This article is about the Chan school of public health specifically (which has been especially hard hit), but it echoes a lot of what I’ve been hearing from friends working in medical research at other institutions.
(gift link)
Federal Cuts Become ‘All Consuming’ at Harvard’s Public Health School
(gift link)
Great. That just cut NSF proposal success rate in half. For years it’s been 1 in nearly 10 proposals gets funded. Now it’s 1 in 20. Hurray. Pity those junior faculty members trying to establish their careers.
RFK Jr. says he may bar scientists from publishing in top medical journals
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday that he could bar government scientists from publishing in the world’s leading medical journals, instead proposing the creation of “in-house” publications by his agency — the latest in the Trump administration’s attacks on scientific institutions.
“We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA [published by the American Medical Association] and those other journals, because they’re all corrupt,” Kennedy said during an appearance on the “Ultimate Human” podcast. He also described the journals as being under the control of pharmaceutical companies.
The three publications he named — which were established in the 1800s, and publish original, peer-reviewed research — play a central role in disseminating medical research worldwide. The Lancet and JAMA each say they receive more than 30 million annual visits to their sites, while the New England Journal of Medicine says it is read in print and online by more than 1 million people each week.
Its unbelievable. (Literally - in its proper use).
However, it’s not like we’re talking about publishing an article in a newspaper or magazine - journal articles may take as long as 18months from submission to publication due to the thorough peer review process (articles are already in the pipeline and can’t be stopped since the government doesn’t own the journals)… And things submitted this year won’t be published for a while so not sure how the government wants to implement this mind boggling idea.
If the point is to push scientists to Canada, Europe, or Australia (or help China) though, such an announcement may turn out successful.
Several years ago, The Lancet notoriously retracted a paper that linked autism to the MMR vaccine: Lancet retracts 12-year-old article linking autism to MMR vaccines - PMC
One wonders whether someone’s long memory of this influenced the decision to stop publishing in The Lancet.
Choosing to not publish in a respected medical journal because of the retraction reminds me of the Churchill quote, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried.”
Publishing in peer-reviewed, respected journals that occasionally must retract is the worst form of science, except for all the others…
More to the point, publishing in peer-reviewed, respected journals that occasionally must retract is anathema to those who traffic in conspiracy theories…
NYT gift link (hey it’s the end of the month, might as well use them up…)
World Scientists Look Elsewhere as U.S. Labs Stagger Under Trump Cuts
With the welcome mat withdrawn for promising researchers from around the world, America is at risk of losing its longstanding pre-eminence in the sciences.
Losing this spark that has been uniquely American is a huge loss, for all humanity.
Dirk Brockmann, a biology and physics professor in Germany, warned that there were much broader implications. The acceptance of risk and seemingly crazy leaps of inspiration woven into American attitudes, he said, help produce a research environment that nowhere else can quite match. The result has been decades of innovation, economic growth and military advances.
“There is something very deep in the culture that makes it very special,” said Professor Brockmann, who once taught at Northwestern. “It’s almost like a magical ingredient.”
More bad news for nuclear scientists in particular
Can you be more precise?
-9
I think they are referring to the nuclear scientists hit in attacks on Iran.
Though unlike the US budget cuts, this might create more vacancies, if that’s your ideal future job…
Edited to Add from @JAGTownHall | Linktree
The video recordings of Jun 12 webinar and Jun 17 townhall are here: Joint Associations Group (JAG) Release of Recommendations of the JAG Subject Matter Experts Group Informational Webinar on 6/12 and Town Hall on 6/17 | Council on Governmental Relations
The Presentation with the different models is here: https://www.cogr.edu/sites/default/files/JAG%20June%2012%20Informational%20Webinar%20Slide%20Presentation.pdf
Interactive article about research grants cut at Harvard. Gift link.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) today lost its 8-year-old headquarters building in Alexandria, Virginia, to another federal agency as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to shrink the size of the U.S. government.
NSF’s 1800 employees learned of the move today in a staff memo that did not say when they will move, or where. During a press conference this morning, employees filled the 19-story building’s lobby and chanted, “We won’t move.” Many condemned the decision as the latest assault on research by the Trump administration, which has fired dozens of NSF staff, canceled 1700 grants, and proposed a 57% cut to the agency’s next budget.
The new tenant of the building will be HUD, which is moving out its building in downtown DC