US scientists slam research funding cuts

Research funding cuts, canceled programs, abandoned studies, and young scientists' careers in jeopardy — these are the realities that have emerged in the months since US President Donald Trump took office, according to thousands of scientists who have signed open letters warning that the administration is undermining US science and higher education.

"We see real danger in this moment … We are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nation's scientific enterprise is being decimated," says a national open letter signed by nearly 2,000 prominent US scientists, including numerous Nobel Prize winners.

Since taking office, Trump and his team have dramatically altered the country's scientific research infrastructure — cutting funding, terminating grants, defunding laboratories, and impeding international scientific collaboration, according to the letter released on Monday.

In recent weeks, the National Institutes of Health has suspended consideration of new grant applications and delayed decisions on funding disease research.

As of March, NIH funding has decreased by more than $3 billion compared to grants issued during the same period last year — representing an almost 60 percent decline, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Daniel Cox, distinguished professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Davis, has witnessed these disruptions firsthand.

"A colleague on another University of California campus was supposed to receive the second installment of his NIH R01 award on Feb 1, and it has not arrived. At my home department, the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program was slated to receive renewal funds for this summer, but they were canceled," Cox told China Daily.

His department has hosted a National Science Foundation-funded program for decades, through which "many dozens of wonderful young students have passed through and gone on to extraordinary careers," said Cox.

"This funding cut has happened to around a dozen or more programs around the country. This is murdering the hope of young scientists," Cox said.

Cox is a signatory to another open letter written by a group of faculty members last month in response to the Trump administration's investigation of 60 universities for alleged anti-Semitism and other civil rights violations. The letter has collected almost 4,000 signatures from faculty at more than 375 institutions.

Columbia University was recently informed that $400 million in federal funding would be withheld unless it adopted disciplinary policies and disabled an academic department targeted by the administration.

Last week, more than 600 faculty members at Harvard University signed a letter addressed to the university's governing boards urging that they publicly condemn federal attacks on universities and defy orders that interfere with their independence.

Cox viewed the suspension of previously approved grant funding to institutions such as Columbia as potentially unlawful government overreach — to exert control over university operations.

Monday's open letter also warns that "destabilizing dozens of universities will endanger higher education — and the research those institutions conduct".

"These drastic actions in just over two full months of the second Trump administration will have dramatic repercussions for years if they are not reversed soon," warned Cox.