JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
If we're taking stock of winners and losers in 2025, science is on the list of losers. The Trump administration upended federal funding for all kinds of scientific pursuits. NPR health and science correspondents Rob Stein and Katia Riddle have come to talk about the implications of these cuts. Hi to both of you.
ROB STEIN, BYLINE: Hey, Juana.
KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: Hey, there. So let's start, if we can, with just a little history of science in America. My understanding is that World War II was a turning point in this country's investment in science. Katia, tell us a little bit more about that.
RIDDLE: Yeah, that's right. You know, at the turn of the 20th century, there wasn't necessarily a marriage between science and government. That changed around the time, like you said, of World War II. As part of the war effort, the U.S. plowed money into scientific research, and it led to advancements like penicillin becoming widely available and the development of the first nuclear weapons. I talked to this historian at Berkeley (ph), Patrick McCray, who gives a lot of the credit for our existing system to one man, Vannevar Bush. He wrote a report calling on the U.S. to increase significantly investments, and that is what we did.
PATRICK MCCRAY: Health, economy and national security. Those were the three main things that science provided for us after 1945, and those, not surprisingly, were the three main things that Bush argued for in his report that science would provide.
RIDDLE: Today, the U.S. is the biggest investor in research and development in the world. This investment has led to tremendous breakthroughs like the foundation of the internet and genetic medicine.
SUMMERS: Rob, with everything we've seen this year, is there a sense that the country's commitment to science is in doubt?
STEIN: Yeah. Many people who Katia and I talked to for this reporting express grave concerns that this grand American scientific experiment is suffering irreparable damage. Here's Bruce Alberts from the University of California, San Francisco. He ran the National Academy of Sciences for more than a decade.
BRUCE ALBERTS: It's very tragic and it's very distressing for everybody who cares about U.S. prosperity and U.S. leadership in the world. It's just, you know, shooting ourselves in the foot.
SUMMERS: Let's now dig into some of the details. Rob, you have been covering the National Institutes of Health, which is, of course, the largest public funder of biomedical science in the world.
STEIN: Yeah.
SUMMERS: Bring us up to speed, if you can, about what's been happening there.
STEIN: It's been a tumultuous, traumatic year, not just for the scientists at the NIH itself, but also for many of the thousands of scientists around the world whose work lives and dies on NIH funding. The NIH staff of about 20,000 was cut by thousands. Many of those left behind are frightened, angry and demoralized. And billions of dollars in grants to study everything from, you know, vaccines and infectious diseases to diabetes and cancer have been terminated or thrown into chaos.
SUMMERS: How are staffers coping with all of this?
STEIN: It's been rough. Sylvia Chou manages grants at the National Cancer Institute. She told me about getting anonymous internal emails terminating research just because it might mention something that sounds like diversity, equity and inclusion - you know, DEI. She's not speaking on behalf of the agency.
SYLVIA CHOU: What we call drone attacks coming from above. You know, no names, no email addresses. There's no human, accountable human being, that we know of. So to have this just, like, attack from above, it's just crazy. And it's just absolutely soul-crushing. So that's why I eventually made the decision to leave. I just, you know, can't take it anymore.
STEIN: She's leaving the NIH next month after 18 years.
SUMMERS: I have to say it's really striking to hear her describe this as soul-crushing. Is that something that you're hearing from other people as well?
STEIN: Oh, absolutely. I asked Dr. Francis Collins about this. He ran the NIH for a dozen years through Democratic and Republican administrations.
FRANCIS COLLINS: What was done this year was basically move fast and break things without a whole lot of interest in what the consequences might be. I just find it heartbreaking.
STEIN: And that's a pretty widely held view.
SUMMERS: Katia, you've covered other federal agencies this year. Where else has science been disrupted under this administration?
RIDDLE: The chaos and tumult that Rob is describing, that has been widespread across nearly every federal agency that is engaged in science - the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, or NASA. Even the Department of Veterans Affairs has seen studies disrupted and major research projects put into limbo with staffing freezes and ongoing funding uncertainty. At NSF alone, there were more than 1,500 grants canceled, many of them projects related to DEI. That represents more than $1 billion in funding.
SUMMERS: So, Rob, what do Trump administration officials have to say about all of this?
STEIN: They say the nation's scientific institutions - including medical and public health agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, yes, even the NIH - desperately need shaking up. I talked about this with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. He's the NIH director. He told me he knows morale suffered but argues he's turned that around and is reinvigorating the NIH.
JAY BHATTACHARYA: Some changes have happened at the NIH, which I think were long overdue - changes to change the culture of the NIH to fund more innovative science, be less risk-averse in the portfolio of scientific projects we fund because life expectancy in this country has been flatlined since 2010. The research ideas that we've had, I mean, there are a lot of amazing innovations, but they have not translated over to better health for Americans.
STEIN: And he chafes at suggestions that the White House or Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have politicized the NIH.
BHATTACHARYA: Secretary Kennedy has not asked me to put my thumb on the scales of any scientific project to say you must have this scientific project come out this way or that way. I think that would be a red line. I have not seen that from Secretary Kennedy or the president.
STEIN: Dr. Bhattacharya argues the U.S. remains a biomedical beacon for the rest of the world.
BHATTACHARYA: I think the future is bright. I mean, there's still no better place on Earth to do biomedical science. If you're a young scientist in this country, this is still, by far, the very best place on Earth to do science.
SUMMERS: So that's the view from the top at NIH, but I wonder, what are you hearing from young scientists? Do they agree that this is still the best place to be?
RIDDLE: A lot of the scientists I talked to do not. I spoke with one young scientist named Brandon Coventry, and he's not sure. He is a recipient of grant funding from NIH, some of it which was recently revoked. He grew up here in a small town in Illinois. He's now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He researches treatments that could help people with diseases like Parkinson's and epilepsy. Coventry is at a pivotal place in his career. He's looking to start his own lab, take a tenure track position somewhere and really put down roots. He says, after watching what's happened this year, he does not trust that the United States is going to be a sustainable place to do this.
BRANDON COVENTRY: And we've lost that sort of pipeline and certainty of the pipeline that's really been a staple, irregardless of what administration has been in office. Like, this is the first time where that's just been out of whack.
SUMMERS: So, Katia, what's he doing?
RIDDLE: Yeah, he's considering leaving the country, possibly for Canada or somewhere else. He says this desire to leave is something that he hears from many of his peers as well.
COVENTRY: I think for many of us, this is a calling to make the world a better place. And we would love to do that in our homes, but we're going to go to places where we can do that.
RIDDLE: Coventry says, even if the money spigot is turned back on in a future administration, it's going to take more than that to rebuild his faith in the system.
STEIN: And, you know, Juana, the bigger question is whether the trust in this grand bargain that made America the greatest scientific powerhouse has been fractured beyond repair.
SUMMERS: NPR health and science correspondents Rob Stein and Katia Riddle, thanks to both of you.
STEIN: You bet.
RIDDLE: Thanks, Juana.
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