Micah Altman and Philip N. Cohen write:

The Trump administration has unleashed a tsunami of budget cuts to federal science programs. Mass firings have taken place at both the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education, part of a deliberate decimation of research staff across the federal government.

Since January, the administration has systematically cut science funding to its lowest level in decades and issued a flood of budget plans and executive orders that are reshaping how the government uses and supports science.

Some outcomes have been immediate and tragic, including staffing shortages that have left cancer patients stranded during experimental drug trials and delays in approving COVID-19 vaccines.

The extent of these actions is unprecedented. The administration for a time froze all grant funding at the National Science Foundation and abruptly terminated thousands of the ongoing projects that it funds, as well as those of the National Institutes of Health.

As scientists at leading research institutions, we have personally witnessed the effects of the administration’s policies — including colleagues relocating overseas and students leaving research altogether.

Undergraduate science internship programs have been canceled, and graduate programs in many research universities paused. As a result, scientists are increasingly seeking jobs abroad.

The administration claims its goals are to increase efficiency and raise the standards of scientific research. In fact, thousands of programs and projects have been cut solely on the basis of ideologically motivated keyword searches, without any concern for their performance, design or conduct. That’s not efficient.

A Trump executive order issued in May underscores the purely political nature of these attacks. Titled “Restoring Gold Standard Science,” the order puts hand-picked presidential appointees into every agency to review and “correct” any evidence or conclusions with which they disagree. That’s not scientific.

Further, many of the administration’s policies effectively punish researchers simply for asking discomfiting questions and punish institutions for teaching about unpopular ideas.

Viewed together, these outline a political strategy toward science that is both systematic and dangerous: a full-scale war on the scientific community, the network of individual researchers across many institutions whose collaboration is essential for scientific progress. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports:

A Korean-born researcher and longtime U.S. legal permanent resident has spent the past week detained by immigration officials at San Francisco International Airport without explanation and has been denied access to an attorney, according to his lawyer.

Tae Heung “Will” Kim has lived in the United States since he was 5 and is a green-card holder pursuing his PhD at Texas A&M University, where he is researching a vaccine for Lyme disease, said his attorney, Eric Lee. Kim, 40, was detained by immigration officials on July 21 at a secondary screening point after returning from a two-week visit to South Korea for his younger brother’s wedding.

The government has not said why it detained him, Lee said, and immigration officials have refused to let Kim speak to an attorney or communicate with his family members directly except for a brief call to his mother on Friday. [Continue reading…]