As Trump targets research, scientists share grief and resolve to fight

BOSTON – At the annual gathering in Boston this past week of one of America’s oldest scientific societies, the discussions touched on threats to humankind: runaway artificial intelligence, toxic “forever chemicals”, the eventual end of the universe.

But the most urgent threats for many scientists were the ones aimed at them, as the Trump administration slashes the federal scientific workforce and

cuts back on billions of dollars in funding for research at universities.

“Angst and anxiety and, to a certain extent, grief,” is how Dr Sudip Parikh, who leads the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the organisation hosting the conference, summed up the mood on Feb 15. News about layoffs at government agencies rippled across conference-goers’ phones.

“It’s like we’re getting hit from all sides,” said Dr Roger Wakimoto, the vice-chancellor for research at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Mere weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration and Republicans in Congress have sent universities reeling with

crackdowns on diversity initiatives

, threats to endowments and

potential deportations of students

in the country without legal status.

Scientists worry that the most far-reaching changes could still be to come, affecting the cornerstones of public research funding in the US: the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Together, the two agencies fund thousands of projects each year, supporting hundreds of thousands of researchers and other workers at institutions in every state. The agencies provide the financial backbone for American efforts to treat cancer, address rising sea levels, advance quantum computing and much more.

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to hold off on a plan to cut US$4 billion (S$5.36 billion) in NIH funding. But if the proposal moves ahead, or if the administration enacts similar changes across other agencies, university officials say that the effects on their institutions and their communities would be devastating.

At stake is the basic model that has underpinned America’s modern scientific leadership, said Professor Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the journal Science. After World War II, officials understood the need to support fundamental research, the kind that does not lead right away to marketable innovations. But such work is expensive. So universities and the federal government agreed to split the costs.

“Now you’re seeing the federal government potentially trying to walk away from that,” Prof Thorp said. “And what worries me is that, in the long run, the universities will just decide to do less research.”

The Trump administration has said its plan for the NIH would curb waste, not research. At the AAAS conference, Professor Kelvin Droegemeier, an atmospheric scientist who advised Mr Trump during his first term, urged researchers to embrace what he described as a drive for efficiency. Scientists spend huge amounts of time trying to meet regulatory requirements instead of doing actual science, Prof Droegemeier said.

“There are challenges right now, but there are also very significant opportunities to get greater efficiencies,” he said.

But pruning regulations on research would not be easy, Prof Thorp said. And withholding funding overnight “is going to destabilise the system,” he said.

Among the 3,500 people who gathered inside a Boston convention centre for the science conference, much of the talk drifted towards a simple question: What can I do about all this? Some of the answers involved first sorting out what the administration is and is not doing before trying to counteract it.

“The current administration, in my opinion, is not anti-science,” said Ms Mary Woolley, the president of Research America, a non-profit group that promotes medical research. Scientists can advance their goals with the administration by emphasising, for instance, that strong science boosts America’s competitiveness in the world, she said.

To Mr Kei Koizumi, who served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Biden administration, scientific research has so far been “collateral damage” in the new administration’s crusade against universities.

These actions, he said, have been driven not by animus towards science, but by the desire to root out what Trump officials deride as “woke” policies and cultures.

One discipline that has been targeted more specifically is climate science. Mr Trump has long downplayed the threats from human-caused global warming.

At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, staff have been ordered to comb their research awards for terms including “climate science”, “climate crisis”, “clean energy” and “pollution”.

Ms Aurora Roth is finishing her doctoral studies at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and preparing to apply for jobs. Instead, she said, “I am wondering what institutions will even exist in a year.”

She and other scientists could figure out how to reword their funding applications to avoid mentioning climate change, Ms Roth said. But “feeling attacked just on the basis of doing science in the world? That’s a hard thing to sit with,” she said.

One attendee at the Boston meeting, assistant professor of geology Kelly Cronin at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College, saw reasons for optimism. For instance, her former employer, Georgia Southern University, recently created a School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability.

“Georgia Southern is in Statesboro, Georgia, solidly red,” Prof Cronin said. “They pull most of their students from South Georgia,” she said. “And still, this was the decision they made.” NYTIMES