Joshua Barocas, associate professor1,
Esther Choo, professor2
A freeze on federal funding for science will be bad for the economy and business, as well as hugely harmful to the scientific community, write Esther Choo and Joshua Barocas
In case you’ve missed it, over the past five weeks in the US, the Trump Administration has been dismantling the country’s scientific research enterprise.
There are more disturbing moves against science than can fit on this page, but for starters, Robert F Kennedy Jr—an HIV denying vaccine sceptic and scientifically unqualified individual—was confirmed as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, the large agency that includes the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and oversight of the two public insurance programmes, Medicaid and Medicare.
After freezing all federal funding, Trump’s administration went on to purge the FDA, the CDC, and the NIH of nearly 5,200 dedicated federal employees.1 Many of them were early in their careers, cutting short a generation of future scientists. Federal programmes related to recruiting a diverse scientific workforce have been removed. All diversity, equity, and inclusion programmes were to have been wound down by last week.2 Public data has been scrubbed of mention of transgender persons.3 Words that will “flag” research for review and censure have been circulated at the National Science Foundation (NSF).4 Colleagues who work in research at the Veterans’ Association medical centers began posting that they’d received notice that the contract for a large data collection programme, Qualtrics, was to be immediately cancelled, threatening the loss of unimaginable amounts of research data.
Among the most brow-raising and concerning actions are those that threaten critical funding for scientific research. On 7 February, the acting director of the NIH issued a notice that established a standard 15% indirect rate on all NIH grants, a sharp cut from rates that may range from 30 to 70%, depending on the type of teaching and research activities and other institutional factors. “Indirects” are what institutions charge the NIH (and other funders) to administer the grants and are more than some obscure administrative line item.5 Indirects are used by universities to pay for a variety of things fundamental to the practical aspects of running a research institution, including managing contracts and data agreements and regulatory standards, biohazard material handling and disposal, security at research laboratories, cleaning and maintaining the buildings, supporting the equipment and technology, and quite literally, keeping the lights on. If direct funds provide the ingredients to a meal, the indirects make sure the kitchen is in working order, the water and electricity are running, and the food is safe for consumption.
“It is a misnomer to call these funds indirect costs,” wrote Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of Science.5 “They are essential to the safe and ethical performance of research.” If the caps were to move forward, it could cut nearly $4 billion from universities and other biomedical research institutions.
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on 10 February, preventing the change to the indirect rate from moving forward.6 The order was extended on 21 February.7 However, the Trump Administration had already halted submissions to the Federal Register.8 By law, study sections (where grant proposals are reviewed) and advisory council meetings (where final review happens before funding) must be posted on the register 15 days before they can be held. The move effectively halts funding, circumventing any legal restraining order, and worrying scientists that the Administration is not interested in following judicial orders. On 26 February, study sections were permitted to post notices in the Federal Register again; however, this only applies to some scientific review panels, and there is widespread confusion as to whether new council meetings are actually being scheduled.910 Federal funding for science remains frozen.
The Trump Administration has famously claimed that they will “Make America Great Again,” but cuts to scientific funding do exactly the opposite.
First, scientific progress has been one of the hallmarks of US leadership in the world for more than a century. From the polio vaccine to the Human Genome Project, the space shuttle to the microchip, and the laser to the internet, the US has established its dominance in scientific discoveries and contributions. If we actually want American greatness, science is a tried-and-true way forward.
Second, this attack on science occurs in the face of enthusiastic embrace of NIH-derived advances everywhere you look; it doesn’t take much of an imagination to understand that our lives benefit materially from a scientific pipeline. For example, exenatide was the first GLP-1 receptor agonist approved by the FDA back in 2005.11 This drug and all subsequent GLP-1 agonists, including semaglutide (Ozempic) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro), were created by NIH-funded research. These “miracle” drugs, which have demonstrated mortality benefits for people with cardiometabolic syndromes, COPD, diabetes, and heart disease, have been used by an estimated 1 in 8 American adults.12 Interestingly, they are most commonly prescribed in states with the highest rates of cardiometabolic diseases including Kentucky, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Louisiana—all states with a high proportion of Trump supporters.13
Third, and importantly, research is big business and good for the economy. NIH funding provides more than 400 000 jobs across the US and boosts local economies to the tune of $92.89 billion in economic activity, or $2.46 to every $1 put in.14 This is the most direct evidence of its impact on our economy, aside from the substantial benefits to the American people of biomedical research itself. Again, these benefits apply to all states, including those that staunchly voted for the current administration.
Texas, for example, received about $1.9 billion in NIH funding in 2022, including $800 million to the renowned Houston medical research institutions Baylor, UT South-western, and MD Anderson—an internationally renowned cancer centre.15 In 2022, Texas brought in a total of $5.5 billion in overall federal research funding. The University of Alabama at Birmingham is the largest public employer in Alabama, with >24 000 faculty and staff and >53 000 jobs.16 With nearly $774.5 million in research funding at stake for a state that is near the bottom in economic mobility and tax competitiveness, it is understandable that Republican legislators have also expressed distress over Trump’s research funding cuts.17
Ultimately, the cuts to research funding are not in line with “Making America Great Again” and certainly are not going to “Make America Healthy Again.” Rather, they reflect a profound lack of concern for the scientific workforce, future science and innovation produced by the US, and our ability to combat the diseases that affect us and our loved ones and increase our quality of life and longevity. The best we can say is that the current administration is consistent in derailing and gutting science.
We are left wondering: why?
Footnotes
Competing interests: EC and JB receive funding from the NIH.
Provenance and peer review: commissioned, not externally peer reviewed.