One of Noah Finkelstein’s biggest concerns amid today’s federal science funding landscape is uncertainty.
Finkelstein, a University of Colorado Boulder physics professor, said it’s not clear if federal funding will exist for science, who will get it and how it’ll be distributed. At CU Boulder alone, 59 awards are currently terminated or under stop-work orders. One of those is a graduate fellowship program that Finkelstein ran, which means a number of his students who are working and researching are uncertain if the money will come and from where.
“That is the form of uncertainty I find so chilling and disruptive,” Finkelstein said.
A panel of experts, including Finkelstein, discussed the impact of federal science funding cuts and how the international and private sectors should respond as part of CU Boulder’s Conference on World Affairs on Tuesday. The panelists agreed that private and philanthropic support, while useful and important, cannot replace federal funding, because it comes with its own set of strings, incentives, goals and potential conflicts of interest.
The federal government has to step up, specifically Congress, said Roger Pielke Jr., a CU Boulder emeritus professor and former National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist. For instance, Congress needs to call a hearing regarding proposed changes at NCAR, he said.
“Until we can come together as a country, it’s going to be challenging for the scientific community,” Pielke said.
Panelist Ling Xin is a science journalist for the South China Morning Post. In 2024, she said, China surpassed the United States in total research and development investment, with China spending $1.03 trillion and the U.S. spending $1.01 trillion, figures adjusted for purchasing power.
“That is a small difference, but it’s not trivial, because it was unprecedented,” Xin said.
China is also now on track to be the first country to bring back samples from Mars since NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission was stalled due to funding cuts. The United States has been working on collecting Mars samples for decades and was on track to be the first country to do so, Xin said, and the samples have already been collected on Mars but are waiting for the U.S. mission to pick them up.
Top Chinese scientists and researchers are also going back to China across all ages and industries due to the funding uncertainty, layoffs and losing the freedom to collaborate, Xin said. Foreign students and scientists have always played a large role in the United States’ research enterprise, Finkelstein said. He questioned whether foreign students would continue to come to CU and the United States or if they would choose to go to a country that is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into recruiting foreign talent.
“This mass exodus of top talent, how it’s going to affect the U.S. research system and its global leadership will take time to see its full impact,” Xin said.
Part of helping science is by improving public perception of it and meeting people where they’re at, Finkelstein said. Especially as there’s a perception among the public that institutions such as CU Boulder do not benefit everyone, Pielke said.
“There’s a perception that the institutions have left them behind,” he said.
Finkelstein believes it’s important to cultivate a sense of belonging for all people and for everyone to understand that they don’t have to do science to belong to science.
“We all have a role to play in arguing for why, when and how science can advance our lives,” Finkelstein said.
Federally funded science, at universities and federal agencies, is meant to benefit all Americans, Pielke said. He described how the modern scientific enterprise in the U.S. started after World War II, and how in the 1970s and 1980s, Republicans were more supportive of federal investment in science than Democrats. The end of the Cold War in 1991 marked a turning point in how people thought about science funding.
“The Cold War provided the overall justification for why we invest in science and technology — we have to stay ahead of the Soviet Union,” Pielke said.
Things really changed during the 2004 election, Pielke said, when George W. Bush didn’t support science, and scientists, scientific journals and scientific organizations spoke out against Bush’s election. As a result, science became more partisan, and Democrats decided it would be a good wedge issue, he said.
Despite all the challenges, good things are happening in science today, Finkelstein said. Boulder and Colorado are global leaders in quantum science and engineering, for example, an area that continues to grow.
“I know people are suffering, and we are doing everything that we can,” Finkelstein said. “… But I don’t want to undersell the fact that amazing things are happening here right now, and it’s ours to lose (if the U.S. continues down this path).”
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