I Don’t Want to Write This!

I hate politics, and I want to write about science. But…

“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.” —Mark Twain

This week’s post was going to be about a cool study on menopause and the microbiome, but something important came up. I’ll get back to menopause next week, I hope. The study I wanted to share was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), arguably one of the finest agencies America has ever assembled—because science, basically, rocks.

Not that science is perfect, because it’s not. For instance, we know that women and men are different, but historically researchers have held that sex doesn't really matter. Worse yet, in most animal studies, scientists have traditionally concentrated on males so they don’t have to deal with the complicating effects of the estrous cycle.

Clearly, this is misguided and misses some of the most fascinating aspects of biology. In 1993, the NIH weighed in and required the inclusion of women in NIH-sponsored clinical trials. That single action opened the floodgates to research on women’s health. Millions of women have directly benefitted from this inclusion.

Shutting down American research

However, in researching my menopause article, I came across something disturbing. On January 22, the government announced it was shutting down the NIH! The Trump administration ordered a funding freeze on all science agencies. The order cancelled grant approvals, shutdown all communications, halted hiring, rescinded job offers, prohibited social media posting, and banned travel.

According to a senior NIH employee, “The impact of the collective executive orders and directives appears devastating.” President Trump wasn’t kidding around. Meetings and workshops were interrupted and halted midstream.

Can the president do this? Well, according to a federal judge, no. The order illegally suspends funds appropriated by the US Congress. And so, the shut-down of the NIH was put on hold. However, the administration still claims it can halt any scientific research it doesn’t like, putting scientifically challenged politicians in charge of our science.

Adding turbidity to an already murky situation, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “this is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. The president’s orders on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.” That leaves the fate of the nation’s premiere science agencies in limbo. This is not a good look.

What were they thinking?

What horrifying development occurred at the NIH to warrant this abrupt shut-down? According to President Trump, there were some “woke” ideologies that had to be rooted out. There is not a good definition of woke, but apparently it is dangerous enough to halt all the research in the United States overnight.

This shock and awe to our own agencies is reminiscent of how Elon Musk upended Twitter. In fact, some of the memos going around the government are direct copies of Twitter manifestos.

Musk fired 80% of the Twitter workforce when he bought it, causing massive disruption and outages. He fired the content moderators. As a business decision, it successfully reduced overhead. But being ham-handed about it destroyed half of Twitter’s revenue and caused thousands of users to find other platforms. Still, it’s Musk’s company to manage as he sees fit.

Government agencies, on the other hand, are often a life-or-death matter for its citizenry and shutting down the NIH has already left marks. President Trump has tasked Musk with streamlining the government and ending wokeness, employing his trademark subtlety.

The NIH is a $46 billion agency, which sounds like a lot, but is only one-sixth of the wealth of Elon Musk alone. Every dollar spent on the NIH generates two dollars of economic activity, based on the scientific discoveries it funds. The NIH is not an agency in need of downsizing; we need more like it. Spending money on science is smart and makes America great right now.

If Musk wants to help, perhaps he could pay some taxes. Wikipedia says Musk made $150 billion in 2020. If he paid taxes at the same rate I do, it would fully support the entire NIH. That is a sobering reminder of America’s complete capitulation to plutocracy.

What is woke?

So, what is this dangerous wokeness that needs to be expunged? The NIH and other government bureaus have been served with a list of keywords that define what they mean by woke. These are the words that will stop a grant in its tracks. Unsurprisingly, these keywords include “disability”, “diversity”, and “climate change”, topics that are considered unworthy of research, no matter what scientists say.

But there is another chilling word that could disqualify a grant. According to the Washington Post, that keyword is “women”.

That’s when I realized the topic of my post had to change. This draconian, purely political purge of research could end certain women’s studies and put more under scrutiny. That would be a shame, because so many lives have been saved by this enormously popular government agency. Epidemiologist Ayden Scheim says, “In the long term, a lot of research that focuses on health inequities for women will disappear.”

Darby Saxbe, professor of Psychology at USC says, "This is a crisis for academic freedom and science. These keywords could show up in the text of ANY grant involving human participants. If you say you're going to study men and women, you get flagged. The word 'systemic' is on the banned list, so if I study systemic inflammation and health, flagged. You can't design a study of humans without using at least one of the terms on the banned list, which means that biomedical, brain, and social science research is now on ice in the USA."

As the conservative National Review noted approvingly, “woke academia is on high alert”.

That might bring a sigh of relief to acolytes of President Trump or Musk. But bringing the entire scientific apparatus of the country to a halt is an extreme way to accomplish this dubious task. If you wanted to lower America’s standing on the global stage, you could not do better than hobbling our science.

Carole LaBonne, a developmental biologist at Northwestern University says, “It will be much easier to destroy the world’s greatest scientific ecosystem than it will be to try to rebuild it.”

Killing the goose

The NIH isn’t perfect. As I mentioned, it took until 1993 to insist on including women in studies. But the NIH typically motors on through Democratic and Republican regimes alike. It has a peer-review process that is designed to avoid conflict of interest. People on granting panels can’t review proposals from anyone they share a personal connection with. This tradition of freedom from personal conflict and political shenanigans is part of what makes the NIH the envy of the world.

But now Musk—without being vetted, without the proper security clearance, without being elected, and with a clear conflict of interest—has taken complete control over the NIH and all science funding in America. That doesn’t square with the respected tradition of impartiality. Musk owes his staggering wealth to government grants, and now that he’s the richest man in the world, he is busily pulling up the ladder behind him.

Can we talk about something else?

“America has the best politicians money can buy.” —Will Rogers

Investors in Musk believe this inside look at his potential competitors—and his apparent ability to snuff their funding—will give him a leg up. As a consequence, Musk’s fortune has increased by $65 billion in the month since Trump’s election. That is an excellent return on his $250 million contribution to Trump’s campaign.

I don’t want to write about this. I’d rather be writing about science. But if this administration succeeds in eradicating large swaths of scientific research, I may have very little to write about.

Science studies nature, which doesn’t care about woke. Science is designed to be an objective pursuer of truth. That truth may be uncomfortable but then, based on that, politicians can create policy to deal with it. The instant that pursuit is steered by politics—either from the left or from the right—science is neutered.

Science is self-correcting. Nothing is fully accepted without testable evidence. Science has an institutional memory that you can bounce ideas off, but it is not bound by the past. It is designed for verified progress. The process isn’t perfect, but it is perfectible.

Politics has no such evidence-based criteria. Bad ideas well up again and again. As George Santayana said, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,” and politicians have notoriously poor memory.

Putting politicians in charge of science isn’t new. It has been the wellspring of many terrifying political movements. But scientific truth doesn’t come from the mount. It comes from below in the multitude of experiments that flow up for correction and then, if they survive the gantlet of verification, become integrated into the larger corpus. It is a surprisingly conservative venture.

But politicians operate in a squishy, malleable world that makes them see the world differently. At the turn of the 20^th century, Indiana politicians decided that pi was too troublesome with its unending stream of digits. So, they readied a bill to establish the value of pi at 3.2. They were rescued from humiliation by a Purdue professor who just happened to be present before the vote.

Don’t let politicians determine the direction of science. That’s nature’s job.

Our sputnik moment

Not too long ago, America was deeply embarrassed by the Russians, who launched the first satellite (sputnik) and then the first human (Yuri Gagarin) into space. Suddenly, we moved to repair our collective stupidity. It wasn’t funny to be left behind by clearly more intelligent Russians. Ultimately, we caught up, but we’re in danger of losing our preeminence again with these attacks on science.

We need a new sputnik moment in this country. Other countries are crossing their fingers and hoping that we will continue down the path of politician-based science. That way, they might lead the world instead of us.

Scientists are an optimistic lot, so we feel that better days lie ahead. We won’t stop looking for the truth that underlies nature because, like most people, we want to make the world a better place.

But we might have to move to another country to do so.

---

References

“Revised and Extended: What’s Happening Inside the NIH and NSF.” Accessed February 6, 2025. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/revised-and-extended-what-s-happening-inside-nih-and-nsf.

Isidore, Chris. “How Much of Musk’s Wealth Comes from Tax Dollars and Government Help? | CNN Business.” CNN, November 20, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/20/business/elon-musk-wealth-government-help/index.html.

“Trump Hits NIH with ‘Devastating’ Freezes on Meetings, Travel, Communications, and Hiring.” Accessed February 6, 2025. https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-hits-nih-devastating-freezes-meetings-travel-communications-and-hiring.

Kozlov, Max, and Dan Garisto. “Chaos Erupts in US Science as Trump’s Team Declares Freeze on Federal Grants.” Nature, January 28, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00266-1.

Gilbert, David. “The Far Right Has a New Hero: Elon Musk.” Wired. Accessed February 6, 2025. https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-new-leader-elon-musk/.

Washington Post. “Opinion | The Trump Administration Is Restricting Research Funding through Keywords,” February 6, 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/nsf-trump-administration-restrictions/.