Powerful scientific leaders must denounce the scientific denial of the Trump administration

Powerful scientific leaders must denounce the scientific denial of the Trump administration

By Charles F. Manski,, Ray J. Weymann & Ben Santer edited by Dan Vergano

In addition to many others, the elections in November 2024 were a referendum on The kind of world That voters will provide future generations, the passage of the stick in a relay race. We hoped that the American people would seize the opportunity to pass the relay of science to a young generation, which would tackle our many urgent problems, including global threats posed by climate change and potential pandemics.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be not the case. Instead, we are now faced with a federal government that Ignore the best available science. The new administration has mounted A concerted campaign intimidation, funding for the scientific company and Locked thousands of dedicated scientistsAmong other vital officials.

We are deeply worried, as scientists, that, faced with these concerted efforts to manage the sciences funded by the federal government, many major professional scientific companies have refused to speak publicly. We are particularly disturbed that the American National Academy of Sciences (NAS)The first scientific company of the nation has not yet rejected the anti -science policies of the new administration. NAS has a particular responsibility to express themselves, having been established by a Congress act in 1863 as an elected scientific society. It is governed by a council of 17 members with an important mission – to provide solid scientific advice to the government. We do not think that the actions currently taken and proposed by the president of the NAS, which includes a “behind-the-scenes” approach to influence the current administration, according to an email sent to the members of the NAS on February 24, 2025, are an adequate response given the immediacy and the seriousness of damage to the American sciences.

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We are proud to be members of the NAS, but we are not proud of its current inaction. In these difficult and defining times, the National Academy of Sciences, of all scientific institutions, must express themselves. Thousands of dedicated federal scientists working on extremely important issues are briefly rejected. These layoffs harm all Americans – not just those dismissed. The layoffs make us less safe, less healthy and less aware in the way and the reason why the world around us changes.

In 2016 And 2018We have written open letters on behalf of the members of the NAS concerned who highlighted the dangers of ignoring scientific understanding in the formulation of public policies. We have particularly drawn attention to the central role of science in the formulation of climate policy, which was completely ignored by the first Trump administration. The 2018 letter was sent to each US member of the NAS and was signed by 1,220 of themincluding around 45% of all American members. The two letters were basic efforts developed by the members of the NAS, without official approval by the direction. Writers and letter signatories Hall or plot By powerful politicians, with consequences prejudicial to all the citizens of the world.

In a weakened way, the concerns that caused open letters 2016 and 2018 are even more valid today. Since 2018, proof of unequivocal Human fingerprints on the earth’s climate system have become overwhelming. This proof is in contradiction with incorrect allegations according to which the climate change caused by man does not exist– or that if it exists, it is trivially small, or uncertainor too expensive to approach, or should not be taken into account in the formulation of public policies. Infectious diseases have also become an important political question during the cocovio pandemic, with very publicized complaints This very cocoded human health vaccination has largely threatened. Such claims had and still have No scientific base. Regarding climate change, the cocoan and many other scientific questions, American citizens deserve more specific information if they want to make informed decisions.

The new Trump administration is now making an unprecedented effort to prevent science from informing public policy. During his first day of mandate, President Trump signed decrees withdrawing the United States Paris Agreement on climate change and from the World Health Organization. The new administration then acted to considerably limit the support of the climate and medical research carried out by scientists of the federal government and universities. In this emergency, it is not enough that the National Academy of Sciences is expressed from its base, as in 2016 or 2018. He must now speak as an institution if he wants to fulfill his responsibilities for the nation and maintain his relevance in the future. In the 2018 letter, we wrote:

“Scientific evidence and research should be an important element in the development of policies. We therefore call on the federal government to maintain scientific content on websites accessible to the public, to appoint qualified personnel to positions requiring scientific expertise, to cease the censorship and intimidation of government scientists and to reverse the decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. »»

We call on officers and the NAS council to approve these declarations without delay and to call the recent layoffs of thousands of federal scientists and the decisions to suspend federal funding for critical research. Unless these actions are reversed, American science will not be at the forefront of Bush Vannevar “”Endless border. “His 1945 report innovating this term, requested by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, put the United States in terms of a large support for science to fuel his prosperity and security.

As we said above, the presidential election in November 2024 was more than a simple choice between two candidates or political parties. Some have seen it as a referendum on the continuous survival of democratic standards and institutions, or as a vote on the health of the economy. Others considered the election as a referendum on immigration policy, the rights to abortion, the rule of law, national security, American engagement with the rest of the world, access to housing and affordable health care, vaccination policy, the availability of inexpensive energy and the way of responding to climate change. Make informed decisions about many of these questions requires a solid scientific company and a strong voice of scientific leaders.

Otherwise, the relay of scientific leadership will have been abandoned by the United States, it will fall into other nations to collect it and become leaders. Ironically, with all the concern that the current administration has shown concerning American competitiveness with China, the current anti-science policies mean that the United States will not lead the breed to develop and deploy energy sources with low and effective carbon emissions to improve climate change and new vaccines to face future pandemics. We will lose capacity not only in climate science, clean energy and infectious diseases, but in many other areas of science and technology. Without a strong scientific enterprise, the United States will finish among the “such rans” for the decades to come.

This is an article of opinion and analysis, and the points of view expressed by the author or the authors are not necessarily those of American scientific.