Science in America: What’s Going On?

The White House is attacking American leadership in science because it can, because it wants to, and it won’t stop until the public, litigation, and elections force its hand.

Tonight, flipping the radio between stations on a rainy drive back home after a family meal, I heard the familiar chords of What’s Going On, the title song of Marvin Gaye’s 1971 album. Then, turning on the computer against my better instincts to check on the latest federal news and reactions coming across Bluesky and X, I saw that Peter Hotez was asking the same question after having learned that Kathleen Neuzil, a world-renowned infectious disease and vaccine specialist and head of NIH’s Fogarty International Center, had been put on administrative leave. All of this on the same day that the New York Times decided to publish an OpEd entitled “What Is Actually the Point of Treating the N.I.H. Like This?”

It's time to answer the question. It’s time to be honest with ourselves, our elected officials, and those who would support, tacitly or actively, dismantling American leadership in science.

Answering the question

This is not a temporary aberration. It’s not a mistake. It’s not some bad apples getting out of line because they didn’t finish their cybersecurity training. This is not temporary mishandling of a thoughtful plan to make America’s research enterprise more efficient and productive. There is no end goal here that involves a reinvestment in the research ecosystem embedded in small towns, regional hubs, and major cities all across the United States and that has driven 80 years of an innovation economy and what could still be ‘The Endless Frontier’.

What’s going on is a the implementation of a zero-sum version of governance in which wins are counted in the number of people, grants, programs, and even institutions that coders working to fulfill the ambitions of their bosses can manage to undermine and perhaps eliminate through keyword searches masquerading as government efficiency even if the real impacts are economic harm in the near-term and the short-circuiting of discoveries and technologies in the long-term.

They want to do this. They said they would do this.

They are attacking some of the very best of America – the people and institutions that work in the service of ideals, not ideology, in universities, hospitals, and institutes that employ experts, not loyalists, and that strive to discover and create something durable, rather than returning back to the fleeting dopamine hit of short-circuiting what they choose not to understand.

But the story is not over. It’s just beginning. And we have a role to play.

What’s at Stake

The attacks on science, higher education, research, discovery, aid, health, and the economy are accelerating. Today’s news exemplified the stakes. In addition to putting Dr. Neuzil on leave, the Trump administration continues to throttle the economic engine of research and development nationwide. Here are but two examples:

First, the Washington Post reported that DOGE now controls and decides which grants are released for competitive bids, seizing control of the power of the purse from Congress. This news reinforces what those of us in science already know – the rate of grant reviews, panels, announcements, and delivery of new grant awards has been slowed or in some cases halted altogether. This politicization of science in particular and grant-giving more generally, will, if left unchecked, create a vacuum to be filled with junk science and insider dealing, junk discoveries, wasted spending, and undermine the long flywheel required to maintain America’s economic advantages over well-resourced global competitors.

Second, the White House announced it intends to slash negotiated research infrastructure costs by more than half for all Department of Energy grants. This will impact programs in universities throughout the United States as part of competitively awarded grants worth billions of dollars. This decision comes just days after a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a permanent injunction barring the government from similar efforts intended to slash negotiated research infrastructure cuts for NIH grants. The Trump administration has appealed that ruling but remains unbowed, another lesson not learned.

These two examples reveal a mindset that sees norms as quaint, contracts as whimsy, and the funding flowing through government supported grants as a target for repurposing even if the new purpose does not necessarily benefit the public good.

What Can We Do?

Perhaps the most important thing is to start doing what all of us are capable of doing: speaking up. Despite what certain New York Times reporters might tell you, there are many more voices speaking up even as some institutional leaders have gone silent.

When more than 100 Stand up For Science events took place nationwide and scientists, physicians, elected officials, and patient advocates spoke from the podium, in Washington DC and beyond, was that not speaking up?

When scientists decide to communicate the meaning and value of science in their hometown newspapers as part of a national ‘Science Homecoming’ initiative, is that not speaking up?

When public health experts like Megan Ranney, Jennifer Nuzzo, Peter Hotez, Paul Offit (and others) decry failing efforts to control a growing measles outbreak that has already caused more than 700 documented cases, dozens of hospitalizations, and 2 fatalities in unvaccinated children and the Director of the American Public Health Association calls for RFK Jr to resign or be fired, is that not speaking up?

When immigrant scientists who view themselves and their careers as indebted to American opportunity write OpEds in defense of American science (whether HHMI investigator Paul Bieniasz or Nobel Prize winner Ardem Patapoutian) and when nearly 2,000 members of the National Academies holding diverse political viewpoints nonetheless sign a unified statement against the Trump administration’s war on science, is that not speaking up?

This is not the first time where, in the words of Marvin Gaye, many of us “just don’t understand what’s going on across this land”. But there is a way to slow the attacks and then repair, rebuild, and protect institutions from those who would try to destroy them. We must continue to speak up in our lanes of expertise and in support of those doing the hard work in defense of academic freedom, of the pursuit of truth, and of the value of science to our well-being and economy.

Courage is infectious. It spreads. It may even spread to decision makers who have a choice between repeated rounds of capitulation or forceful litigation. And with each round of litigation there is a greater chance that we can restore experts back to their positions of service, rebuild institutions that are now wavering under the threat of destabilization, and reinstate guardrails to the rule of law.

That’s what’s going on.