If we were looking for lamentable assessments of the Trump administration’s contributions to the vitality of American intellectual research, the editorial belchs of Holden Thorp would probably be at the top of the list.
Thorp is the editor -in -chief of ScienceThe Weekly Journal of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This makes him one of the most influential figures in the academy and American science as a whole. A few weeks take place without editorial of Thorp denouncing the ravages by Trump. The May 8 issue is slightly entitled “The new reality for American academics”, but sweetness stops there. The editorial begins: “The endless unsubscribe of the damaging actions of the Trump administration towards science – from freezing and cancellation of subsidies at the end of programs that encourage greater participation in science – has ravaged in American universities and reverberated worldwide.
Science, Science, Science, Science – The word appears four times in this sentence, so that we do not forget what is at stake. Let’s say that Dr. Thorp has an interest in attaching a certain type of panic. He is not alone. Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts recently warned that Trump’s policies are “Bad for science” and will lead American scientists abroad. Donald Ingber, founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biological Inspired Engineering in Harvard, talks about Trump “relentless attack on science and medical research. »»
But it is not only Massachusetts politicians and Harvard scientists who are concerned. The August authority of Roller The magazine warned: “Brain drain: Scientists flee the United States while Trump reduces funding. »»
The forecasts of the cultural disaster are so prolific that they might be more numerous than “small red dots“That the James Webb space telescope spotted in the first days of the universe. President Trump has clearly succeeded, it is disturbing the complacency of researchers comfortably funded on the deepest secrets of nature.
But let me focus for a moment on the main chief researcher. Dr. Thorp graduated from 1986 from the University of North Carolina, where he obtained his undergraduate diploma in chemistry, before completing his doctorate in Caltech in 1989 and making a post-doc Yale. His record for juvenile achievements was impressive, and he said something about his balance which, as a child, he played on stage in the regional theater and before the college, he spent a summer studying the guitar at the Berklee College of Music. His agitation and music skills continue to serve him.
I met Dr. Thorp once a few years ago when he stopped briefly on a stand that I ate during the annual AAAS meeting. He rushed when he realized that skepticism about Dei, climate change, massive federal funding and great science could be found. But I don’t blame him. His life is built around these causes and he does not need to waste time on non-believers. The question at hand is whether he is right about the state of affairs that now confronts American science.
His dark editorial actually reaches an optimism measure. He writes that Americans as a whole still love higher education and that “70% of the public opposed reduced funding for biomedical research”. What is necessary, he said, echoing the professor of Harvard philosophy, Danielle Allen, is that scientific teachers show more appreciation to the masses. Presumably, we, the masses, will reply these subsidies to the teachers of Harvard and by abandoning ideas such as the ceiling on the rate of general costs at 15% and tax the endowments engorged.
The editorial of Thorp followed this number of Science by a procession of domestic articles. (I have imitated the typography that could be Frantic cataclism):
Trump offers massive cuts to search for expenses
The NIH prohibits the future sharing subsidies with foreign scientists
Report trans-care questions
Harvard is prohibited from grants
NIH NIH’s dismissed training pipeline for deaf researchers
Trump reduces online lies studies – and how to counter them
How Trump Science has been infiltrated: A chaotic push at 100 days to redo federal research will have lasting consequences
Nih under SEAT:: The agency’s scientists say that Trump’s assault has left demoralized and reduced health institutes, their uncertain future
Human IMPACT: Behind the countless upheavals, American science was confronted during the first 100 days of the administration of President Donald Trump, countless researchers are fighting for their careers and their aspirations (the stories include “equity in danger”, “Goodbye Research Dreams”, “Blackout of data” and “interrupted phd)
Following 100 days: Budget fights and court decisions could shape Trump’s scientific agenda
I must add that this is not a punctual display of the panic of “Mars attacks”, for a more or less weekly functionality of America First Science Journal. It seems that under the stable hand of Dr. Thorp, we are all condemned. Cancer would have been healed. Refrigerated global warming. Ordered interplanetary peace. But for Donald Trump.
I do not have the space or the desire to face all these charges AD IdemBut I would like to venture some general points. First, part of the “science” deluminated by Trump deserves to be eliminated. Financing of projects of diversity, equity and inclusion because science is wrong on the order of scure of packaging as building materials. The legions of personnel who mentioned and imposed national closure as a public health measure against COVID did not practice science. They played with conformity. The multitudes of research projects funded by the federal government were and are trivial, redundant or simply bad in mind. The majority conjure Irreproductible results which are created either to preserve the favor of bureaucrats who wish advance a regulatory program And need the facade of “science” to justify it.
Second, Trump did not launch a general war against science. Rather, he used the over-dependence of universities on dollars of federal research as a lever to bring them to comply with his decrees on Dei and anti-Semitism. The financing of a really important search will be restored when Harvard and other recalcitrant institutions decide to comply. Hysteria Holden Thorp is an attempt to keep illegitimate programs and projects by giving what the whole boat flows. It’s not. If there is a remedy for cancer, it will not languish for lack of NIH funds.
Third, there is no law of nature which says that all scientific research must be taken out by federal taxes. For the most part if human history, including the scientific revolution, people have looked for new knowledge and invented new drugs, machines and processes without federal funding. The explosion of such funding after Sputnik led to stagnation oceans in which small innovation islands occur. We may have a more and better innovation on a cutting R&D budget.
And finally, a large part of the results of our scientific research funded by the federal government circulates without hindrance through waters, often to our opponents. China has aggressively exploited American research for its own advantage, sometimes stealing intellectual property, sometimes acquiring it by enrolling curious students in sensitive programs and often by seducing members of our research teacher and even whole research programs with funding. China is not the only player in this arena, but it is the most dominant.
And not a word on this subject of Dr. Thorp who is a champion of science as a shared international effect, cooperative investigation and American financing of foreign scientists. There may be careful ways to carry out such things, but you will not generally find them in American universities, where a little funding from a foreign source will often give millions, or even billions of research paid by the American taxpayer. How did China go from the last place among the world powers in space exploration at the front of the line? Not by means of local research. Until solving this problem, I will just see Trump continue his so-called “implacable attack”.