The leadership of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest multidisciplinary science organisation, issued dire warnings about the Trump administration’s actions to scientists and researchers during a plenary session that kicked off its annual meeting in Boston on 13 February.
‘The unprecedented developments of these last few weeks have left many of us in the science and engineering community uncertain, anxious and fearful,’ stated AAAS board chair Joe Francisco, who served as president of the American Chemical Society in 2010. ‘Being together, as we are now, is one of the greatest antidotes to those feelings, but together this is not enough,’ he told the packed exhibition hall.
The remarks were a reference to the slew of executive orders and other directives that President Donald Trump and his administration have introduced since his inauguration on 20 January. Reports are also circulating about imminent and dramatic cuts to the workforce of research agencies, such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, and Trump is also expected to propose significant budget decreases for them shortly.
Francisco went on to deliver a statement that the AAAS board had drafted and approved just hours earlier. ‘The shifting landscape of the United States has caused confusion, anger, uncertainty and anxiety among members of our community – these feelings are valid,’ Francisco read. ‘Decisions made by all three branches of the US government in the weeks ahead will affect our enterprise for years to come.’
Sudip Parikh, chief executive of the AAAS, also admitted that he was very concerned by recent developments. ‘We are in a moment of turmoil,’ he said. ‘There are things we have to adhere to, and one of them is that science, engineering and medicine are searches for the truth and facts, objectivity, and we live in a time when that seems under threat and we have to be able to say that.’
Unfit to serve
Further, Parikh suggested that some of the people leading the scientific endeavour in the current administration are unfit to serve, pointing specifically to Robert F Kennedy Jr, who was narrowly confirmed in the Senate yesterday to head the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the National Institutes of Health among other vital science agencies. Kennedy is a very public vaccine critic and a conspiracy theorist.
‘Let me just say this clearly: Robert F Kennedy Jr is not the right person to lead the HHS,’ Parikh asserted to massive applause. ‘He is not the right person because solving disease, curing disease, addressing health, requires a search for truth, requires science.’
He cautioned that the next month will likely be ‘one of the most important in the history of science and technology’ in the US. ‘I am not one that tends toward hyperbole,’ Parikh continued, referencing the fact that Congress only has until 14 March to avoid a government shutdown by enacting an overdue spending bill for fiscal year 2025. ‘Other shoes are going to drop,’ he predicted. ‘We are going to stay together as a community because it’s going to get rough.’
AAAS president Willie May, a PhD chemist who led the National Institute of Standards and Technology and now spearheads research and development for Morgan State University, a historically Black university in Maryland, also expressed grave concerns during his presidential address at the plenary session. ‘Although some of the early actions of this incoming administration may be unnerving, concerning and alarming, it is really too early to know how they may be clarified, modified, implemented, or even rescinded,’ May stated. ‘Still, it is undeniable that the rhetoric and chaos that we are hearing are already taking a toll.’
Although he said it ‘makes sense to be worried’, May emphasised that AAAS and its members cannot allow themselves to be distracted by ‘political histrionics’ and must instead focus on fostering a resilient science and technology enterprise over the long-term, as well as ensuring that disruption to the work of scientists in the US is minimised.
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