Michelle Dang
Appearances
Science Vs
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Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, the unprecedented and sometimes rather strange things that have been happening to science in the US recently. Milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard, so they say. But recently they've also been courting some controversy. Rose Rimlett, Senior Producer at Science Versus, tell us about the milkshakes.
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Okay, so time for some good news. But to get to the good news, we will need some more bad news. So grants looking into COVID research have been cut. And when your team at Nature asked...
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Health and Human Services, why they told you the HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago, which is quite startling because according to the CDC, more than 6,000 people died from COVID in the U.S. in the past three months. And then there's folks with long COVID.
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There was another big reversal, which is that big chunks of this study called the Women's Health Initiative had also been on the chopping block. We've talked about this study on this show before. It's basically tens of thousands of women being tracked for more than three decades. Super, super important study. Certain parts of that study had been terminated.
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But then there was this huge outcry from scientists saying, some senators, even some celebrities, and the department decided to refund it. This is a time, though, when a lot of researchers have been scared into silence. And, you know, I think as reporters, both of us have experienced this, where we'll reach out to someone who just says, not right now, I can't talk to the press.
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But do you think this actually tells us that your best chance of getting research is to speak up in this moment, as hard as that might be?
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And I think for some scientists, they might be feeling like, hey, I didn't sign up for this, you know, to be running these campaigns to try and get my funding back. In fact, we talked about this a little bit with Seema Lakdawalla, who's a virologist at Emory.
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And nerds are fighting back with lawsuits too. So just this week, a bunch of researchers and physicians sued the NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services over the cuts to grants for LGBTQ research. After the break, a controversial executive order. Some say it could stop critical research in its tracks. But others reckon that it just might save us from a new pandemic.
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Plus, will all these cuts boost the economy? Coming up. Welcome back. Now, we're going to talk about a new executive order from the Trump administration that's got some scientists pretty nervous. And before we get into the details of the executive order, I just want to talk about a big part of the reason that it came down, which is because of this big and very interesting question of...
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What started the COVID pandemic? So let's start here. Now, the truth is that we don't know exactly where the virus came from before it showed up in humans. But the best scientific thinking and what most virologists and epidemiologists think happened is that the virus came to us naturally through animals. And we're getting more and more evidence on this.
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Despite that, President Trump and others have long theorised that COVID-19 started from a lab leak in China. Here's Nature reporter Max Kozlov again.
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Wouldn't it be convenient that if... Have you gone to COVID.gov recently?
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Yeah, and I do want to emphasize that a lot of the information on here right now is just truly misinformation.
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And that's because this idea that the COVID virus leaked out of a lab is part of the explanation for this new executive order that came out just a couple of weeks ago. And what it does is it's putting a pause on what the administration is calling dangerous gain-of-function research. So think if you take a virus or a bacteria and you tweak it in a way that might make it more deadly or contagious.
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And it's this kind of research that the Trump administration claims was happening in China and caused the pandemic. Now, the order says that federally funded research doing dangerous gain-of-function research has to stop for 120 days while the administration creates a new policy on this.
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And if a scientist disobeys this order, it means they could be banned from receiving federal funding for up to five years.
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So halting dangerous gain-of-function research, that might seem like a good idea, but Seema, the virologist from Emory University, along with other virologists, are saying that the wording of this order is so vague that they're worried a bunch of really important research is going to be affected here.
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Yeah, so scientists tweak viruses and bacteria for all kinds of reasons. to help us understand the risks of bird flu, for example, or to study superbugs. There's even cancer research that alters viruses so that they attack tumors, which is very cool. But Seema's wondering, is all of that work going to be affected here? Does all of that work now have to be on pause? We just don't know.
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And for Seema, what's a little frustrating here is that there's already a bunch of rules around how scientists do this kind of work. Even before Trump got in, the Biden administration introduced a new policy that added more scrutiny to this kind of research. Here's Seymour again, talking with our editor, Blythe Terrell.
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That's right. Hopefully, we'll know more about what research is going to be affected when the new government policy comes out. And we did ask the Trump administration about some of the concerns here and didn't hear back. Here's Max again.
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So finally, I want to go back to the cuts to grants and jobs in science to talk about the government's reasoning here, why they're doing this. I mean, the US has got a national debt of around $36 trillion. And the Trump administration says a big reason for these cuts is that they want to stop government waste and help the economy.
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Thanks, Professor Andrew Fieldhouse, who's an economist at Texas A&M. And Andrew told me that for decades, since World War II really, there's been this idea that when the government invests in basic science, like how the body works or how atoms work, That gives us knowledge, which can potentially be used to help the economy.
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So investing in rockets and space science decades ago ended up launching the current space economy, which the US government recently said adds more than $130 billion to the economy. Another example, the US government invests in understanding the basic biology of viruses, like coronaviruses. And it literally spends millions of dollars into mRNA vaccine technology that might have never worked.
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So there are some obvious examples where investing in science has clear benefits for the economy. The internet is another classic example, which also started out through U.S. government money. But at the same time, it's pretty easy to find some projects that the U.S. government has funded recently and think, huh, that's no Apollo space mission.
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Like take this one, Smart is the New Sexy, a study about the mating behaviour of chickadees. Or another paper that's about cannibalistic tadpoles. Every now and then a politician will find studies just like these and say, come on, science is having a laugh. This is a waste of taxpayer money.
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So we wanted to know, when you don't cherry pick the obvious examples where science has made bank, or the curious examples where it's not so obvious where the benefit might be, does investing in science really boost the economy? Luckily, Andrew and a colleague at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas finished a study that helps us answer this very question.
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They looked through more than 70 years of data and used regression models to see when the US government put money into non-defence research and development in the past. So think the NIH, the NSF, NASA. What happened? That is... The government puts in a dollar of R&D funding, what comes out...
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Yeah. The team found that for every dollar that the government spends on science, years down the line, the economy gets around $1.70.
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And it's not just Andrew's work that finds this. In fact, one non-partisan think tank concluded that, quote, virtually every scholarly study examining the issue finds the same thing. Although the bang for your buck that you get from investing in science changes depending on the studies. Now, this isn't to say that every single research project is going to launch a new company for Elon Musk.
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But it does tell us that however we've been funding science, it is to some extent boosting the economy. It's also been estimated that for every dollar spent on the National Weather Service, which has also recently had budget cuts, we get back about $74.
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NOAA's budget is just under $7 billion, or at least it was, and the improvements it's made in predicting hurricanes has been estimated to save us about $5 billion every time there's a large hurricane.
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Andrew says that the numbers you see for investing in science are better than anything else the government could be doing, better than investing in infrastructure even, which is why it's hard to understand the White House's proposed budget for next year. It would slash the National Science Foundation by more than 50% and the NIH's budget by 40%.
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Now, some folks say that without this government funding, things are actually going to get better because the private sector and the free market can now do more efficient research. Andrew says that he hears this kind of thing all the time.
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Why would they... care this much about a milkshake study.
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Yeah. Andrew's research and others have found that public funding actually incentivises private firms to invest a bit more in R&D, which is partly because all this basic science has found cool shit that then companies invest in. But the thing is, when the public funding goes away, the private sector doesn't come to the rescue.
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Companies are generally focused on investments that develop new products rather than exploratory basic science. And on top of that, you can't patent a lot of basic research because you're just working out how the body works or how the universe works. And you can't patent Uranus. Andrew told me that this idea that the private sector is going to foot the bill here, it's a fairy tale.
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We talked about it. Why would big pharma with shareholders to look out for invest in research, basic research that may or may not go anywhere? And if it does, you can't patent it.
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Last month, economists in D.C. used Andrew's research to estimate that if there really were long-term 50% reductions in federal science funding, and this may not happen, but just as an example, it would make the average American approximately $10,000 poorer. Wow. So really, these cuts that are being proposed, you genuinely think it's going to mean less wages over time for the average American?
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So bottom line, investing in science, even if it's not clear exactly what those nerds are up to with their cannibalizing frogs or whatnot, overall, it does pay off. And by cutting science, we might just be cannibalizing our economy. To cap this off, I went back to Max, reporter at Nature. Max, as we're winding down, what have researchers told you about how they're feeling right now?
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And this idea that we may be heralding the end of America's fairytale science run, it's been on Seema's mind too.
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And maybe whether the U.S. is a science superpower anymore isn't your priority in this moment. But what I keep coming back to is that unless other countries are going to start really investing in science, we all stand to lose out here, potentially having fewer new medicines, fewer breakthroughs. We'll definitely have less cool science. And to say the least, that's going to be a bummer.
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That's Science Faces. This episode has 91 citations in it. So if you want to read more about how science can help to boost the economy or anything that we've talked about on the show, you can go to the show notes and there's a link to the transcript. Also, if you want to follow Max's reporting, just go to nature.com slash news. And I'd love to hear how you're feeling about science right now.
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You can tell us on Instagram, we're science underscore VS. And also on TikTok, I'm at Wendy Zuckerman. Thank you. Thanks to Maya Golden-Krasner, Deputy Director at the Climate Law Institute at the Centre for Biological Diversity, who you heard at the start of the show saying that this has just been a daily stream of nightmare news. Also, thank you to Dr. Shea Wolf.
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Special thanks to Lindsay Cherner and Whitney Potter. Also to the Zuckerman family and Joseph LaBelle Wilson. Mum, I cut the second Uranus joke. You were probably right. It was too many Uranus jokes. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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And wherever you do listen to us, please give us a five-star review if you like what we're doing. It helps other people find the show. And if you are listening on Spotify, follow us and tap the bell icon so you get notifications when new episodes come out. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.
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So Kevin's findings are rather inconvenient to this story that they're pushing.
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Yeah, because that is what... This episode is about what is happening in science in the U.S. right now. Because a few months ago, we reported on what some were calling a war on science. But there was a lot of confusion about what would be targeted. How bad is this going to be? And now it's becoming very clear what is going on. And I tell you, it's been a real... Milk shaker.
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As the Trump government says that it is trying to reduce government spending and cut waste billions of dollars of funding into science research has been cut in many areas. We're going to tell you all about it. Because today we are talking about exactly what is going on with science, because it's not only about the muzzling and the cuts.
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There's also been some curious executive orders affecting research. And we're hearing from a lot of folks who are really worried in this moment.
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We're also going to tell you how some scientists have been fighting back. Plus, a big reason that the Trump government is making these cuts, as we mentioned, is to help the economy. So will it work? After the break. Welcome back. Today on the show, what's happening with science in the US. And to kick us off, let's first get a lowdown on what has been happening since we first covered this.
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So we've called back someone on the show who has been following this really, really closely. And it's someone that you guys absolutely loved from last time, or at least one person on Instagram did.
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What would have been like the nicest, the nicest comparison that someone could have given you?
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Give us the lowdown. What do we know now? What has been happening in just the last few months?
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It would be great if science influenced more public opinion, in fact, if evidence influenced opinion.
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And then let's look at climate change for a second, because that has also, that's another area that's been on the chopping block. NOAA, which is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has been hit. There's been projects on weather forecasting, tracking the cost of climate disasters that have been retired. What have you heard about climate change research at the NIH?
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You and your team have done a lot of work just trying to understand why these cuts are happening. And when it comes to vaccine hesitancy, the NIH told your team, you know, it's basically not a priority anymore to improve vaccine interest. Curious, in the middle of a measles outbreak.
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And then research on LGBTQ folks, and particularly transgender folks, has been hit really hard. Grants around how taking hormones might affect your health, disease prevention, like HIV prevention. These are all examples of projects that have been cut, which the government had justified because they said research programs based on gender identity are unscientific.
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But what's curious is that there is one study that the White House was very keen to fund when it came to trans folks. Tell us about that.
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It is astonishing because if you're genuinely in a place where you don't want to be funding trans research because it's the minority of the population, many Americans are not trans, But then when we look at the research we do have, maybe out of those who regret surgery, for example, who have done surgery, it's maybe 1% of trans folks will regret it. And that's important to know.
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By the way, we also reached out to the NIH about these cuts and they told us that the, quote, NIH is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities. And then just something else that I'm starting to see is scientists beginning to calculate or at least get their head around some of the consequences of the cuts that the US made to international aid.
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So... Recently, there was some researchers that tried to put figures around how many people might die because of those cuts to programs like USAID. So what these researchers estimated is if they just looked at the expected increased cases of HIV, tuberculosis, and deaths from unplanned pregnancies, so from unsafe births, unsafe abortions...
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They predict that around 25 million people could die in the next 15 years if the U.S. pulled back all of its global health funding.
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And on that point, I mean, I should say that this has been on the US for a long time now and the whole world has been used to that. There's other countries that could be replacing the US and could be putting money into international aid.
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This just comes at a time when the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland have also said they might cut contributions, which tells us this is part of a... Just a bigger story here.