Almost 2,000 US scientists and engineers warn the public that the Trump administration is decimating science.
Since January 20, Trump, Musk, and the other members of the
administration have been constantly attacking scientific knowledge, scientific
methods, and scientific institutions. A group of over 1,900 researchers is now
appealing directly to the American public to stop these relentless attacks –
because everyone is in danger.
The signatories are members of the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. These organizations provide evidence-based
advice to the government, but the Trump government has made it clear where it
stands on scientific matters. Hence the open letter addressing the general
public.
“We are speaking out as individuals. We see real danger in
this moment,” the letter states. “We hold diverse political beliefs, but we are
united as researchers in wanting to protect independent scientific inquiry. We
are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nation’s scientific
enterprise is being decimated.”
The Trump administration has targeted universities and
members of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement have snatched students
off the streets, including Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil, which has been
described as a violation of the First Amendment.
“The administration’s current investigations of more than 50
universities send a chilling message. Columbia University was recently notified
that its federal funding would be withheld unless it adopted disciplinary
policies and disabled an academic department targeted by the administration.
Destabilizing dozens of universities will endanger higher education – and the
research those institutions conduct,” the open letter continues.
The Trump administration has used many executive orders
(EOs) to curtail the freedom of scientific institutions, orders that have been
described as illegal, violating the Constitution, and segregationist.
The orders have covered a wide range of topics from the EO
on trans and non-binary people to taking the US out of the Paris Agreement and
World Health Organization. They focused on purging any mention of diversity and
equality from public institutions, for example, NASA changed the stated goal of
the Artemis program, which was originally to put the first woman and first
person of color on the Moon.
Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency
has cut vital services in so many institutions, such as the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, where meteorologists and computer engineers at
the Hurricane Research Division, as well as those who worked for the agency’s
Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, the Great Lakes Environmental Research
Laboratory, etc., have been fired.
US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy
Jr has canceled meetings to prepare the next winter flu vaccine and is wasting
money in trying to prove the widely and thoroughly debunked link between
vaccines and autism.
“We call on the administration to cease its wholesale
assault on US science, and we urge the public to join this call. Share this
statement with others, contact your representatives in Congress, and help your
community understand what is at risk," the letter concludes. "The
voice of science must not be silenced. We all benefit from science, and we all
stand to lose if the nation’s research enterprise is destroyed.”
You can read the full open letter here.