Jocelyn Kaiser

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. We are busily working on new episodes for our next season, which kicks off in March. We've got some awesome episodes coming up on ADHD and squirting. But before the fun games and waterworks, we just really wanted to update you on what was going on with science in the US right now.

And so now if this funding gets severely cut, I mean, the expectation is that we will have fewer drugs on the market, at least as quickly as we would have otherwise, right?

After the break, why you shouldn't write a grant with the word women in it anymore. Plus, why the Trump administration might be going after science. Welcome back. Today on the show, we're talking about the state of science in the US, and it is not looking good. I'm chatting with Max Kozlov, reporter for Nature.

So Professor Darby Saxby at the University of Southern California received this list of words from a colleague. And the colleague received funding from the National Science Foundation and received this list directly from the National Science Foundation that basically implies that if you use these particular words, it can automatically cause a grant to be flagged, maybe pulled.

And this list includes words like women, female, activism, Black and Latinx, gender, even systemic trauma biased.

So no more talking about blunt force trauma or statistical bias, let alone talking about research into women or Black and Latinx folks.

So what is going on with this list? What do we know?

Yeah, it's all part of the same package. It's all part of the anti-science agenda, whatever you want to call it.

I mean, this list is out of control. It's like to call it, to try to pretend that this list is about... Gender ideology, racial ideology. I mean, it's really just a list that makes many branches of science difficult to function.

What is great, though, is that people with vaginas is still allowed.

Just putting that out there, which actually might be more accurate to what some of the people are researching.

People with vaginas. Still okay, apparently. For now.

For now.

Headlines are screaming that Trump is waging an assault on science that will make Americans dumber and sicker. So after the break, what is actually happening right now? And how bad is this? Welcome back today on the show, the Trump administration's so-called war on science.

And by the way, we did reach out to the NSF, the National Science Foundation, and they wrote back saying, quote, NSF is working expeditiously to conduct a comprehensive review of our projects, programs and activities to be compliant with the existing executive orders. And then they sent us to their website on these orders. Now, Max, USAID has been hit really hard.

What are the public health implications of what's going on here?

Wow, it's called the President's Malaria. Clearly not this president.

Absolutely. And so the USAID was on a 90-day freeze, but has it actually just been shut down?

And now that RFK Jr. has been confirmed as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, you know, this is someone who's rejected the science on vaccines, among many other things. What are you most worried about?

We're hearing about parents in the U.S. downloading the vaccine schedules for their kids now because they're worried about that information being wiped and changing. Do you think that's an overreaction?

Why do you think the Trump administration is going after science in this way? Is this all just about saving money?

I talked about what was happening with Max Kozlov, who's a science journalist at Nature, focusing on biomedical research and US policy. And Nature, if you don't know, is one of the most prestigious science journals in the world. Max and the team at Nature have been tracking what's been going on since Trump became president very closely.

Wow. They're still pissed about mosques? Is that what's going on here?

It feels like... A war on science, if we call it that, makes sense because science is how we understand the world and how we can tell facts from misinformation, from lies. And so if you have an administration that just wants to say whatever it says, whatever fits its agenda, whether it's facts or not, science would get in the way of that.

I think my last question is, do you, when I talk to academics about this, I think depending on their optimism. They either see this as sort of a bit like Trump's negotiation tactics with the tariffs, make it really bad to begin with, then you sort of sidle somewhere in between and it's maybe not so bad, there's some victims along the way, science survives, having lost an arm or two.

But then others tell me they think the war on science is here to stay for the next four years at least and this is only going downhill. What do you think?

You got any good jokes?

Now, when describing basically what's happening to science in the US right now, I'm hearing academics use words like unprecedented, scary. How would you explain the current situation?

There's only so much they can do.

That's right. Thanks so much, Max. Thanks for your time and your work.

That was Max Kozlov, reporter at Nature. We reached out to the White House, the Health and Human Services Department, the NIH and the CDC for comment, but we didn't hear back by the time we published this episode. And Science Versus will be back in your ears in March. And we'll be using a lot of those forbidden words, I promise. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.

And so let's talk about the government websites, because in some cases, entire web pages have been taken down. So what is going on?

So Trump has said that he's trying to cut government spending. And last year, the U.S. federal government deficit was $1.8 trillion. But still, scientists say that what is happening right now is unprecedented and insane. They're telling us that it's scary. One person told us that they've been crying every day.

Ironically, something liberal. What?

It's really wild. So last week, as I was preparing for this episode, I just saw a bunch of pages on monkeypox prevention, HIV and transgender folks, health disparities among LGBTQ youth. They were all offline, but now they're back.

Yeah. Do you want to, you want to rate it out?

That is unbelievable. It's so Orwellian to just say that. I know. When in fact the biological reality is the exact opposite.

Also, on a website about monkeypox vaccines and prevention, it's... This is insane.

And is data actually being erased or it's just the websites are being just the websites don't work anymore?

Right, and because some of these data sets use these supposed diversity and inclusion words, like tracking the sexuality of individuals, the gender, the race, they're worried that they're going to get scrubbed. Is that...

And to be honest with you, while following this attack on science, I've been crying too.

Climate change has also been hit really hard by this. We're seeing the Department of State had a climate change section on their website. It's gone. The White House website climate change page is no longer existing. Max, so speaking of, you know, you've mentioned these kind of forbidden words, these words that are no longer allowed to be on websites.

The CDC told its scientists to retract or pause the publication of any research manuscript that's been considered by a scientific journal to ensure that those manuscripts do not use these terms. And just to be explicit, the terms are things like gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBTQ, transsexual, non-binary, assigned male or female at birth.

why is the CDC, this is a memo coming from the CDC, why is that organization capitulating to this?

And then speaking of job losses, there has been quite a few firings going on just recently. So what's going on? Who's been targeted here when it comes to science?

This is Jocelyn Kaiser, a reporter for Science magazine. We talked about how in the past few weeks, thousands of federal websites have had information pulled from them. Thousands of people at agencies like the CDC, National Institutes of Health and the EPA have been fired. Clinical trials, really important clinical trials, have been halted.

So a lot of people getting fired at the NIH and CDC. There's also been a lot of confusion around funding for research. We're talking research for cancer drugs, heart medication, new scientific discoveries. What is going on with the funding?

I was speaking to an academic who said at one point they got an email from their university saying, stop all research now, and then soon after, no, no, you can keep doing your research. Are scientists still getting money for their research?

Restraining the restraint. I hate a double negative.

That is how the administration does its work. There's a lot of... I remember the last time Trump was in power, there was a lot of stuff that hit the news cycle that was really flashy. But a lot of the damage that was done around, you know, immigration and things like that, it was in these really boring things that don't... that don't hit the news cycle.

Funding for research was stopped and then possibly restarted. There's just a lot of confusion. Jocelyn has been a journalist for over 30 years, and she told me that the changes she's seen since Trump became president are startling.

So I want you to tell me the boring ways that Trump is stopping science.

This is how it happens.

That's right. These incredibly mundane ways that therefore, as a direct consequence, researchers cannot get money to do their science.

Because instead of saying we're freezing funding, which they tried and that didn't work now, the strategy is don't let them do a boring post.

And this has huge implications, right? I mean, there was this study that came out a few years ago about NIH funding showing that every new drug approved by the FDA from 2010 to 2019, with every new drug, the NIH played some role in researching that drug. And so that's new drugs that people listening would have taken.