August 14, 2025 ☼ --theatlantic ☼ brain-drain ☼ federal ☼ funding ☼ science ☼ trump ☼ university
Source: www.theatlantic.com (Link)
If a grant is snatched away today, researchers are let go, graduate students are turned away, and clinical trials are halted with potentially devastating consequences for patients. Unused equipment gathers dust, samples spoil, lab animals are euthanized. Top scientists move their laboratories to other countries, which are happy to welcome this talent, much as the United States welcomed German scientists in the 1930s. Meanwhile, the best students around the world enroll elsewhere, where good science is still being done and their legal status is not up in the air. The result, ultimately, is that the U.S. leaves it to other nations to discover a cure for Alzheimer’s disease or diabetes, or to make fusion energy practicable.
Extremely shortsighted. Does Trump thinks that private enterprise will conduct this kind of research? They can’t and won’t.