By KIM BELLARD

Many people don’t realize it, but a hundred years ago America was something of a scientific backwater. Oh, sure, we had the occasional Nobel laureate, but the center of science was in Europe, particularly Germany. Then in the early 1930’s the Nazis decided that “purity” – of political ideas, of blood – was more important than truth, making life uncomfortable at best and deadly at worst for their scientists. So hundreds of them fled, many of them ending up in the U.S. And – voila! – American science came of age and hasn’t looked back.

Until now. Now, I fear we’re going to suffer what Germany did, a brain drain that will bode well for some other country’s scientific fortunes.

Once of the first chilling announcements from the Trump Administration was that it was freezing NIH grants in order to ensure they were in compliance with Trump’s executive order banning DEI-related efforts. That froze some $1.5b in grant funding.

Piling on, the Administration announced that NIH grants would limit indirect costs to 15%. Sounds reasonable, you might say, but the vast machinery of U.S. biomedical research uses these “indirect” costs to fund the infrastructure that makes the research possible. Numerous state Attorney Generals immediately filed a lawsuit to block the cuts, claiming:

This research funding covers expenses that facilitate critical components of biomedical research, such as lab, faculty, infrastructure and utility costs. Without it, lifesaving and life-extending research, including clinical trials, would be significantly compromised. These cuts would have a devastating impact on universities around the country, many of which are at the forefront of groundbreaking research efforts – while also training future generations of researchers and innovators.

Oh, and on top of all this, as many as 1,500 NIH employees are in line to be laid-off.  

Katie Witkiewitz, a professor at the University of New Mexico, lamented to The New York Times: “The N.I.H. just seems to be frozen. The people on the ground doing the work of the science are going to be the first to go, and that devastation may happen with just a delay of funding.”

Universities are similarly frozen, not sure when or how much money they can expect. The University of Pittsburgh has paused all Ph.D. admission, until it can better understand its funding future. One has to suspect it won’t be the only such program to do so, and we may never know how many would-be Ph.D. students will simply decide a future in U.S. science is too bleak to risk.