Top scientists pen letter calling for end to ‘assault on U.S. science’

Nearly 2,000 doctors, researchers, and scientists have signed an open letter calling for an end to what they describe as the Trump administration’s “wholesale assault on U.S. science” 

The letter, written by 13 scientists from disciplines including medicine, climate science and economics, urges Americans to demand their Congress protect scientific funding and integrity.

The signatories, all members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, wrote that the Trump administration is “destabilizing this enterprise by gutting funding for research, firing thousands of scientists, removing public access to scientific data, and pressuring researchers to alter or abandon their work on ideological grounds.” 

Funding for biomedical research from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which supports more than 300,000 scientists, was cut by billions of dollars.

Environmental sciences have also been targeted, with more than 1,000 scientists and other employees set to be laid-off from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) research office. 

The administration is also planning to reduce the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) workforce by up to 20 per cent, which could seriously affect weather forecasting. 

Dr. Steven Woolf was one of the signatories. He’s a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a professor at  the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. He spoke to As It Happens host Nil Köksal about the letter.

What is really at stake right now? 

The issue that we’re dealing with here is that the Trump administration’s policies have been markedly degrading the functions of our government [and] different agencies. 

But the area that concerns us as scientists is that there is basically a destruction of a lot of the research capacity, not only within the federal government, but at universities and research centres around the country. 

The United States has invested for about 80 years in building up its research capacity. 

Within weeks, the Trump administration incapacitated a lot of those functions. 

We’re seeing mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services. What are you hearing from your colleagues about what is happening there?  

The layoffs that are occurring today are apocalyptic in our field. These are major agencies that are responsible for the health of Americans, and large amounts of workers who have spent their careers trying to improve the health of Americans are being sent packing. 

There are those … who would say that there’s bloated bureaucracy, [that] these things need to be trimmed back, so they’re happy to hear of what they think is happening, and they think that the amount given to research, such as yours and your colleagues’ research, has been too much over the years. What would you want to say to them?  

I think there is a fair argument that there are inefficiencies in many of these agencies. 

But the way you address inefficencies is a much more targeted approach. My analogy is if you have a car engine that’s running inefficiently, you normally take it to a mechanic for a tune-up.

In this case, what’s happening is they’re taking a sledgehammer and clobbering the engine, which does nothing to improve efficiency, and now the car doesn’t work anymore. 

There’s been very little attempt to actually improve the efficiency of these agencies. Instead, what’s been done is simply to dramatically downsize them and [that has] made them basically dysfunctional. 

I think it’s important for listeners to understand that there’s two pieces to this. 

One is that these massive cuts are turning off the spigot for research, so there’s less money and personnel available to do the research. 

But the second part is the censorship. This is where the government is imposing ideological and political agendas to interfere with what research questions scientists can investigate, what methods they can use, for doing their studies and … the words they can use in reporting the results. 

The very important principle of scientific independence that researchers across the world value is being threatened in this case. 

Have you heard a response or reaction … that people are getting this message? 

It’s a heavily polarized country right now. 

When people like myself raise concerns about the direction the Trump administration is taking, there is a large sector of the population that is not happy with those kinds of comments. 

But on the other side, there’s a large sector of Americans who appreciate the fact that somebody is actually speaking out. 

There is a climate of fear in a lot of these research institutions and universities where the leadership are in a very difficult place and are not speaking out, trying to keep their heads down and avoid displeasing the administration because the government is placing a lot of financial and legal pressure on universities and other research institutions. 

As a result, there’s been a relative silence in the research and scientific community. 

Here in Canada, we’ve certainly seen … stories about professors and researchers leaving the United States for Canada. Are you expecting that more of your colleagues will leave your country for ours? 

I think so. I think it’s happening very rapidly. I personally know colleagues that are doing this. It’s true for experienced researchers who are feeling the need to leave the country in order to continue to do independent scientific research.

But it’s also happening for our young people who are interested in a career in the sciences that are changing their minds about going to graduate school in the United States and looking elsewhere for their education.

What do you think will change the minds of people who don’t agree with you right now? 

The only way the current momentum is going to change is when the American public starts to appreciate in a tangible way how this is impacting them. 

As long as it’s a far away, remote problem at some agency in Washington, D.C., it’s easy for them to dismiss it as irrelevant political news, and to marginalize the scientists or other workers at these agencies or the researchers at universities that they consider elite and disconnected from everyday life.

But when it comes home to roost, when your child cannot get the care that they receive, when the medical errors at your hospital are increasing because the agency that would be responsible for improving outcomes doesn’t exist anymore, and when health trends like the mental health crisis that exists among American youth and other major threats to health and well-being are on the rise because of these policies, one hopes that that might be enough to register with the general public and motivate them to push back.