Tag Archives: science

The Brain Drain

Yesterday, I warned about the ferocity of the administration’s war on knowledge, and the incredible damage Trump and MAGA are doing to America’s long dominance in science and technology.

Lest you think I was over-reacting, allow me to share some recent headlines.

Foreign universities hope to lure scientists from the US after Trump research cuts | AP News
The World Is Wooing U.S. Researchers Shunned by Trump – The New York Times
International students see fewer pathways to US careers under Trump
“‘A fear campaign.’ Students around the world are shocked, scared and saddened by US visa pause” — CNN
“America’s Coming Brain Drain: Trump’s War on Universities Could Kill U.S. Innovation” — Foreign Affairs
‘Major brain drain’: Researchers eye exit from Trump’s America; “In the halls of US universities and research labs, one question has become increasingly common as President Donald Trump tightens his grip on the field: whether to move abroad.” — AFP
“US brain drain: the scientists seeking jobs abroad amid Trump’s assault on research: Five US-based researchers tell Nature why they are exploring career opportunities overseas.” — Nature
The Economist warns: “America is in danger of experiencing an academic brain drain”.

(Links to each of these reports is available at the primary link.)

According to the Economist,

Springer Nature publishes Nature, the world’s most prestigious scientific journal. It also runs a much-used jobs board for academics. In the first three months of the year applications by researchers based in America for jobs in other countries were up by 32% compared with the same period in 2024.

In March Nature itself conducted a poll of more than 1,200 researchers at American institutions, of whom 75% said they were thinking of leaving (though disgruntled academics were probably more likely to respond to the poll than satisfied ones).

And just as American researchers eye the exit, foreigners are becoming more reluctant to move in. Springer Nature’s data suggests applications by non-American candidates for American research jobs have fallen by around 25% compared with the same period last year.

As any sentient observer might have predicted, MAGA’s war on knowledge is a win for China, which is offering big salaries to entice disaffected knowledge-workers to relocate there.

According to an essay in the Washington Post, the administration’s inability to understand the consequences of its actions is based in large part on its lack of historical knowledge.  In “Houston, J.D. Vance has a problem,” Mark Lasswell reports that Vance “barely grasps the history of the U.S. space program.”

Last week, Newsmax interviewer Greg Kelly took a break from slathering Vance with praise to delicately broach the possibility of a “brain drain” from American universities if researchers decamp for more hospitable institutions overseas. The White House, as you might have heard, is working energetically to dissolve arrangements between several research universities and the government that for the past century helped make the United States the most powerful and innovative country in the world.

“I’ve heard a lot of the criticisms, the fear, that we’re going to have a brain drain,” the voluble vice president told Kelly. “If you go back to the ’50s and ’60s, the American space program, the program that was the first to put a human being on the surface of the moon, was built by American citizens, some German and Jewish scientists who had come over during World War II, but mostly by American citizens who had built an incredible space program with American talent. This idea that American citizens don’t have the talent to do great things, that you have to import a foreign class of servants and professors to do these things, I just reject that.”

As Lasswell sardonically notes, “Vance seems to think a defunded brainiac who happens to be an American citizen is going to tell a recruiter from Aix-Marseille University, “You can keep Provence. I’d rather work on nanotechnology in my garage. U-S-A!”

The actual history of America’s space program–and scientific dominance–is rather different from Vance’s version. After the war, both the United States and the Soviet Union recruited German and Austrian scientists, engineers and technicians. (Without, as the essay notes, being too picky about their Nazi connections. I enthusiastically recommend Tom Lehrer’s “take” on Von Braun...) In the mid-1950s, they created the U.S. space program. “Von Braun and his many, many colleagues were instrumental to U.S. space supremacy — and, according to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, most of them became naturalized citizens in 1954 or 1955.” 

We may not have been picky about their politics, but we did understand–once upon a time–that a nation’s health and wealth depend upon its respect–and support– for empirical knowledge. 

MAGA=Morons Are Gutting America….. 

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Science Isn’t Waste Or Fraud

The daily damage being done by the Trump administration has given rise to a grim debate: how much of the wreckage can be remedied, or at least ameliorated, and how much is irremediable? How many of the attacks on purportedly “wasteful” and/or “fraudulent” expenditures are really based upon the appalling ignorance of those leveling the attacks–their profound lack of understanding of how things work?

Example: The sudden and draconian cuts to scientific and medical research don’t just threaten to cripple US global research prominence. They’ve thrown a wrench into promising research into cures for diseases like Alzheimers, Parkinson’s and Cancer. 

Last week, the news media reported on two breakthroughs: the use of advances in gene editing to cure a baby born with a rare genetic disorder; and a new blood test to detect Alzheimers. The exciting aspect of the technique used to cure the 9½-month-old baby is its potential to help people suffering with thousands of other uncommon genetic diseases. The blood test makes it possible to detect Alzheimer’s disease much earlier. As one doctor pointed out, the test will allow primary care physicians to order a blood test and, if that test is positive, immediately refer a patient to a neurologist. He predicted that the test will “dramatically change clinical care.”

These advances and others like them didn’t emerge from a few weeks experiments in a laboratory. They built on years of scientific research, much of which had no immediate relevance to the reported advancements.

Most Americans don’t recognize the importance of basic research–it simply isn’t salient to citizens the way cuts in Medicaid or attacks on Social Security are. And very few Americans understand the long-term and disastrous effects of abrupt terminations of multi-year grants.

As Josh Marshall has argued at Talking Points Memo,

Basic and applied research generates huge dividends for a society. But its immediate and salient relevance to the average voter varies greatly. Theoretical physics is very worth funding and has many real world applications. But its relevance to — and just as importantly, its political traction with — a middle income couple in your average community where he’s a bus driver and she’s a nurse may not be crystal clear. Yet everyone knows a family member or loved one or friend stricken with cancer, or conditions tied to aging and dementia, heart disease, or any number of other conditions against which medical science is making steady progress. The point is so obvious it barely merits arguing: People fear death and disease. They look to science for hope of cures and some promise of long and robust lives. For two or three generations, that hope has been tied to researchers, somewhere, perhaps operating with something akin to magic but consistently producing new and wonderful things….

The challenge is that the world of biomedical research is insular. It operates with a system of internal governance and mores that are broadly understandable to people who’ve been exposed to university life, especially in the sciences. But that’s a very, very rarified discourse — peer review, study sections, fundamental vs. applied research, pipelines of new researchers, etc. Let’s start with just the foundational point that almost no one has any fucking idea what any of those terms and concepts mean. And for most things, that’s fine. Society should be well-run and knowledgeable enough to keep its scientists and researchers funded so that they don’t need to focus on the song and dance of making the case for what they do in the public square. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we’re living in right now.

Researchers have an additional and under-ordinary-circumstances very understandable desire not to overpromise or give false hope. This is rooted both in ethical imperatives and the uncertainty-driven empiricism that is the hallmark of any good scientist. But at the moment, it is a big problem because it is providing an unmerited advantage to those who are using lies to shut down medical research in the U.S. 

Marshall’s essay is worth reading in its entirety, but his essential point is that people with big megaphones–those in the various “disease communities”– should inform the general public about what is happening. Loudly. As he says, “The more widely known this becomes, the more salient it becomes, the worse it will get for those people who are pushing these cuts, or at least trying to make them permanent through the 2026 budget process.”

Trump and Musk gave carte blanche to know-it-all interns who have no comprehension of how science or government works. Millions of Americans will suffer unnecessarily as a result.

Welcome to MAGA (Morons Are Governing America) world.

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Shades Of Scopes

Christian Nationalists have tried to discredit science ever since Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. Most Americans know about the Scopes litigation–probably thanks to the movie, Inherit the Wind–but fewer know that Scopes (and science) lost at that Tennessee trial.

It’s comforting, albeit misleading, to think that respect for science, the scientific method and empirical evidence eventually won out.

It’s misleading because the forces antagonistic to scientific research and verifiable knowledge haven’t yielded to logic or evidence. Those forces are alive and well in the Trump administration, and they are rapidly eradicating America’s longstanding global dominance in the creation of human knowledge.

The New York Tmes recently took a “deep dive” into the Trump administration’s war on scientific inquiry. Noting the resignation of the head of the National Science Foundation–a man Trump appointed during his first term–after Trump cut more than 400 research awards from the NSF budget, the report noted the administration has also slashed budgets for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NASA, and has defunded thousands of researchers.

The explanations offered for this wholesale attack are typical Trump hogwash. “Cost-cutting,” “government efficiency,” and my favorite: “defending women from gender ideology extremism.” It appears that numerous grants were eliminated simply because their descriptions referenced aspects of reality rejected by MAGA morons– climate, diversity, disability, trans or women.

Economists tell us that every dollar spent on research has returned at least $5 to the economy.

Nevertheless, Trump’s administration has defunded studies on AIDS, pediatric cancer and solar physics. It has laid off meteorologists at the National Weather Service; pandemic-preparedness experts at the C.D.C.; and black-lung researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The Times reports that a next-generation space observatory, already built with $3.5 billion over a decade, awaits a launch that now may never happen.

Predictably, American scientists are evaluating their options. France and Canada are among several other countries courting American researchers. A recent poll found that more than 1,200 American scientists are considering working abroad.

What is even more frightening is the administration’s effort to count as “science” only “findings” that accord with the administration’s beliefs–and the National Science Foundation will no longer fund “research with the goal of combating ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation.’ Why? The administration says that efforts to correct lies and disseminate accurate data “could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens.” And a Justice Department official accused prominent medical journals of political bias for not airing “competing viewpoints.”

I am not making this up.

The Atlantic has responded to this insanity with an article titled “This is Not How We Do Science. Ever.”

Since its first days, the new Trump administration has clearly shown where it thinks scientific attention should not be focused: It has attempted to censor federal scientific data, cut billions in government spending on research, and compromised care for some of the world’s most at-risk populations. Now, as the nation’s leaders have begun to encourage inquiry into specific areas, they are signaling that they’re willing not just to slash and burn research that challenges their political ideology but to replace it with shoddy studies designed to support their goals, under the guise of scientific legitimacy.

The article reports on several administration directives clearly intended to confirm Trump’s desired results.

This is consistent with everything Trump and his allies have revealed about their views on science since January: that it is not a means to better understand objective reality, but a political weapon that they must guard against, or deploy themselves. In recent months, Kennedy has accused the expert committee that counsels the CDC on its nationwide vaccine recommendations of being in the pocket of vaccine manufacturers; the administration has also fired from HHS several scientists who were prominent leaders in the COVID-19 response, including a few closely affiliated with Anthony Fauci, whom Trump has ridiculed as a “disaster” and an idiot and Desai derided as one of many “demonstrably fallible ‘experts.’” Last week, administration officials also redirected two federal websites, once used to share information on COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines, to a page promoting the idea that the coronavirus pandemic began as a lab leak, rather than Fauci’s “preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated in nature.”

MAGA’s revolt against science is an important part of the GOP’s continuing rejection of the “reality-based” community.

A psychiatrist friend defines denial of reality as insanity. (See yesterday’s post…)

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When America Really Was Great…

America really has been great–or at least, greater. Of course, a lot depends upon one’s definition of “greatness.” Donald Trump rather obviously confuses the term “great” with the term “much”–in his limited and twisted worldview, rich people are great because they have lots of money, celebrities are great because they command lots of attention, and countries are great if they control more territory.

So–in Trump’s mind, Elon Musk must be great because he has lots of money. Trump himself must be great because the media is paying attention to him (it’s irrelevant that much of that attention is highly critical–it’s attention!) If the United States “acquires” Greenland and Gaza, and takes back the Panama Canal, that will make America great again.  

People with more (and considerably more active) brain-cells tend to define greatness differently. 

Paul Krugman recently considered the “greatness” involved in constructing the Panama Canal, and the greatness–okay, intelligence– displayed by our decision to turn ownership over to Panama.

Yes, it was a spectacular feat of engineering. But even more important, it was a triumph of medical science and science-based policy. To build the canal, America first had to conquer yellow fever and malaria. This meant understanding how these diseases were spread, then implementing widespread preventive measures that ranged from isolating infected patients with mosquito netting to eliminating sources of standing water in which mosquitoes could breed.

The success of these measures was an extraordinary achievement. But then, for much of the 20th century America led the world both in medical research and in the application of that research to public policy. This one-two punch of knowledge and knowledge-based action led to an incredible decline in the rate of death from infectious disease.

Why did the U.S. decide to turn that “spectacular feat of engineering” over to another country? Because it was in our national interest to do so.

America gave up the canal, not out of a spirit of generosity or wokeness, but because U.S. occupation of the Canal Zone had become a strategic liability rather than an asset. By the 1970s changes in transportation patterns had greatly diminished the canal’s economic importance; its military value was almost nil. At the same time, U.S. occupation of the zone had become a flashpoint for anti-Americanism, and it was obvious that defending the canal against sabotage and potential guerilla warfare would be difficult if not impossible.

Of course, weighing the pros and cons of continuing to own the canal requires the application of intelligence to sufficient accurate information–a process clearly beyond the capacities of our egomaniac co-presidents.

As Krugman also notes, quite accurately, America’s real greatness–the attributes that have earned us the global respect and deference that Trump is busily dismantling–relied to a significant extent upon our leadership in science and medicine.

Now Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a crank who rejects vaccines in particular and medical science in general, is on track to become the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The National Institutes of Health have effectively been shut down. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have stopped releasing crucial data. If you go to CDC’s website, there’s a banner across the top reading “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders,” which mainly means purging anything that hints at concern over social inequality.

This country didn’t become great by bullying other nations (although we have certainly done our share of bullying). It didn’t become a beacon for the rest of the world because of slavery or Jim Crow, but instead for our constant struggle to fulfill the Constitution’s promises of liberty and equality. 

Donald Trump evidently thinks “greatness” requires picking on trans children, reversing the social acceptance and economic progress of women and minorities, and ethnically cleansing Gaza. He evidently thinks that scrubbing all mention of climate change from government websites will stop the globe from warming, that ignoring scientific facts of which he disapproves will make those facts disappear, and that being the center of attention means he’s important. 

Trump spent four years in the Oval Office and still has no concept of how government operates or what the rule of law means, or what American government is for.

We the People will never be able to teach him anything–he’s clearly incapable of learning. But we can–and must–disabuse him of the notion that he’s entitled to exercise unfettered power.

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The Assault On Science

Facts exist whether you acknowledge them or not.

Among Trump’s blizzard of demented, anti-American Executive orders were several that attacked science and evidence. The declaration of an energy emergency was one–no such emergency exists. Asserting that the southern border is under invasion conveniently overlooked the fact that there are far fewer immigrants there than when he left office. The airy dismissal of climate change and the withdrawal from the Paris accords are part and parcel of a diseased mind that rejects irrefutable evidence of what is currently the single largest threat to human life on the planet.

Trump’s attacks on medical science were especially breathtaking, and enormously consequential.

As Talking Points Memo put it, the new administration has “turned off the spigot of funding for a huge amount of cancer research and various other health fields and diseases, and all signs point to a cutoff that will be thorough-going and draconian.”

This comes after a similar halt to the weekly MMWR report which CDC sends to hospitals and doctors every week with information on flu, COVID and other infectious diseases.

I think we’re at the point in this where you can’t yet categorically say that this is being done for RFK Jr.-adjacent anti-research nuttery, but basically all signs point in that direction. And there is at least a temporary and disruptive halt to how health research gets funded in this country.

The American Prospect reported on the assault on NIH.

All travel has been canceled, ruining many important conferences. All agency communications have been banned until further notice, blocking a highly anticipated report on the festering avian flu outbreak that has killed millions of birds, and could cause another pandemic if it mutates to enable human-to-human transmission. Worst of all, all study sections, which are required to disburse NIH’s $40 billion in grants—supporting some 300,000 working scientists at thousands of universities—are also halted indefinitely.

Before 1933, Germany was the clear world leader in academic research and achievement, winning far more Nobel Prizes than any other country. Hitler and the Nazis blew that up in a crusade against liberalism and “Jewish science,” driving most top researchers across Europe (like Albert Einstein) to Britain or the U.S., where many of them worked on the Manhattan Project. German science never recovered fully…

All agency communications have been banned until further notice, blocking a highly anticipated report on the festering avian flu outbreak that has killed millions of birds, and could cause another pandemic if it mutates to enable human-to-human transmission. Worst of all, all study sections, which are required to disburse NIH’s $40 billion in grants—supporting some 300,000 working scientists at thousands of universities—are also halted indefinitely.

As the Prospect concludes, Trump heads up a “rising tide of vengeful, crackbrained irrationalism” that is likely to end American scientific pre-eminence.

The Week reported on the Executive Order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization.

The problem is there is no similar organization ready to take its place. Meanwhile, global health threats continue to proliferate thanks to mass travel, rising urban populations and human encroachment on wildlife habitats. Without WHO, we leave ourselves unprepared.

Why, you might ask, has Trump withdrawn us from an organization that might protect us from (or at least alert us to) the next pandemic? Evidently, because the organization’s acceptance of medical science on matters like abortion and gender care is “woke.” (That’s the trouble with science and reality…they do tend to be “woke.”)

Trump hasn’t simply disrupted ongoing medical research–he has also censored medical information. Federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes for Health, have all been ordered to pause all external communications, including health advisories and scientific reports.

So–American doctors and scientists not only won’t be pursuing research into diseases and public health, We the People won’t be informed about evidence they’ve previously uncovered. If we experience another pandemic, we will once again be told to ingest bleach or a horse medication–or perhaps, given the overwhelming influence of anti-science White Christian Nationalists–we may just be told to pray the disease away.

Trump’s cuts to foreign aid included numerous assaults on global heath. He’s stopped bird flu monitoring in 49 countries; halted efforts to eradicate polio; cut off support for vaccination of 90 million women and children; halted drug supplies keeping 20 million people living with HIV alive, and services for 6.5 million children affected by HIV in 23 countries.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been recognized as central to both America’s prosperity and its geopolitical influence. As one article put it, the social and strategic benefits of owning such an immensely successful research complex are immense.

The benefits to individuals of living in a humane and fact-based world are also immense.

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