By KIM BELLARD
These are, it must be said, grim times for American science. Between the Trump budget cuts, the Trump attacks on leading research universities, and the normalization of misinformation/ disinformation, scientists are losing their jobs, fleeing to other countries, or just trying to keep their heads down in hopes of being able to just, you know, keep doing science.
But some scientists are fighting back, and more power to them. Literally.
Lest you think I’m being Chicken Little, warning prematurely that the sky is falling, there continue to be warning signs. Virginia Gewin, writing in Nature, reports Insiders warn how dismantling federal agencies could put science at risk. A former EPA official told her: “It’s not just EPA. Science is being destroyed across many agencies.” Even worse, one former official warned: “Now they are starting to proffer misinformation and putting a government seal on it.”
A third researcher added: “The damage to the next generation of scientists is what I worry the most about. I’ve been advising students to look for other jobs.”
It’s not just that students are looking for jobs outside of the government. Katrina Northrop and Rudy Lu write in The Washington Post about the brain drain going to China. “Over the past decade,” they say, “there has been a rush of scholars — many with some family connection to China — moving across the Pacific, drawn by Beijing’s full-throttle drive to become a scientific superpower.” They cite 50 tenure track scholars of Chinese descent who have left U.S. universities for China. Most are in STEM fields.
“The U.S. is increasingly skeptical of science — whether it’s climate, health or other areas,” Jimmy Goodrich, an expert on Chinese science and technology at theUniversity of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, told them. “While in China, science is being embraced as a key solution to move the country forward into the future.”
They note how four years ago the U.S. spent four times as much in R&D than China, whereas now the spending is basically even, at best.
I keep in mind the warning of Dan Wang, a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution:
Think about it this way: China is an engineering state, which treats construction projects and technological primacy as the solution to all of its problems, whereas the United States is a lawyerly society, obsessed with protecting wealth by making rules rather than producing material goods.
We’ve seen what a government of lawyers does, creating laws and regulations that protect big corporations and the ultra-rich, while making everything so complex that, voila, more lawyers are needed. Maybe it’s time to see what a government of scientists could do.
When scientists (or engineers) are in charge, we can put a man on the moon within a decade or create a pandemic vaccine in months. When lawyers are in charge we get Congresses that can’t even pass a budget.
In The Atlantic, Katherine J. Wu discusses a new wave of scientists who are running for public office. Core to that effort is 314 Action, which claims it is “the only organization in the nation focused on recruiting, training, and electing Democrats with a background in science to public office.” Shaughnessy Naughton, the president of 314 Action, told Ms. Wu the organization had fielded 700 applications from scientists interested in becoming candidates just this year, which is seven times what it would normally expect.
Ms. Wu cites data from Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics that only 3 percent of state legislators are scientists, engineers, or health-care professionals – and most of those are Republicans. 314 action thinks it can help change that. Its website declares:
Bottom line: when candidates run on their science credentials and have the backing to get their message out there, they win. 314 Action candidates are scientists first, not politicians. We’re fighting to elect scientists who can tackle urgent shared challenges – like the climate crisis, reproductive rights, and healthcare access – and secure a better future for us all.
It claims to have raised some $8.6m and help elect 400 endorsed candidates, including 4 U.S. Senators, 13 members of the U.S. House, 9 candidates for down-ballot statewide offices, and over 300 candidates at the state and municipal level. Ms. Wu reports that Hawaii’s Josh Green, the only Democratic physician currently serving in a state governorship, has partnered with 314 Action to launch a $25 million campaign to elect 100 new Democratic physicians to office by 2030.
“Politics came for us,” pediatrician Annie Andrews told Ms. Wu. “You can’t fight bad politics by staying apolitical.”
Running for office is only one way for scientists (or people who care about science) to fight back. Take Stand Up for Science, which believes in protesting loudly and proudly. Founded just this year in response to Trump Administration actions, Stand Up for Science describes itself as “a political activism organization dedicated to defending and advancing America’s scientific ecosystem, a cornerstone of democracy, freedom, and progress.”
Its mission:
We believe that science is the lifeblood of American democracy and freedom. With a bold strategy combining activism, messaging campaigns, grassroots organizing, and political advocacy, we’re mobilizing the fight for science and democracy, now and for generations to come.
SUFS was active in the No Kings protests, and is conducting an important – and amusing — effort to impeach HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. called “Impeach the Quack,” complete with toy ducks.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer Colette Delawalla, MA, MS manages to run the organization while working on her Ph.D. (and apparently being a mom). She saw the need as soon as Trump was inaugurated. “You’ve got these legacy organizations that have simply not thought it was that important to communicate with the public in a meaningful way,” she told NOTUS. “Any of these organizations — and I know this because I’ve done it — on Jan. 21, 2025, could have stood up, in less than 24 hours, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit arm of what they’re already doing, and granted over some money, set up a little team, and gotten political.” Too few did, so she created her own organization.
Both 314 Action and Stand Up for Science deserve our support.
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Scientists are no angels (e.g., James Watson, William Shockley), Maybe putting them in charge isn’t the answer. But, really, could they do any worse than our current politicians? We’re quickly moving into an era of AI, quantum computing, synthetic biology, and a host of other advances, while battling climate change, microplastics, income inequality, and many other challenges. Who do you think will be best able to deal with them: lawyers, or scientists?
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