Nature reports:

Scientists around the world expressed disappointment and alarm as Republican Donald Trump won the final votes needed to secure the US presidency in the early hours of 6 November. Owing to Trump’s anti-science rhetoric and actions during his last term in office, many are now bracing for four years of attacks on scientists inside and outside the government.

“In my long life of 82 years … there has hardly been a day when I felt more sad,” says Fraser Stoddart, a Nobel laureate who left the United States last year and is now chair of chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. “I’ve witnessed something that I feel is extremely bad, not just for the United States, but for all of us in the world.”

“I am shocked, but not surprised”, given how polarized US politics are right now, says Michael Lubell, a physicist at the City College of New York in New York City, who tracks federal science-policy issues. The implications of the win for both government policy and science are profound, especially because of Trump’s deep scepticism of scientists and other specialists who manage public health and environmental policy within the federal government, Lubell says. [Continue reading…]