"Unprecedented": The White House is moving to control the financing of science bothers the researchers – a public radio in South Carolina

Darby Saxe is worried that her funding for research can be canceled.

People’s brains change when they become parents. She studies more specially the brain of the father to find out which changes are at the heart of better parenting. And she wants to study different brains.

“If you want to understand the changes in the brain and biology of the fathers, it is not necessary to only look at white rich fathers who are hanging around a university, from which a convenient sample can be made,” says the University of a neuroendocrinologist in South California. “It just makes a better, more influential research project.”

So with a grant from the National Scientific Foundation – Federal Agency with an annual budget of $ 9 billion to finance research – it works to include more people from minority groups in its survey.

But her proposal for research contained the words “diverse” and “insufficiently presented”, words that now appear in a list of hundreds of terms related to DEI, which NSF is currently used to combine tens of thousands of research grants. The process, described to NPR by two NSF employees who spoke on condition of anonymity of fear of retribution from the administration, aims to mark research that may not obey President Trump’s executive orders aimed at initiatives of diversity, justice and Inclusion.

This type of control, together with other actions of the administration so far-the misery of grants, pressing communications by federal agencies, downloading databases of women’s health, HIV and youth behavior and cleansing some of the terms related to DEI-represent Many scientists are an exceptional move to exercise more presidential control over the types of science that is funded and potentially who does it. If continued, it can be a great deviation from how science has been funded for decades.

“This is Totally Unpreceded, Nothing Like This Has Ever Happened,” Says Neal Lane, Who Served as Director of the NSF from 1998. ” To Particular in Science, “he says. Focusing on Day, “they kill American science.”

From the 1990s, Congress has necessitated the load of NSF to weigh how its grants will strengthen the participation of women and minorities in science, in addition to the intellectual virtues of the proposal. Now the Trump administration is essentially saying that they cannot comply with this law.

“President Trump was elected president, but being elected president, the laws of the United States were not canceled and replaced by everything he wanted to do,” said reporter Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. Committee on Science, Space and Technology. “These are bilateral efforts to make sure we do not miss smart people in the scientific enterprise in the United States.”

But some say that given the diversity in the production of grants leads to more science. Last October, Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, released a report stating that “NSF has allocated over $ 2.05 billion for thousands of research projects that encourage neo-Marxist perspectives or dei thenets” and suggest that it undermines “objective Hard science. ”

“Intellectual diversity is welcome,” says Jonathan Backer, a senior research associate at the Heritage Foundation. “But to judge the merits of an idea based on the description of the grant, it is much more important than finding out where the participating people are literally coming in with regard to racial origin or country of origin.”

Changing how science is funded

Presidents have the power to set priorities in financing research and have used this power. The Biden administration made a boost to research climate and cancer, for example, and the George W. Bush administration prioritizes energy research and physical sciences. The Congress distributes money for these priorities, and then the agencies develop the fine details.

“Since World War II, Science Has Been Organized Around This Idea of ​​Peer Review, That Scientists Understand What Good Science Is and Should Make Decis About Oologist Who Studies Science at the University of Michigan.

In NSF, this means programming staff – often scientists who work in other institutions that come to NSF for temporary stay – manage the process of reviewing proposals, with a contribution from a number of scientists. The law dictates that the NSF examines both the intellectual merit of the proposal and the “broader impact” that research can allow, which means how the study will be beneficial to society.

For decades, a key part of these potential benefits has been how the grants will strengthen the participation of women and poorly represented groups in science. Since 1997, Congress requires NSF to explicitly weigh such factors in its gratuitous creation. According to Susan Barber, Dean of Duke University of Duke and Chairman of the NSF Committee on equal opportunities in science and engineering, which is ultimately beneficial for taxpayers.

“There is a great emerging literature that suggests that the teams have the largest set of voices, from different different environments, different types of living experiences, voices that may have dealt with the problems of few different angles,” she says. “They are more creative, they are more successful and … in the end they are the types of teams that make the largest discoveries.”

Trump’s executive orders are strongly against this mission. The agency is currently reviewing grants for Dei-related grants using, in part, a list of Senator Cruz’s report from October 2024, entitled “How Biden-Haris NSF politics”, according to the sources of the NPR NPR.

It is not clear what will happen with grants. NSF resumed the funding of existing awards after freezing them at the end of January and saying that “they cannot take action to delay or suspend the payment for active awards based only on actual or potential failure to comply with enforcement orders.” NSF sources say NPR that approximately 20% of the grants were originally marked and this number may be more increasing.

When reviewing the grants of content related to DEI and temporarily suspending payments, it seems that the agency prioritizes the executive order at its congress term, a practice that contradicts the internal directions, saying that the law has an advantage over enforcement orders when There is a conflict.

The Trump Administration’s efforts to exercise more control over NSF science exceed DEI. On Tuesday, staff were informed of plans to reduce the agency’s number from about 1700 by 25% to 50% over the next two months, according to NPR sources. The staff were also informed that President Trump’s first request could reduce the agency’s budget from $ 9 billion to $ 3 billion, Arstechnica reported first and confirmed by the NPR, although the actual reduction agreed by Congress may be different.

“It seems that this administration not only defines priorities, but the imposition of ideological compliance in such a way that if your grant studies something that is not aligned with a specific view of the world, it will simply not be funded,” Berman says. “I think the removal of this has the potential to undermine the entire scientific enterprise.”

Concerns about America’s competitive advantage

If the Trump administration continues to aggressively focus on initiatives for diversity in science and seeks to significantly reduce funding, American science will look radically different, Berman says.

Whole academic fields could dry out without federal means, she says, especially if Dei is widely defined. “This reduces the economy, psychology, sociology. In all these areas there are whole pieces of discipline that may simply not be possible to continue anymore,” Berman says.

Movements have also caused a culture of fear among many scientists. “This level of control will make the research less joint, less competitive and less innovative,” says Diana Machias, an ecologist at the University of California, Berkli, which is funded by NSF grant. Attracting more people to science is “not only expansion in the name of expansion, but expands in the name of developing strict questions that help us really remain competitive.”

Only about a quarter of NSF grant suggestions earn funding and this is after a strict application process. The idea that a prize grant can be canceled or not to be funded for political reasons makes many scientists uncomfortable and ultimately could lead to refusal or move outside the US

“I train students and students who want to continue scientific careers,” says Saxe. “It’s hard for me to think about how to encourage them when it looks like the work we do is so vulnerable to a guerrilla attack.”

Federal funding supports these trainees, many of which ultimately enter the private sector. NSF funds nearly 80% of major computing studies at universities, according to a recent statement by the Association for Computing Research.

Reduced funding can ultimately lead to a smaller qualified workforce to work on important issues in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and more. This is despite the insistence of close allies of the President, including Elon Musk, that in the US there is not enough talent for home cultivation to fill the search for the technology industry for computer science professionals such as software engineers and programmers.

“The private sector makes very important, mostly applied research and developments. But they do not really fund the same type of research where you are really exploring the border,” says Lane, the former NSF director.

“They cannot justify their shareholders, who do most of the things that the National Scientific Foundation does. If you take away federal support for science, science is dead in the United States. Nothing can replace it.”

Copyright 2025 NPR