When Professor of the University of Virginia, Chris Mooney, wrote “Republican war against science20 years ago, he had many evidence with which to work with. The best-selling book, written halfway through the Bush / Cheney eraDocused a GOP that manipulated research results, ignored scientific facts and evidence, and even adopted pseudoscience as part of a cultural war crusade.
It was difficult to imagine, in 2005, how the party Hostility towards science could get worse.
Two decades later, the Bush / Cheney era begins to look like halcyon days compared to the Trump / Vance era. NBC News reported::
The National Institutes of Health announced on Friday that the agency made discounts of grants that support research institutions by limiting the amount of indirect financing for research projects to only 15%. In the agency’s announcement, the NIH Policy Office for the Administration of Extra-Mural Research, or Opera, wrote that $ 9 billion out of the total of $ 35 billion spent on research grants During the year 2023 were allocated to the agency for indirect costs, which cover elements such as equipment, operations, maintenance, accounting and staff.
An occasional reader could see this and think that changing the costs of general costs is without consequences, but the details count: this decision will oblige research institutions To redirect funds far from medical research.
A Politico report explained: “(u) the organizations of the nivers and research which prefer to lose a lot of money sounded the alarm according to which the cuts will endanger the progress of health research and slow progress towards healing, because the Financing administrative costs is crucial to keep the lights on and personal buildings.
The New York Times added that the new policy, which immediately takes effectLeave a large part of the scientific community “in shock”, such as doctors and scientists have warned that the Trump administration’s decision “would have a devastating effect on studies aimed at finding treatments for diseases such as the Cancer, diabetes and heart disease ”.
Matt Owens, president of the government relations council, an association of academic medical centers and research institutes, told Washington Post: “It is a foolproof way to paralyze research and innovation.” Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of the Harvard Medical School, added Via social media, “a healthy government would never do that”.
If you are wondering how such an idea even reached the Trump administration in the first place, it is worth emphasizing the context with which it is from – you guessed it – the plan of the 2025 project.
Making things much worse is the extent in which it is a battle in a greater war against science. Consider the related developments that took place as the second term of Donald Trump as a current president:
- Essential online information to scientists and doctors was shot down.
- The financing of scientific research is underway limited by keywords that the Republicans find reprehensible.
- Scientific information subsidized by taxpayers was retained from scientific and medical communities For the first time in generations.
- Eminent supporters of discredited scientific ideas, Including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.were chosen for powerful management positions in the administration.
- The Trump team would have said “unleashed chaos“At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the scientific agency commonly called Noaa which provides weather forecasts thanks to its national meteorological service.
- Appointed policies at the Environmental Protection Agency fired all the members The most influential scientific panels of EPA.
Did I mention that we are not yet a month in Trump’s second term in the White House?
California Democratic Democrat recently said“My fear is that the chaos that the new sowed administration is sufficient to leave our scientific and technological ruined enterprise, with Chinese communist leaders in the Popping champagne traffic jams in Beijing.”
It seems inevitable that these anxieties propagate and intensify in the hours, days, weeks, months and years to come.