#trumpvresearch — Public Fediverse posts

Update. #ScientificAmerican was under pressure from its past owner, #SpringerNature, to drop its criticism of the #Trump admin, even as part of news coverage about what was happening to US science. (SN sold the magazine to #LabX in June 2026.)
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/scientific-american-springer-nature-trump/

SN forced the resignation of the magazine's editor-in-chief, #LauraHelmuth (@laurahelmuth), who wrote the editorials I praised as excellent -- in this thread, above.

Stefan von Holtzbrinck, one of the family of owners of SN, even reached down through the chain of command to directly order the magazine to pull a story on the "medical situation in #Gaza."

The magazine's past-president, #KimLau, told staffers that SN understood the magazine's tradition of editorial independence, but didn't care when criticism of Trump threatened its business in the US.

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Thanks to #GrantWitness (@grantwitness.org) for this graphic of the steady drop in the number of #NSF grants since FY2021. Note that the steepest drops were in Trump's second term.
https://grantwitness.org/nsf/analyses/agency-pulse-nsf-grants

#DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"NIH appears to shut down comments on science peer-review rule change ahead of schedule."
archive.is/8tkIk

#DefendResearch #NIH #PeerReview #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"NIH appears to shut down comments on science peer-review rule change ahead of schedule."
archive.is/8tkIk

#DefendResearch #NIH #PeerReview #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"NIH appears to shut down comments on science peer-review rule change ahead of schedule."
https://archive.is/8tkIk

#DefendResearch #NIH #PeerReview #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"In 2022, the Advisory Committee on Data for Evidence Building recommended the federal government create a National Secure Data Service (NSDS) that would centralize information about the many federal datasets. Currently, these sources are scattered and siloed, which can obscure which data are available." -- And obscure when they are taken down or censored for political reasons.
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/how-can-ai-responsibly-open-access-government-data-evaluation-national-secure-data

PS: Good idea. But I don't trust the #Trump admin and #Republican Congress to build it. Put it on the to-do list for the next regime. Even if the current admin does build it, the next regime will need to ensure that it's done well.

#Censorship #Data #DefendResearch #NSDS #OpenData #Takedowns #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Even after #Trump slashed its budget, the #NSF left $1.4 billion unspent at the end of FY26 (Sept 30).

From Joel Widder (@jmwidder.substack.com): "NSF closed FY2026 having obligated $6.4 billion in research funds across 6,218 awards, down from $8.3 billion and 8,647 awards in FY2025, with roughly $1.4 billion left unspent."
https://jmwidder.substack.com/p/periodic-update-on-federal-science-6b0

#DefendResearch #Funding #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

" ‘Complete devastation’ —How NSF gutted its social sciences research: Agency body that funds sociology, linguistics, and archaeology studies in U.S. gave 90% fewer new grants this year."
https://www.science.org/content/article/complete-devastation-how-nsf-gutted-its-social-sciences-research

"In March, the White House’s budget request for fiscal year 2027 called for eliminating the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE), which funds roughly two-thirds of the country’s academic social science research, such as sociology, linguistics, and archaeology. Whether Congress will approve the request is unclear, but #NSF is not waiting. Interviews with five recently departed #SBE staff and newly available data document how the agency has quietly followed through on administration orders by slashing SBE’s budget, throttling its decision-making, and reducing its workforce."

#DefendResearch #Funding #SocialSciences #SSH #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

According to Mona Nemer, #Canada’s chief science advisor, the #Trump admin is "planning a review of the #NelsonMemo."
https://sciencebusiness.net/news/open-science/open-science-compatible-research-security-says-canadas-chief-science-advisor

PS: This is new. As far as I know, no US official has yet indicated that such a review is in the works.

While the #Trump admin has attacked research from nearly every angle, it has so far supported the #OpenAccess policies created under the direction of the Nelson Memo. In some respects it has even strengthened them. So if such a review is in the works, I suspect it's more about fine-tuning than deep overhaul or repeal.

Nemer is also concerned about locking Canadian research to infrastructure controlled by Americans. "I'm certainly hoping that a lot of the Canadian institutions, funders, researchers, have started looking at joining forces on databases and using more European research infrastructures.”

#DataSovereignty #DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Why are members of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) boycotting their own professional society? Let me explain."
https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/123301

This account has new details on the #ADA's behavior in suppressing protests against #Trump policies and the independence of the ADA's flagship journal.

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

New from the administration that took down open scientific datasets, halted scientific data-gathering projects, closed agency science programs, fired science agency experts, slashed research funding, terminated approved research grants, banned words in research grant applications, shifted grant peer review to political appointees, defunded research repositories, denied researcher visas, deterred international research collaboration, privatized govt research, froze funds to universities, introduced endowment taxes on nonprofit research institutions, moved to modify accreditation standards to steer university hiring and curricula, and replaced evidence-based agency findings with ideological assertions.

"U.S. Leads International Coalition to Endorse Kyoto Vision for a Golden Age of Science."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/10/us-leads-international-coalition-to-endorse-kyoto-vision-for-a-golden-age-of-science/

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"NIH Employees Lived in A Culture of Fear, So They Started Keeping Receipts."
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/nih-culture-fear.html

An interview with Sylvia Chou, an 18 year vet of the #NIH, and former program director at the National Cancer Institute (#NCI).

h/t @lschiff

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

" ‘Zombified’ #CDC Hobbled by Cuts, Struggles to Fulfill Scientific Mission."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/health/cdc-staff-cuts-rfk-jr.html

"The agency has lost its independence and nearly a third of its staff, as Health Secretary #RFKJr and associates have tightened control."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Trump administration backing off NIH grant order amid pushback."
https://www.semafor.com/article/09/23/2026/trump-administration-backing-off-nih-grant-order-amid-pushback

"White House plan to increase control of NIH grants appears ‘dead’. The proposed executive order stalled after bipartisan pushback."
https://www.statnews.com/2026/09/23/nih-grants-political-control-executive-order-bipartisan-pushback/

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #NIH #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"Thousands of comments have poured in on the Education Department’s proposed rule that would give the agency’s secretary the power to cancel grants “for convenience,” prioritize applicants who charge lower indirect cost rates and generally exert more discretion over grantmaking. The regulation would also force states that receive grants, and their subgrantees, to comply with President Trump’s numerous executive orders."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/business/financial-health/2026/09/25/higher-ed-groups-bash-ed-proposal-allow-more-grant

The public-comment period on the proposal ended two days ago.

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Education #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

#Trump is facing a slow rise in Congressional #Republican pushback, even if still small, on tariffs, foreign wars (Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran), federal spending, DOGE, immigration, and corruption.

And now science.

From Dave McCormick, Republican Senator from Pennsylvania: "I’m a Republican senator. America needs more science, not less."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/09/23/sen-dave-mccormick-nih-research-needs-more-reform-investment/

#DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. More detail on Bhattacharya's refusal to do Trump's bidding on this point.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/9/21/harvard-bhattacharya-trump-funding/

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Harvard #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"Trump asked budget chief to draft order bringing health research funding under his control."
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/19/nih-grants-trump-vought-bhattacharya-harvard-01085413

Among the nuggets unearthed here: Trump ordered #NIH director, Jay Bhattacharya, to cut research funding to #Harvard -- apparently without regard to merit, topic, DEI, antisemitism, or any other excuse previously floated. Bhattacharya refused. So Trump intervened to put NIH funding under the control of political appointees, as if Bhattacharya were not already a political appointee.

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Harvard #Medicine #NIH #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"As researchers around the world begin work on the next U.N. climate assessment, fears are growing that the #Trump administration could meddle with critical U.S. #climate #data. In response, scientists are preparing to transfer vast troves of that data to repositories in #Germany."
https://e360.yale.edu/features/germany-us-climate-data

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #Preservation #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Yesterday "researchers filed a class action lawsuit challenging the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) policy of blocking grants in order to censor views it disagrees with, on everything from DEI to gender identity to climate change."
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/researchers-challenge-nih-screening-of-grants-for-disfavored-viewpoints/

#Censorship #Climate #DefendResearch #DEI #Funding #Gender #Medicine #NIH #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

"For many U.S. scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (#NSF), the agency they know and loved died on 10 September. That’s the date NSF issued a 10-page memo signaling a retreat from its traditional role of giving grants to individual researchers to pursue their best ideas and to train the next generation of scientists. Instead, the memo makes clear, NSF will devote the bulk of its resources to addressing the research priorities of President Donald #Trump and his administration, many of them technology focused."
https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-memo-implementing-trump-s-golden-age-science-unsettles-researchers

"NSF’s budget, adjusted for inflation, is essentially the same as it was 20 years ago, and Trump wants to cut it by half next year."

EDIT. Here's the NSF's Sept 10 memo.
https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/Statement-NSF-Leadership-Golden-Age-Science.pdf

#DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"The Justice Department last year queried a dozen scientific publications, including Science, Nature Medicine, and Pediatrics, on their 'partisan' positions in scientific debates."
www.aip.org/fyi/doj-offi...

#Censorship #DefendResearch #ScholComm #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

DOJ Official Queried a Dozen J...

"The Justice Department last year queried a dozen scientific publications, including Science, Nature Medicine, and Pediatrics, on their 'partisan' positions in scientific debates, newly released records show."
https://www.aip.org/fyi/doj-official-queried-a-dozen-journals-on-partisan-views-in-2025

#Censorship #DefendResearch #ScholComm #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Members of the American Diabetes Association (#ADA) have launched a boycott against the organization, condemning leadership's actions in the aftermath" of the incident described in this thread, above.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/endocrinology/diabetes/122977

"The editors of ADA's flagship journal, 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘊𝘢𝘳𝘦, have joined on in support of the boycott. "Manuscripts submitted will not be handled until the boycott is over," said Steven Kahn…the journal's editor in chief and one of the five researchers ejected from the meeting in New Orleans."

Here's the call for a boycott.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd4h548X9qXgkVREQ71k2gDHiU8WFAFF78wTnmS20_ntwUM0w/viewform

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"Within days of the January 2025 inauguration, more than 3,000 taxpayer-funded federal data sets from the CDC, the Justice Department and the Office of Personnel Management were pulled offline, and Harvard public health researchers held marathon sessions scraping the pages before they vanished."
https://spacedaily.com/sd-within-days-of-the-january-2025-inauguration-more-than-3000-taxpayer-funded-federal-data-sets-from-the-cdc-the-justice-department-and-the-office-of-personnel-management-were-pulled-offline-and/

#Censorship #Data #DefendResearch #OpenData #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

New study: "Shortly after major policy changes to US science funding began in early 2025, we surveyed 916 young biomedical scientists – PhD students and postdoctoral researchers – about their career intentions and expectations…Barely half of respondents now say they are likely to remain in academia, down 22% from how they felt six months earlier. The fraction likely to stay in the United States fell by 21%."
https://www.nber.org/papers/w35330

Also see the summary in the Harvard Gazette.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/09/survey-of-young-researchers-raises-concerns-over-future-of-science-in-u-s/

#DefendResearch #ECR #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"Canada poaches 48 top US-based academics."
https://www.ft.com/content/8cc488a5-54c2-41f9-8b87-327ff591be6a

“Canada’s willingness to support research that challenges commercial and political threats to democracy is deeply necessary at a moment where authoritarianism is on the rise around the globe,” said Ethan Zuckerman [@ethanz], who is leaving the University of Massachusetts to become Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair in the Digital Public Sphere at McGill University in Montreal."

#Canada #DefendResearch #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Inside the federal keyword lists that canceled billions in research funding."
https://www.highereddive.com/news/inside-the-federal-keyword-lists-that-canceled-billions-in-research-funding/826203/

"A handful of federal agencies confirmed earlier this month in court documents that they cut grants if researchers’ projects 'expressed, or were presumed to express, viewpoints disfavored by the Administration.' … Federal agencies relied heavily on keyword searches when terminating grants."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Kudos to the @bostonreview for hosting this first-rate forum on 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘰 𝘚𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦.
https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-to-save-science/

#ZeynepPamuk kicks it off with a clear and wide-ranging essay on the history of US thinking (including influences from non-US thinkers) on how a democracy should fund science and control what it funds. Think: Not just Vannevar Bush and Harley Kilgore, but Adam Smith, Michael Polanyi, Milton Friedman, John Rawls, and Ronald Dworkin. Her closing thoughts are not merely on how to undo the damage Trump has caused, but how to return to first principles and fund science in a democracy better than before. Nine thoughtful and well-placed people respond to her essay, and she responds to the responses. Recommended.

#DefendResearch #Democracy #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

"The U.S. federal grant terminations of 2025 have had a chilling effect on American science. Grantees whose awards have been renegotiated under threat of termination must now determine how the revised terms constrain the language they use when reporting their findings in peer-reviewed publications."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666560326001118

"The post-Lysenko experience suggests that even if formal restrictions can be imposed and rescinded rapidly, the damage to human capital, training pipelines, and institutional trust may outlive the political conditions that produced them."

h/t @lschiff

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #SelfCensorship #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Agencies Move to Implement OMB’s Proposed Takeover of Grant Making."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2026/08/24/agencies-move-implement-ombs-proposed-grants

"The Education Department and National Science Foundation have suggested regulations that would adopt core aspects of the White House Office of Management and Budget’s proposal—even though it’s not finalized."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #ED #Funding #NSF #OMB #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Update. "Comments on #OMB research rule mysteriously removed from federal website."
https://www.statnews.com/2026/08/25/russell-vought-omb-funding-comments-daughter-benefited-nih-research/
(#paywalled)

42 comments on the OMB proposal have been removed from the public collection of comments. "It’s unclear why those specific comments, out of the 164,000 currently posted, were removed from the public record, and OMB did not respond to a request for comment clarifying the specifics of the cited policy. But 10 of the excised comments note that OMB Director Russell Vought has benefited from federally funded research."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics