American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

Summary

Sign up for the Starts With a Bang newsletter Travel the universe with Dr. Ethan Siegel as he answers the biggest questions of all. From World War II until 2024, the US stood unchallenged as the scientific leader of the free world. Across practically every discipline — physics, materials science, astronomy, chemistry, biology, medicine, geology, etc. — American scientific missions and initiatives, often in collaboration with European, Canadian, Asian, and many other global partners, brought us new advances and breakthroughs, paving the way for generations of scientists to thrive. In a society that values facts, scientific truths, education, and the public good, this recipe led to multiple generations of continued breakthroughs and advances.Since late January of this year, however, all of that has rapidly changed. Many of the most valuable scientific organizations in the world, including NOAA, NASA, the NSF, the CDC, the EPA, and the FDA, have experienced a set of unprecedented internal attacks. Funding streams have been terminated. Grants that have been successfully competed for and won have been pulled. Fellowships and scholarships have been revoked. Contracts have been broken. Thousands upon thousands of employees have been terminated, often in defiance of court orders. And now, at the start of the second half of 2025, a new budget is on the verge of becoming law, which would largely eliminate science as we know it across universities and colleges, research institutes, and national labs. This isn’t a horror story; this is a real-life nightmare for the most educated and skilled American workers of all: scientists.And yet, even if the worst comes to pass, there’s still a reason to be hopeful. Hitler’s destruction of his nation’s science in 1930s Nazi Germany wound up benefiting the rest of the world through an exodus of scientists that became known as Hitler’s gift. Even if American science becomes gutted to the worst imaginable level, science will still survive and...