My last final exam is finally ready for prime time (Mon., May 5, at 1:30: Legislation and Regulation, a required 1L course; I wish my students good luck on the exam).
Grading will begin Tuesday morning.
So this is a perfect time to blog a little something, which I haven't done since February. After my grades are in, I will be on sabbatical for a year, followed by retirement on May 31, 2026. This year I'll be finishing a student treatise on health law regulation and compliance (state and federal), public health law, bioethics, and medical malpractice. Not sure whether blogging fits into that task, at least until September when my draft is due to the publisher.
If it hadn't been for an eye-catching email from Paul Krugman this morning, I probably wouldn't be blogging this afternoon, but his thoughts are compelling for anyone who cares about scientific research in general or medical research in particular. I republishing his email below in the hope that he won't find out won't mind, because his email starts with this: "Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more." In lieu of literally forwarding his email to you (impossible to do), I'm forwarding in the best way available to me. But definitely subscribe. In my perennially overstuffed Inbox, his messages are among the handful that I genuinely look forward to reading.
So much for the prelude. Now comes Krugman, unvarnished.
Many of us have long noted the growing hostility of the G.O.P. to science. But my experience was that many people viewed those raising the alarm — like Chris Mooney, who wrote a 2005 book titled The Republican War on Science — as over the top scaremongers.
But at this point, can we acknowledge that MAGA is indeed waging war on science? Not just “woke” stuff, but science in general.
Nature tells us that National Science Foundation funds have been frozen, and that even if some money eventually flows again, funding will be heavily politicized:
Staff members at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) were told on 30 April to “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice,” according to an email seen by Nature.
The policy prevents the NSF, one of the world’s biggest supporters of basic research, from awarding new research grants and from supplying allotted funds for existing grants, such as those that receive yearly increments of money. The email does not provide a reason for the freeze and says that it will last “until further notice”.
Earlier this week, NSF leadership also introduced a new policy directing staff members to screen grant proposals for “topics or activities that may not be in alignment with agency priorities”. Proposals judged not “in alignment” must be returned to the applicants by NSF employees. The policy has not been made public but was described in documents seen by Nature.
In effect, NSF, if it supports research at all, will only support research that tells MAGA what it wants to hear. Add in RFK Jr.’s savage cuts at the National Institutes of Health, budget cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Trump administration’s attacks on research universities, and we’re looking at a near-collapse of U.S. science. I don’t mean a hypothetical collapse a few years down the road, but the destruction of large parts of the American scientific enterprise — the envy of the world just a few months ago — this year.
Why should those who aren’t scientists care? In the 21st century, science isn’t some esoteric intellectual affair. It’s the foundation of social and economic progress. And no, we can’t expect the private sector to fill the gap left by loss of government support. Basic research is a public good: it generates real benefits, but those benefits can’t be monetized because everyone can make use of the knowledge gained. So government support is the only way to sustain science. And that support is being rapidly ended.
But why do our new rulers want to destroy science in America? Sadly, the answer is obvious: Science has a tendency to tell you things you may not want to hear. Medical research may tell you that vaccines work and don’t cause autism. Energy research may tell wind power works and doesn’t massacre birds.
And one thing we know about MAGA types is that they are determined to hold on to their prejudices. If science conflicts with those prejudices, they don’t want to know, and they don’t want anyone else to know either. So they really want to destroy science.
Again, this isn’t hyperbole, and it’s not about the long run. American science is being gutted as you read this.
