A judge just took Trump to task for his attack on science

In some quarters, science has a bad name. Some children, from their first exposure to courses in biology, chemistry, or physics, are intimidated by their quantitative focus or turned off by what they mistakenly see as its sterility.

On college campuses, humanists feel under siege due to the growing popularity of scientific fields among their students. They reject the view of some scholars that because “science follows the methodology of rational dialogue,” it “transcends culture.”

But, as the Trump administration proceeds to take down the existing infrastructure of scientific research in the U.S., all Americans need to rally to its defense. That is because scientific literacy and research are essential to the well-being of all of us and to the country itself.

The administration claims that it does not want to limit or end scientific research, just rid it of the taint of politics. On May 23, President Trump issued an executive order alleging that “Actions taken by the prior Administration ... politicized science, for example, by encouraging agencies to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion considerations into all aspects of science planning, execution, and communication.”

The president promised to restore what he called a “gold standard for science to ensure that federally funded research is transparent, rigorous, and impactful.” But on June 16, Judge William G. Young of the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts exposed that promise as just a pretext for carrying out a war on science.

He said that cuts to the National Institutes of Health grants mandated by the president and others in the federal government were blatantly discriminatory and rooted in prejudice. Judge Young ordered the government to restore most of those grants.

This is not the first time in American history that the scientific enterprise has been used as a political football. Indeed, as a 2017 article in Scientific American notes, “The reality is that engaging in scientific research is a social activity and an inherently political one.”

Scientific projects, like World War II’s Manhattan Project, which led to the atomic bomb, and the massive investment in science after Russia launched the first satellite into space, have been fueled by political goals. Moreover, the work of scientists on subjects like global warming can easily get caught up in partisan contests.

Critics worry that the scientific enterprise will be tainted by the political agendas of those who supply funding and help drum up public support for the work scientists do. Those worries reached a fever pitch following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Science skepticism spiked as resentment grew over such polices as universal masking and school closures. Although polls show that trust in science has rebounded, a substantial portion of the population remains doubtful that scientific research is sound and helpful in making public policy decisions.

Enter the Trump administration. As The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer observes, “The Trump administration has launched a comprehensive attack on knowledge itself, a war against culture, history, and science.”

But it has done so by using a skillful kind of double-speak. The president’s executive order puts the administration on the side of “restoring a gold standard for science,” and guarantees that scientific research is “transparent, rigorous, and impactful.”

At the same time, Trump has cut science funding to "its lowest level in decades.” The administration has taken a meat ax to research budgets everywhere, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, to say nothing about what it has done to research funding at universities like Columbia and Harvard.

This brings us back to Judge Young’s ruling.

He found that the administration’s efforts to terminate NIH grants “on topics such as health equity, racial disparities, vaccine hesitancy and maternal health in minority communities” had nothing to do with the president's supposed commitment to “restoring the gold standard for science.” Instead, Young said they were motivated by prejudice and a political agenda of “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.” 

Young took note of “the administration’s very public efforts to eliminate any trace of diversity and equity initiatives from the federal government, as well as its attacks on transgender people.” He did not mince words.

From the bench, he told the government’s lawyers that “over the course of his career he had ‘never seen government racial discrimination like this,’” and that he “felt duty bound to state his conclusion about the government’s intent. ‘I would be blind not to call it out.’”

Americans should not be blind to why the Trump administration is targeting science and what its consequences will be for all of us. As Serwer puts it, the president and his allies believe that the kind of “truth-seeking” that goes on in scientific laboratories all over the country “imperils their hold on power.”

But whatever its motivation, the president’s assault on science will leave us sicker, less prosperous, and more vulnerable to the ravages of nature. It will leave this country weaker and will undermine its position in the world.

Put simply, America loses when science loses.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.