Like you, I woke up on Saturday morning to the news of Donald Trump’s unconstitutional war in Iran. But I also woke up to a message from my friend about her lab results regarding a diagnosis of her mystery illness, took my second-to-last antibiotic for a sinus infection, and checked my weather app to see if we should take my son to the playground. Though Trump’s assaults continue domestically and abroad, so, too, do our daily lives. And my day would have been much worse without the ease of science. My friend’s doctor could have not caught the early stages of her curable disease, my sinus infection could have gone on for weeks, and we could have gotten drenched at the park.
Science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEM) make up about a quarter of the American workforce. STEM output accounts for 40% of GDP. Scientists and adjacent fields make up about 18% of eligible voters. Every tax dollar invested in research and development returns $2.50. The great experiment of American democracy is interwoven with science, innovation, and discovery. But today we are faced with an administration that ignores evidence at every turn: from intelligence about nuclear capabilities of other nations to the effectiveness of vaccines and pasteurization. And we — our democracy, our economy, our families, our lives — bear the cost of this malicious ignorance.
Authoritarian regimes of the past century have written the playbook on how to turn vibrant scientific ecosystems into weapons of the state. In Germany, Spain, and the USSR, after an initial purging of ideologically incompatible science and scientists, government funding was bolstered for “government-approved science.” The tradeoffs were numerous. The science had to come from citizens — and the scientists had to turn over lists of colleagues (e.g., those who were Jewish or Protestant, those who believed in heritability), change their research questions to align with administrative priorities, and be willing to experiment on other humans for the #GoodOfTheMotherland. Science was forcibly moved from curiosity-driven knowledge gathering for the betterment of all humankind to competitive, nationalistic, ideologically driven questions to benefit the regime. Science became a weapon of the state.
Historical context and parallels are breathtaking and should give us all pause. The same people who confirmed Secretaries Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth, who allow immigration forces to violently terrorize our cities, call for the United States to invade sovereign nations, and promote the consolidation of power to the executive are now in control of American science. We are seeing prototypes of federally funded research being used against the public. Private companies are being issued contracts to purge science that is not ideologically aligned with the administration, the National Institutes of Health budget is being used to advance eugenics-based pseudoscientific claims, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attempted to fund wildly unethical research on vulnerable African babies. We cannot let this happen in America.
The combination of a masked paramilitary force being used against civilians, the intentional spread of extremist ideology and misinformation, the purging of scientists, and the censorship and use of “science” by the state to harm specific groups of people have never been indicators of a society moving toward a more enlightened and democratic future. When a government decides evidence no longer matters, it allows them to construct justifications for almost anything — no matter how vile. This is why on March 7, Stand Up for Science is mobilizing for a National Day of Action to save science, protect health, and defend democracy. I hope you will join us.
Colette Delawalla is the founder and CEO of Stand Up for Science.