By Sheeva Azma
True leaders are made in tough times. What if some of those leaders were scientists?
Scientists are a unique part of the US workforce: our PhD training is paid for entirely by taxpayers precisely because our work is so important to the general welfare of our fellow man…but let’s face it, the past few months have been awful for the US scientific workforce.
It’s something you can’t really understand the full magnitude of unless you are a scientist (or someone who has really good knowledge of how US science policy works). I spoke at Stand Up for Science OKC about it in March 2025, and it has gotten worse since then.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what to do in our current times. My whole job revolves around communicating science and policy and using science to solve tough problems, and I do have a lot of ideas. There have been many people floating around solutions to the problems we have — and I’ve been trying to put aside my years of debate team participation to be able to really listen.
There’s a lot to say about this nexus of science and policy in which I have been working for nearly my whole life. Perhaps it’s one’s life’s work to figure it all out — it’s a tough challenge. However, one thing that seems clear to me is that scientists should be proactive, not reactive in their part of the discussion.
For example: when you read a news story that you do not like, your first reaction may be to feel negatively and complain. What if your first reactions were to 1) acknowledge that you are experiencing negative emotions because things did not go the way you wanted, then 2) figure out if you could do something to change it and then 3) do that thing? (If you’re all about this but something’s holding you back from steps 2 and 3, get in touch — I’d love to know more and help.)
For one thing, social media feeds would be a lot less toxic. For another thing, you might be able to change the thing you so dislike.
To be fair, federal funding for science was not a voting issue in the 2024 general elections — and before all of this happened, few people may have known that almost all science research is funded by taxpayers through Congressional appropriations each year.
It’s clear that people voting in November 2024 were concerned about things they felt were more tangible to them — the rising price of groceries, housing, and everything else which made paychecks travel much less far.
Now, thanks to federal science policy actions, we have new problems that non-scientists don’t have the expertise to grasp the full effects of, much less tackle.
The easiest thing is to fume and be mad at the people who voted for this, but perhaps those voters did not realize they were voting for this. Neither presidential ticket had anyone with a science background — what a different country we would be if that was the case!
One huge problem in our current times is the strengthened role of career politicians without a science background making decisions about how science should happen. This is partly “politics as usual” with non-scientists running the show, but not entirely. Vannevar Bush, engineering faculty at MIT who became the US’s first presidential science advisor, deliberately created a system in which scientists would help decide where taxpayer dollars would go — because scientists are the ones who are up-to-speed on the pressing research questions of our time and the best ways to tackle them using the scientific method.
What I’m going to say next has always been true: just because politicians say things that sound scientifically valid…doesn’t mean that those things are. At the Department of Health and Human Services, politicians’ scientific “advice” has harmed people — I’m looking at you, RFK, Jr., for recommending that kids with measles take megadoses of vitamin A — which causes liver damage — rather than simply getting a vaccine. RFK, Jr., not a biomedical scientist or health professional, but primarily an environmental lawyer, has since walked back his statements on vaccines. He told Congress on May 14 that he does not want his personal views to be part of the scientific discourse on vaccines at HHS. According to RFK, Jr.’s congressional testimony, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya is the expert tasked with such decisions, and his beliefs on vaccine science align much more with that of mainstream science. However, if you ask me, the damage has been done, and has brought measles back again.
The issue of putting science over politics to help taxpayers live better lives is a bipartisan issue — it affects all of us. Will it become a voting issue in the 2026 midterms or even the 2028 presidential elections after the mass layoffs of the federal scientific workforce? Only time will tell.
Another part of the problem is that scientists are excluded from science in ways that are structural. The people who get to intern in state legislatures, for example, have to have certain degrees: journalism, political science, and so on. These people, who will end up making laws on science-related things, might have never taken a science class. Same goes with the people who serve as judges in the judicial system — lawyers train in a humanities tradition, by and large.
What is a scientist to do in our current political times? There are many things you can do. Learn about why things are the way they are, and how US science funding was established post-WWII. Channel your frustration into participation in the policy world in ways that build bridges rather than divide people. There are many ways to get involved in science policy.
Instead of jumping onto social media to write yet another missive nobody will read (or — even worse — that will get a handful or even hundreds of likes, but lead to no action), pick up the phone and call your state and local lawmakers.
Instead of insulting your relative whose political views you don’t understand, seek to listen and figure out where your views might fit in. Surrounding yourself with people with the same views as you is convenient, but having an echo chamber is isolating and blocks you off from new ideas — whether you agree with them or not. There are some things we all agree on — it’s up to scientists to find those things and advocate for them to support our US science infrastructure.
Coming up with political zingers is nice, but coming up with solutions to help preserve the US science infrastructure is what we need, and it’s clear that, as with any other policy issues, the science is only a small part of a larger landscape in which voters’ attitudes towards science are shaped by how their lawmakers talk about them.
Instead of spamming the Facebook of that lawmaker you despise (and thereby bringing them even more of the publicity they crave), why not elevate a local, science-informed candidate running for office and work to help elect them in a positive-vibes, proactive, pro-science campaign?
Be proactive, not reactive. Instead of fuming over that thing you can’t believe happened, reflect on the good things that may be possible at the intersection of science and policy. Believe it or not, there are still a lot of those right now.
True leaders are made in tough times. What if some of those leaders were scientists?
Fancy Comma, LLC 