Scientists Are Caught in a Political Trap

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.

As of late, some in the scientific community have been pushing back, organizing marches and rallies, publicly criticizing government reports and agency priorities, and quitting their jobs at federal agencies. Professional medical societies have banded together to sue the Department of Health and Human Services over Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s unfounded restrictions of COVID vaccines and dismissal of vaccine experts. Academic scientists have done the same, to fight for grant funding. Researchers are convening extragovernmental panels to evaluate evidence on vaccines; the American Academy of Pediatrics has published vaccine recommendations that deviate from the CDC’s, and several states in New England are mulling doing the same. This week, for the second time, hundreds of HHS officials have signed a public letter criticizing the department’s leaders for interfering with the integrity of their work.

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. But in retaliating, scientists also run the risk of advancing the narrative they want to fight—that science in the U.S. is a political endeavor, and that the academic status quo has been tainted by an overly liberal view of reality. “When you face a partisan attack, it’s extremely hard to respond in a way that doesn’t look partisan,” Alexander Furnas, a science-policy expert at Northwestern University, told me. “It’s a bit of a trap.”