The pointless destruction of the world's leading scientific and medical research system

No one benefits from this

For 75 years, the U.S. has led the world in scientific research, most of it centered in our universities. Beginning in 1945 with a famous report by Vannevar Bush, the President’s science advisor, the U.S. has invested in science as a strategic effort to compete with its rivals and to build a better future. Bush’s report (“Science: the Endless Frontier”) led to the creation of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1950, and together with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense, these agencies have funded an incredibly successful stream of scientific and medical breakthroughs in the decades since.

The list of technologies and medical breakthroughs that started as US government-funded, university-led projects is endless. The computer or phone you’re reading this on? Check. The Internet that connects all our devices? Check. Chemotherapies to treat and cure some types of cancer? Check. Fuel-efficient, less polluting cars? Check. Non-invasive surgical procedures that can repair heart valves or place stents? Check.

Why would we intentionally give up our number one status in science and medicine? No one has an answer, because it makes no sense to do so. And yet that’s what’s about to happen.

The university-led training of new scientists in the U.S. is the envy of the world. Each year, our universities receive hundreds of thousands of applications from students in other countries wanting to come here and study. In contrast, very few students from the U.S. apply to science programs in other countries. Why? Because the U.S. has made a long-term investment in scientific and biomedical research that is simply unrivaled.

I should add that many of these students stay in the U.S. after their training, and some have gone on to found highly successful companies in our technology and biomedical sectors. The U.S. graduate education system has for decades been our not-so-secret weapon in the global competition for economic success.

And yet, despite all this, in just the past few weeks we have been witnessing the rapid destruction of thousands of scientific and biomedical investigations. As I write this, the US government, now run by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, has frozen all scientific funding. Musk knows nothing about scientific research or the funding system (he has only a bachelor’s degree), but he has been given carte blanche to fire thousands of federal employees who are responsible for administering that funding.

In just the past week, several thousand employees of NIH were sent packing, when Trump-Musk decided to fire all employees throughout government who had been working less than a year. This group included hundreds of recent college graduates who were spending a year or two at NIH to help prepare them for medical school.

Imagine this was one of your children or another close relative. Last week they were working hard on a biomedical research project and excited about their future. This week, they are out on the street, unable to pay next month’s rent and wondering where they can go. Will they somehow make it to medical school? Maybe so, but it’s likely that some never will. (But don’t worry, we have plenty of doctors! As if.)

Why did Musk-Trump target this group? Because federal employees are all “probationary” for their first year (or two years, in some agencies), which means they can be fired easily. In other words, Musk-Trump fired them for no reason other than that they could. And Musk, for his part, seems to be enjoying all the pain he’s causing. Two weeks ago, he bragged on Twitter that that he “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties.”

What kind of cruel sociopath boasts about destroying an aid organization? And then sarcastically adds that he had to miss some parties to do so?

Musk has also announced his intention to fire two-thirds of all NSF employees and cut the NSF budget by two-thirds. Never mind that no one elected him, or that only Congress has the authority to allocate money, or that Musk has no knowledge of the visionary Vannevar Bush report that led to NSF’s creation.

So, you might wonder, how are academic scientists taking these actions? We are not doing well. As this attack on our government is happening, we are looking through Ph.D. applications, representing the best and brightest of the next generation of students. At my own university, Johns Hopkins, we received over 2500 applications this year in the two departments I belong to, Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science. We were planning to admit more students this year, to address the rapidly growing demands for AI and machine learning, on top of the already-strong demand for highly trained scientists in these areas.

But without funding, we can’t do that. On the contrary, it is highly likely, under the Musk-dictated rules, that we will be forced to dramatically reduce the number of science Ph.D. students, not only at Hopkins but throughout the country.

Oh, and in case you heard that the funding freeze was put on hold after two courts ruled that it must be suspended? Nope! Last week, one of the NIH Deputy Directors, Michael Lauer, instructed all NIH institutes to resume funding in light of those court orders. University scientists briefly had a bit of hope, but that hope was crushed the next day, when we learned that Lauer was suddenly forced to resign. Funds are still frozen: 98% of the NIH funds that should have gone out this past month, didn’t. And the same is true for NSF: no new awards have been issued since Trump froze all funding, and the court orders have had no effect, as yet.

I’ve seen on social media that some people have argued that a brief pause shouldn’t be a problem. Why not look at all the grants and cancel the ones that don’t serve the administration’s goals?

Well, there are several huge problems with that. First, this isn’t a brief pause–it has already lasted 3 weeks and Musk has made it clear that some funds will never resume.

Second, the President (and Musk) don’t have to power to cancel individual grants, especially those already awarded. That’s the kind of power that a dictator has, but our system doesn’t work that way. When NIH, NSF, DOE, DoD, or others issue a grant, that’s a contract between the government and the grantee. They can cancel it for pre-specified reasons, but not on the whims of Elon Musk.

And third, Congress decides how to allocate funds, not the President. If Congress wants to cut the budget of NIH, they can do that. Elon has no patience for that, so he is just firing everyone he can, without consulting Congress, and President Trump is following Elon’s commands.

Elon thinks the U.S. government is like Twitter, where he fired 75% of the employees. He thinks you can just destroy everything and build it back, but that doesn’t work for scientific research (or many other functions of government). It might work for Twitter, where all we stand to lose is one of many social media platforms. (Indeed, we might all be better off if Twitter ceased to function.)

But what he’s doing now is incredibly and irreparably damaging. Imagine someone knocked on your front door and said “Hey, I don’t like your house. The windows are too small, the rooms are laid out inefficiently, and the color is wrong. So I’m here with a wrecking ball. You have 10 minutes to clear out, and I’m knocking it down whether you’re inside or not.” To make matters worse, imagine this person had never even been inside your house.

That’s what’s happening to the U.S. biomedical research enterprise, and it’s happening right now, in plain sight. If no one stops the destruction, it will take decades to rebuild. Meanwhile, we’ll miss out on untold advances in science and medicine. New treatments and cures for disease simply won’t happen, or they’ll be delayed for years. Our enemies might be pleased, but no one truly benefits, not even them.