Trump Administration Mass Annuling Science Grants, causing job loss

It seems that scientists and scientific financing in the United States are now faced with another type of cancellation culture, in which their funding for federal agencies is suddenly canceled. More and more researchers have published information on social media about their suddenly dismissed research subsidies since President Donald Trump took office. There have also been reports on subsidies in the swimming of national national health in particular areas, such as Sara Reardon Reporting for Science About at least 33 research subsidies to study the hesitation of the vaccines to be drawn. And as a large part of the financing of scientific research is generally to research staff, the result A and will be job losses. For example, Johns Hopkins University is to dismiss more than 000 people after $ 800 million in grants to the institution’s investigators were essentially torn off, As Kanishka Singh reported for Reuters.

Federal subsidies suddenly ending

The processes by which these decisions were made were as clear as the mud mixed with aerosol tanning. The letters of termination provided very few explanations beyond the language of stocks, such as saying that the research price “no longer accepts the priorities of the agency”. This was surprising for many researchers because a NIH grant generally represents an extended long -term commitment. Imagine being in a serious long -term relationship with someone only to one day find a note that says: “You no longer make my priorities.”

Letters have generally not given researchers and institutions no possibility of clarifications or additional changes in the project either. They included a language as “no modification of the project could align the project with the agency’s priorities”. Again, it’s a bit like your other saying: “No matter what you do, I won’t love you.”

If you think that researchers who have lost their subsidies can simply get new ones to save the jobs of those who work for them and even their own job, think again. It’s not that simple. The entire process of requesting subsidies is long and expensive, generally taking at least one year from the moment when the subsidy proposal is subject until it is allocated, assuming that the proposal is part of the chance of 10% or less to finance successfully. So, unless you have a time machine in the form of a Delorean or know a billionaire in charity, you will not be able to obtain new funding quickly to avoid job loss.

The kit and the subsidy kit and cabodle have included various training and subsidies at the start of a career. These subsidies are designed to help researchers establish themselves at crucial periods of their careers when they have few other options to continue their scientific work. Who knows how much can they have to abandon their scientific career accordingly?

The loss of subsidies will also considerably affect universities and other institutions of this type. These institutions depend on the financing of the indirect costs of research grants that researchers draw for all kinds of things ranging from the salaries of the administrators to the maintenance of the facilities As I have already described in Forbes.

Opportunities for NIHs to be drawn

In addition, it seems that several financing opportunities have also been carried out. So there is fewer things to apply now. In a LinkedIn post, Arghavan Salles, MD, PH.D., Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Stanford, mentioned 76 notices of financing the possibilities of the unpublished NIH:

Nothing indicates whether these abandoned financing opportunities will be replaced by news. Meanwhile, researchers can be quite reluctant to ask for new grants until there is more clarity on what can be funded or not. And who knows if and when this clarity will come. It seems that the Trump administration has sought subsidies and contracts for specific terms to identify those to be terminated, As I recently detailed in Forbes. But this practice was discovered by discussing and obtaining service notes issued from various sources in NIH and NSF and not by official announcements or declarations of the Directorate of NIH, the United States Ministry of Health and Social Services or the White House.

Mass cuts in subsidies can damage America for years

As you can see, Salles described these cuts as “devastating” for “the American scientific company. People will stop coming here for training (did you know that 40% of the American winners of the Nobel Prize since 2000 have been immigrants?) And the Americans will seek more and more training and careers elsewhere. ” She continued with: “This is a massive self-inflicted injury from which we will not recover for generations.”

In addition, it is important to remember that the American scientific company is not like Las Vegas. What is happening in it doesn’t just stop there. The American scientific company ends up affecting the whole society. When countries try to grow, they generally invest massively in science. It is not surprising, for example, that the founding fathers of the United States included scientists like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

A large part of the things you use every day are the result of science. You can also thank the science for being alive so that you can use it all. Before the advent of childhood routine vaccinations, many more children died regularly from diseases such as measles and smallpox. Life expectancy in the United States increased from around 47 years in 1900 to around 78 years in 2022, largely due to various health and public health measures identified by scientific research. It is true, only a hundred years ago, you would have already been of average age if you had reached twenty.

If America wants to remain as competitive as in the world, it must continue to produce new ideas and scientific things. Michael Jordan and Larry Bird did not say: “Oh, now that I have won a championship, I will stop doing this thing of work and immersed and resting on my laurels and eating candy.” No, they continued to practice hard and adding new skills, which not only made them excellent, but kept them great.

The reduction in scientific financing could make the opposite. This can discourage people from staying in or even going to science and encouraging those who want to continue to do science to go to other countries. Those who would have succeeded scientists can do other things to earn a living, such as making YouTube videos, because there are simply not enough people who already do it.

It is perhaps only the start of this new cancellation culture that emerged in NIH and other federal agencies during the Trump administration. Who knows how many other grants and subsidy possibilities will be canceled. I will continue to follow this situation, to make agency investigations and to provide updates accordingly.