Hiltzik: Why was Donald Trump missing? Here is why

Why does Donald Trump lack respect for science?

The question arises because a large part of its attempted dismantling of the federal government was intended for scientific agencies.

His candidate for the Secretary of Health and Social Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is A main anti-vaccine activist and an exhibitor of scientific theories loop and without facts And health remedies that are not proven or those that have proven to be unnecessary (such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as COVVI-19 treatments).

He spoke out against the fluoritation of drinking water, which the CDC has identified as One of the 10 major public health achievements of the 20th century, as well as vaccination, family planning and recognition of the dangers of tobacco health.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been ordered to remove web pages that provided patients and health care providers with crucial information on a variety of medical conditions and its weekly ratio of morbidity and crucial mortality, An essential statistical publication has not been planned as planned to The first time in 60 years of history.

The most complete Sally, of course, is the Drastic and steep financing of funding by the National Institutes of Health.

On February 7, the NIH announced that its payments for “indirect” research costs, which sometimes reach 60% or more of the direct costs of grants, would be reduced to 15%, a reduction of billions of dollars of management budgets Academic institutions.

The cuts were to come into force three days later, leaving the beneficiaries of the Thunderstruck subsidy. Indirect costs include the general costs of maintaining housing laboratories for buildings and general administration expenses.

On the surface, these attacks make no sense. They can only erode the position of America as a paragon of advanced science; The CDC is a source of essential information on disease epidemics, and the NIH the largest source of funding in the world for biomedical research – “The largest biomedical search engine Never created ”, in the words of the oncologist and veteran pseudoscience, David Gorski. If the NIH can keep this distinction is now in question.

Trump’s actions threaten to trigger a brain flight from the United States, as researchers in important laboratories have started looking for jobs abroad or started surfaceing recruitment.

“There is A sale of fire on American academics Right now, ”said Carl Bergstrom of Washington University in Stat News. Others have suggested that financing reductions would open the door to more scientific leadership by US global competitors, in particular China.

The administration initially attempted to give NIH the cuts a partisan coloring, which suggests that university centers in blue states are fattening the funding of “indirect” research. The NIH illustrated its tweet announcing the oblique bar of the financing of indirect costs with A graph citing the indirect rate Claimed by Harvard (located in Massachusetts), Yale (Connecticut) and Johns Hopkins (Maryland). All receive indirect cost rates of more than 60% in addition to their direct subsidies.

The idea that the NIH cuts would hit the most hard in the institutions of the Blue State did not survive its first contact with reality. The truth is that university centers in red states can be even more dependent on indirect funding than the rich institutions targeted by the NIH tweet.

Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) Immediately went public with a call That the NIH turns to a “targeted approach” on the cuts “so as not to hinder revolutionary and revolutionary research in very efficient institutions like those of Alabama”.

The University of Alabama in Birmingham has placed in The highest 5% of all American universities In the research funded by the federal government in 2023 and in 1% the earliest last year. “People must remember that the UAB is not only the largest employer in the city, It is the greatest employer in the state“Said the mayor of Birmingham, Randall Woodfin.

Georgia academic leaders noted that the $ 780 million received during the last financial year by Georgia institutions had produced About $ 2 billion in economic impact. Everything that has been endangered by reducing threatened NIH.

Indeed, the importance of financing the NIH for all states has been underlined The trial brought Tuesday Before the Federal Court of Massachusetts by 22 Blue States, including California, to block the reduction of NIH. They looked an order to not give temporary blocking the reduction – and asked that the order only applies in their states, granted by judge Angel Kelley.

This looked like a sneaky attempt by the complainants to put more pressure on the red states to assert their own argument for the wholesale destructiveness of the NIH order, in public. (Kelley has widened her order at the national level in response to a second trial brought by hospitals, public health organizations and universities, including the University of California.)

What is the importance of NIH for the innovation of American bioscience and public health? A 2020 study have found that the financing of the NIH played a role in the research associated with each new drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2019. Funding produced 22,000 patents.

So what underlies Trump’s war against science?

We can analyze the arguments put forward by Trump and his GOP acolytes to understand it. A part is ideological. Well-made science, like nature itself, is impermeable to ideology. The scientific method is an asymptotic process aimed at determining natural truths. Pre -existing concepts are subject to examination and tests; If they fail in the test, they are revised or thrown away.

His mechanisms, including the review of anonymous peers and the open debate, are “explicitly designed to counter human self-disappointment,” said psychologist Steven Pinker to Chris Mooney, author of the 2005 book “The Republian War on Science ».

“Powerful people will tend to use their authority to … remove the annoying opposition,” said Pinker. “You are trying to set up the game of science so that the truth has come out despite this ugly side of human nature.”

Anti-science ideology tends to protect powerful economic holders. Those who call global warming a “hoax”, including Trump, advance the interests of fossil fuel companies; The effort of several decades to doubt the links between smoking and the disease took advantage of the tobacco industry.

This project involves launching a doubt about expertise. Which explains the Mating Hontenous by Anthony FauciThe most distinguished epidemiological expert in the nation until his retirement from the NIH in 2023, by republicans who absurdly tried to blame him for having created Covid-19.

Politicians and their Hench readers reject scientific expertise so that they can replace their own vision of the world without being challenged. Florida Republican governor Ron Desantis tried to demonize Fauci In order to claim superior knowledge on how to fight Covid; It does not matter that his condition was found with one of the worst pandemic mortality rates in the country.

And it does not matter that Florida policies are so out of step with a scientific understanding that in 2023, the CDC and Food and Drug Administration chiefs have publicly reprimanded the general surgeon of Desantis, Joseph Ladapo, for his “Erroned interpretations and disinformation” About the safety of coated vaccines.

Trump’s participation in this company is not new. It was very well exposed during his first mandate. He has promoted the useless hydroxychloroquine of Nostrum and the deployment of UV light and disinfectants as remedies for COVID-19, then sidelined FAUCI as a White House Advisor when the latter proved to be insufficient On Trump’s views.

He installed anti-abortion activists In key positions of HHS, perches from which they replaced affirmations such that condoms do not protect against HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases and that abortions and contraceptives cause breast cancer, false layers and infertility. None of these statements are true.

Trump accused the FDA scientists of being A part of “the deep state” Plot to undermine his administration as the 2020 elections approaches to the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, he has dissolved or sidelined scientific council panels.

In the department of EPA and the interior, according to A report by the Union of Scientists concernedPersons appointed policies had to review the subsidies and contracts “to ensure that the proposed research corresponds to the political agenda of the administration”.

In 2017, the UCS report revealed that the CDC prohibited the use of the terms “vulnerable”, “law”, “diversity”, transgender “,” fetus “,” based on evidence “and” scientific “in documents budgetary, prefiguration A similar ban implemented by the current administration.

The “culture of fear” instilled in several agencies has led to “self -censorship among scientists and otherwise hinders their ability to work effectively or to speak of important scientific questions,” the UCS revealed.

All this was not born from Trump. Locked in front of religious and supporters in 2001, George W. Bush has restricted research on embryonic stem cells. Politics were based on a misunderstanding of the science of embryonic stem cells, which made Mooney’s words, “a policy-based policy”.

Bush’s order inspired California to establish California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in 2004 with a $ 3 billion bond issue approved by voters. This could open the way to the continuation of crucial scientific research thanks to state funding. Since the NIH budget is About $ 46 billion a year, It is unlikely that states can fully compensate for the losses of Trump’s policies of their own budgets.

The only resistance against the administration’s anti-science program comes from the courts. Out of 58 legal proceedings filed in the federal courts so far in opposition to the actions and policies of the administration, at least seven concern questions such as the removal of web pages on the CDC and the financing reductions in the NIH.

So far, according to the Litigation Tracker on Justcurity.orgThe judges have temporarily blocked web deletions, the freezing of funding imposed throughout the government, including in scientific agencies and the “indirect” financing cuts.

Trump’s war against science is just beginning. The scientific community will have to play a crucial role in the conflict. Hopefully it depends on the task.

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