Kim Bellard
I began to feel like I was defeating a dead horse and have written several articles about the Trump administration’s attack on science recently, but the hit rate has been going on. For example, last Friday, the government not only proposed a budget cut of National Science Foundation (NSF) funding by more than 50% in 2026, but also increased nature The report said that NSF not only stopped receiving new grants, but also paid for existing grants.
Then, this week, in an event called “Choose European Science”, European leaders announced a 500 million euro ($566 million) plan to attract scientists. It is not specifically targeted at American scientists, but the background is very obvious.
Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for Science Development, said the proposed budget cuts “a crisis, just a disaster for American science.” Even if Congress has not made such severe cuts and approved recovery, Dr. Parick warned: “This is this paralysis that I think has hurt us.”
One NSF employee worried: “The country’s position as a global leader in science and innovation seems to be hanging by a thread at this point.”
nature An internal email from the internal NSF was obtained on April 30, which told staff to “stop granting all funding actions until further notice”. Researchers can continue to spend money they have received, but new funds for existing grants or new grants are “freezed until further notice.” Staff have been told to screen for grant recommendations to “a topic or event that may be consistent with agency priorities.”
NPR The report said about 344 previously approved grants were terminated because they “difference to the agent’s priorities.” A staff member told nature The policy has the potential to be “over-disclosed by the Orwellians”, another policy warns: “They are massacring the gold standard merit review process established by the NSF for decades.” Another staff member told Samantha Michaels Mother Jones The freeze is “a slow-moving apocalypse…in fact, now every NSF grant is cancelled.”
No wonder NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned last week and simply said: “I believe I have tried my best.”
If you want, oh, who cares? We still have a lot of innovative private companies investing in research, so who needs government to fund research, then you might want to consider this: New research from American universities estimates that even if federal support for R&D drops by 25%, U.S. GDP will also drop by 3.8% in the long run. These are not one-time hits. “This will always be a decline,” said Ignacio González, one of the authors of the study. “The U.S. economy will be smaller.”
If you don’t believe in AU, then maybe you’ll believe in the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, which estimates that government investment in research and development accounts for at least one-fifth of U.S. productivity growth since World War II. “If you look at it for a long time, the enhancement of our living standards seems to come from public investment,” Andrew Fieldhouse, an economist in Texas A&M and author of the Dallas Fed study, told him. The New York Times. “The rate of return is indeed very high.”
So it’s no wonder that European leaders saw the opportunity.
“A few years ago, no one could have imagined that one of the world’s greatest democracies would have eliminated the research program with the excuse that the word “diversity” appeared in its plans,” the French president said in a “Choose Europe” event.
President Macron continued to add:
“No one would think that one of the largest democracies in the world would erase the ability to grant visas to certain researchers. No one could have imagined that such great democracies, whose economic model relies heavily on free science, innovation and relying on Europeans’ ability to innovate more than the three differences in the past, makes them more leap, making them more false, which makes us a misunderstanding.
“Unfortunately, we see today’s science being questioned in today’s world. Investment in basic, free and open research is being questioned. This is a huge miscalculation,” said European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen. She wants to “make Europe the magnet for researchers” in the next two years.
Here we are, yes, that’s a huge miscalculation.
“In the United States, academic freedom is challenged once it becomes a paradise for researchers. The line between truth and falsehood between fact and faith is being weakened,” said French Education Minister Elisabeth Borne.
Ms von der Leyen explained: “The first priority is to ensure that science in Europe remains open and free. This is our phone card.” President Macron responded to this: “We call on global researchers to unite and join us…If you love freedom, help us stay free.”
The United States should be a free land, right?
We need to remember that while this is going on, President Trump is launching a war against major research universities in the United States in the name of Dei or anti-Semitism. The New York Times It is estimated that his target is about 60, especially the Ivy League agencies. More than 200 universities have signed a statement condemning the attack:
As leaders of American universities, universities and academic societies, we oppose unprecedented governmental over-and-political interventions now endanger American higher education… We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must refuse to force public research funding.
“Our students and our society will pay the price to reduce freedom of higher education in the United States,” the statement warned.
Robert N. Proctor, a historian at Stanford University, told Reuters Trump has led a “liberal right-wing attack on scientific enterprises” for years. “We’re likely to see reverse brain loss,” he said. “It’s not only Europe, but scholars have moved to Canada and Asia as well.”
Last week, Dr. Francis Collins, former NIH chief, noted: “When you mix politics and science, you get politics.” Since World War II, American universities have bargained with the federal government about research funding. This bargaining has served both sides and the country over the past few decades, but we have never seen politics and ideology play such an important role in money and money.
The government claims it values science, but only certain sciences, especially not “awakening” science. It is fair to question the level of federal funding, but when political considerations outweigh the scientific aspect, we risk that “America No. 1” will no longer be the reality of American science.
Kim is the former emarketing Exec of the main blues program, late editor and regret tinture.ionow regular THCB contributor
