Political leadership has increasingly shaped scientific priorities and personnel, including firing vaccine advisers, cutting research grants, denying gender, and accusing federal scientists of corruption while denigrating their work. Medical societies and academic scientists have organized legal challenges against HHS and the administration's vaccine restrictions and grant decisions. Researchers are forming extragovernmental panels, and professional groups have issued guidance that diverges from federal agencies. Hundreds of HHS officials have publicly criticized departmental interference with scientific integrity. Scientists face a dilemma: silence cedes public opinion, but public retaliation risks reinforcing the image of science as a partisan endeavor and undermining trust in the academic status quo.
Practicing science in the United States has become more politically fraught in the past seven months than it has ever been in this country's history. As the Trump administration has fired vaccine advisers, terminated research grants in droves, denied the existence of gender, and accused federal scientists of corruption while publicly denigrating their work, the nation's leaders have shown that they believe American science should be done only on their terms.
And yet, these counterattacks may be ensnaring scientists in a catch-22. Their goal is to defend their work from political interference. "If scientists don't ever speak up, then the court of public opinion is lost," one university dean, who requested anonymity to avoid financial retaliation against their school from the federal government, told me: Americans would have little reason to question the government's actions.
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