, the position will be held in 2023. He says he retired in . anti-science policy. “It became increasingly clear to me that at best, I would have to shut up, get under the table, and not do the job I thought I was supposed to do.”
She now worries that her experience in Florida is emblematic of what’s to come in other parts of the country. Jones said, “With President Trump waging a war of intimidation and fear against scientists, there will be far fewer people stepping up to serve the public good through science in the future, right?” Ta.
