The War on Science

Summary

Science Vs: The War on Science

Episode Release Date: February 19, 2025 | Host: Wendy Zuckerman | Produced by Spotify Studios

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Introduction

In the February 19, 2025 episode of Science Vs, host Wendy Zuckerman delves into what she describes as an unprecedented assault on science in the United States under the Trump administration. Setting the stage with an emotional tone, Wendy shares personal sentiments and highlights alarming changes affecting the scientific community.

“While following this attack on science, I've been crying, too.”
— Wendy Zuckerman [00:00]

Government Actions Against Science

The episode begins by outlining the Trump administration's efforts to cut government spending, juxtaposed against a soaring federal deficit of $1.8 trillion. Scientists express deep concern over the administration's actions, labeling them as "unprecedented" and "insane."

“Headlines are screaming that Trump is waging an assault on science that will make Americans dumber and sicker.”
— Wendy Zuckerman [02:10]

Website Censorship and Data Erasure

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the removal of information from federal websites. Wendy and Max Kozlov, a science journalist at Nature, shed light on the administration's directives to delete terms related to gender ideology and diversity from federal resources. This has led to vast portions of websites, including those of the CDC, NIH, and EPA, becoming inaccessible.

“Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female.”
— Max Kozlov [05:53]

The censorship extends to critical public health information, such as monkeypox prevention and HIV resources, which were briefly taken offline before being restored with contentious disclaimers.

“So because of that knowledge, we were able to redirect resources, vaccines, treatments, education materials to those communities. And if you look... you'll see almost immediately a steep decline down.”
— Max Kozlov [07:08]

Funding Freezes and Grant Issues

The Trump administration implemented a “roller coaster” of funding freezes and resumptions, causing confusion and hindering ongoing research. Courts intervened with restraining orders, but the disruption remained significant.

“There's just a lot of confusion right now because the Trump administration has acted very quickly...which is unprecedented.”
— Max Kozlov [03:50]

At the National Science Foundation (NSF), staff are scrutinizing existing grants for the now-banned terms, leading to modifications or potential withdrawal of funding. This has left researchers in limbo, unsure if their projects will proceed.

“I've been hearing from just so many postdocs who are like, shoot, I used one of these words in my grant application. They don't know what's next for them.”
— Max Kozlov [09:54]

Impact on Public Health Initiatives

The episode highlights the detrimental effects on public health programs, particularly those led by USAID. Key initiatives like the President's Malaria Initiative and PEPFAR, which funds HIV research and prevention, have faced severe funding cuts and operational disruptions.

“It's a whole scale dismantling...participants were just left Absolutely. Hanging in the middle of a clinical trial.”
— Max Kozlov [23:28]

The shutdown of these programs not only hampers disease prevention efforts but also erodes public trust in both science and the United States.

Leadership and Future Concerns

With RFK Jr. confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, concerns are mounting regarding the future of vaccine policies and public health programs. His history of challenging vaccine efficacy raises alarms about potential policy shifts that could undermine existing immunization efforts.

“RFK Jr. Has frequently said that he's not an anti vaxxer...but his actions his entire career would say the opposite.”
— Max Kozlov [25:17]

Researchers fear that his influence could lead to significant alterations in vaccine recommendations and the Vaccines for Children program, potentially increasing the likelihood of disease outbreaks like measles.

Psychological Toll and Community Response

The administration's actions have created a pervasive culture of fear among scientists, discouraging open research and collaboration. The uncertainty surrounding funding and employment has left many feeling demoralized and insecure about the future of their work and careers.

“So it's just everybody just has no idea what's coming next.”
— Max Kozlov [21:41]

Conclusion

Science Vs paints a grim picture of the current state of science in the U.S., attributing the administration's actions to both financial motives and a broader anti-science agenda. The swift and sweeping changes have already begun to have lasting implications, with the scientific community grappling to maintain integrity and progress amidst political turmoil.

“And I think that people are really struggling to make sense of it. And I think that's what hurts so much.”
— Max Kozlov [29:32]

Wendy Zuckerman closes the episode by emphasizing the global repercussions of these domestic policies, underscoring the critical need for science in combating misinformation and fostering informed decision-making.

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This episode of Science Vs provides a comprehensive and deeply concerning exploration of the Trump administration’s impact on the scientific landscape in the United States. Through insightful interviews and detailed analysis, listeners gain a clear understanding of the challenges facing the scientific community today.

Transcript

[Max Kozlov]

Wendy.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus. We are busily working on new episodes for our next season, which kicks off in March. We've got some awesome episodes coming up on ADHD and Squirting. But before the fun games and waterworks, we just really wanted to update you on what was going on with science in the US Right now. So Trump has said that he's trying to cut government spending, and last year, the US federal government deficit was $1.8 trillion. But still, scientists say that what is happening right now is unprecedented and insane. They're telling us that it's scary. One person told us that they've been crying every day. And to be honest with you, while following this attack on science, I've been crying, too.

[Jocelyn Kaiser]

I mean, it's mostly just shocking. You just can't believe that this is happening.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This is Jocelyn Kaiser, a reporter for Science magazine. We talked about how in the past few weeks, thousands of federal websites have had information pulled from them. Thousands of people at agencies like the cdc, National Institutes of Health, and the EPA have been fired. Clinical trials, really important clinical. Clinical trials have been halted. Funding for research was stopped and then possibly restarted. There's just a lot of confusion. Jocelyn has been a journalist for over 30 years, and she told me that the changes she's seen since Trump became president are startling.

[Jocelyn Kaiser]

You know, because we covered the first Trump administration, and it was nothing like this. It is just like nobody. I mean, you know, it goes far beyond science, but it's like nothing anybody has ever seen in their lifetimes. And it's just. It's just bizarre. It's like. Like, what is this world we're living in? I mean, it's censorship. It's not scientific. It's just complete crap.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Headlines are screaming that Trump is waging an assault on science that will make Americans dumber and sicker. So after the break, what is actually happening right now, and how bad is this?

[Susan Ettlinger]

The PC gave us computing power at home. The Internet connected us, and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now, generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift, a new podcast for Microsoft Azure. I'm your host, Susan Ettlinger. In each episode, leaders will share what they're learning to help you navigate all this change with confidence. Please join us, listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Welcome back. Today on the show, the Trump administration's so called war on science. I talked about what was happening with Max Kozlov, who's a science journalist at Nature, focusing on biomedical research and US Policy. And Nature, if you don't know, is one of most prestigious science journals in the world. Max and the team and Nature have been tracking what's been going on since Trump became president very closely. Now, when describing basically what's happening to science in the US Right now, I'm hearing academics use words like unprecedented, scary. How would you explain the current situation?

[Max Kozlov]

I think those words would be absolutely accurate. I've heard harrowing tales of people getting fired. There have been grants frozen and then unfrozen and then refrozen. So there's this. There's just a lot of confusion right now because the Trump administration has acted very quickly in putting in, putting out executive orders and directives, and at the same time, there have been a number of lawsuits. Those are still very much in process given that, you know, we're only weeks into the administration. But because of that, there's been kind of this roller coaster of emotions because things have started, things have stopped. But what is very clear is the mass firings, the mass freezing of funds, the censoring of government websites, that. That is all unprecedented.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And so let's talk about the government websites, because in some cases, entire web pages have been taken down. So what is going on?

[Max Kozlov]

This largely stems from a directive in Trump's first days in office that ordered certain terms related to gender ideology and woke terms and terms related to diversity, equity, and inclusion to be deleted from any federal resources. And what has happened is they've taken a very liberal approach to scrubbing anything.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

With, ironically, something liberal. What?

[Max Kozlov]

I know, I know. And so it's been very difficult to keep track because it's just been thousands and thousands of websites that all of a sudden link to a. An error page.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

It's really wild. So last week, as I was preparing for this episode, just saw a bunch of pages on monkeypox prevention, HIV and transgender folks, health disparities among LGBTQ youth. They were all offline, but now they're back.

[Max Kozlov]

Yeah. And I don't know if you noticed, they. They come with a certain disclaimer on them now, but the disclaimer is pretty, pretty, pretty wild.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah. Do you want to, you want to rate it out?

[Max Kozlov]

Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well being and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the administration in this department rejects it.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That is, that is unbelievable. It's so, it's so Orwellian to just say that I know when in fact the biological reality is, is the exact opposite. Also on a website about monkeypox vaccines and prevention, it's, this is, this is insane.

[Max Kozlov]

So I've covered, I've covered a lot about the monkeypox outbreaks people might remember in 2022 especially. This is a virus that swept the world. And it's a virus that has largely been endemic in parts of Africa, but now it caused, you know, a huge surge of infections all over the world, including in the United States. And with all this data coming down, not only are entire data sets missing, but also certain classifiers, certain categories of data, for example, data about sexual orientation. And part of the reason that we were able to stop the monkeypox outbreak so quickly in the United States is because we had very detailed data on precisely who was getting infected and which communities it was infecting. We knew quite quickly that it was really the population of men who have sex with men were at higher risk and especially those who are HIV positive. And so because of that knowledge, we were able to redirect resources, vaccines, treatments, education materials to those communities. And if you look, you can look up a chart of the infections in the United States of monkeypox in 2022 and you'll see there's this big curve up and then almost immediately a steep decline down. And with this data getting fragmented and deleted now, it's basically shooting ourselves in the foot for being able to stop future outbreaks, is what I'm hearing from public health officials and researchers.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And is data actually being erased or it's just the websites are being. Just the websites don't work anymore.

[Max Kozlov]

So my colleagues, my colleagues at Nature have reported that there are scientists who are banding together online to try to download entire websites, try to download these data sets before they go down, and in some cases, trying to access archived versions of the websites so they can save the databases they have, like terabytes and terabytes of data because these are such an important and incredibly useful resource for epidemiologists who monitor things like weekly flu infections to see if there is an uptick in cases or monitoring the latest with what's happening with H5N1 right now to make sure that that doesn't become a full blown pandemic.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Right. And because some of these data sets use these supposed diversity and inclusion words like tracking the sexuality of individuals, the gender, the race, they're worried that they're going to get scrubbed. Is that right?

[Max Kozlov]

Yes, exactly. And even in some cases, I mean, entire, anything with the word race or ethnicity. And in a way that a lot of researchers say this is actually extremely inefficient and it's a huge waste of resources for all these federal employees to be spending time just combing through website by website, data set by data set, to see if it's matches any of the key words that the administration is looking for.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Climate change has also been hit really hard by this. We're seeing the Department of State had a climate change section on their website. It's gone. The White House website, climate change page is no longer existing, Max. So speaking of, you know, you've mentioned these kind of forbidden words, these words that are no longer allowed to be on websites. The CDC told its scientists to retract or pause the publication of any research manuscript that's been considered by a scientific journal to ensure that those manuscripts do not use these terms. And just to be explicit, the terms are things like gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, lgbtq, transsexual, non binary, assigned male or female at birth. Why is the cdc. This is a memo coming from the cdc. Why is that organization capitulating to this?

[Max Kozlov]

Yeah, I mean, the CDC is a federal agency and it has to listen to federal directives. So that's why you're seeing what you're seeing right now. And I don't think that the researchers at CDC are thrilled with this for the most part. I think a lot of this has been very demoralizing for researchers there who have spent years getting the funding to do this research, to do the research itself, to write up the paper, and then to be told in the final moments, as the paper will be live in mere weeks, that they can't publish it because it might use one of these words. I think that's extremely demoralizing. You know, I think there's a really a culture of fear that if they don't listen to these directives, they will be fired. And I think it's a difficult decision because so many people at CDC understand how important their jobs are, how many lives of Americans and people around the world depend on what they do. So it's a tough gamble because if you decide to disobey, not only is your paper still might, still might not be published. But then you also might be out of a job.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And then speaking of job losses, there has been quite a few firings going on just recently. So. So what's going on? Who's been targeted here? When it comes to science?

[Max Kozlov]

Yes. Thousands and thousands across agencies like science, cdc, nih, you name it, have been terminated. And some actually were terminated. And I think they realized that their jobs were so important that they've tried to reinstate them in some cases. I know that a lot of these agencies, I've talked to people who have tried to argue that, you know, we can't fire these people because they're working on trying to stop H5N1 from becoming a pandemic. But a lot of those exemption requests have gone unanswered or gotten denied.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So a lot of people getting fired. At the NIH and cdc, there's also been a lot of confusion around. Around funding for research. We're talking research for cancer drugs, heart medication, new scientific discoveries. What is going on with the funding? I was speaking to an academic who said at one point they got an email from their university saying, stop all research now. Oh, and then soon after, no, no, no, you can keep. So are scientists still getting money for their research?

[Max Kozlov]

Yeah, you ask a great question. Because like I said, it's been a roller coaster. So pretty early on in the Trump administration, they tried to issue a funding freeze on all federal grants and foreign aid. And it was such an enormous directive that everybody was like, what do you mean? It's especially confusing because in the United States, Congress controls money, controls appropriations. They have the. What's called the power of the purse. So we're talking about funds that have already been set aside to say, yes, this is going to the NIH for them to spend money on clinical trials, to spend money on research. And that's why courts in the United States issued a restraining order. A pause on the pause. You can see how this gets very confusing.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yes. So restraining the restraint. I hate a double negative, but in.

[Max Kozlov]

This case, I know I don't envy people who cover the courts. So, technically, any funds, any grants that have already been given out, they should be going to the universities, the institutions, to the researchers again. Is that happening in all cases? Not really. And that's why a federal judge last week was pretty scathing in his remarks and said, look, the Trump administration needs to start funding again. Because I was pretty clear in that I issued a pause on the pause. So funding should be going out. But importantly, at the nih, they have a very rigorous way of deciding which grants to fund. Basically, two separate panels of scientists have to say, yes, this is important research that we should fund. And all of that has been gummed up. Virtually none of those advisory council meetings where grants are kind of given the stamp of approval to say, yes, let's fund this research, have been happening. I mean, it's a slightly more boring thing, but essentially, anytime they.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This is boring stuff. That is how the administration does its work. There's a lot of. I remember the last time Trump was in power, there was a lot of stuff that hit the news cycle that was really flashy, but a lot of the damage that was done around, you know, immigration and things like that, it was in these really boring things that don't. That don't hit the news cycle. So I want you to tell me the boring ways that Trump is stopping science.

[Max Kozlov]

Yeah. Well, let me tell you, I have a lot to tell you then. So basically, there's this whole process. Anytime they. The government wants to hold a meeting, even if it's a meeting that's not open to the public, they have to basically post a notice to the Federal Register, basically saying to everybody, we're gonna have a meeting. We're gonna talk about grants. And at nih, those Federal Register notices are not allowed to be posted right now.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This is how. That's right. These incredibly mundane ways that, that therefore, as a direct consequence, researchers cannot get money to do their science because instead of saying, we're freezing funding, which they tried and that didn't work, now the strategy is don't let them do a boring post.

[Max Kozlov]

Yeah. And you know, it's one thing for it to. For these meetings not happen for a week or two weeks, but now that we're getting near the one month mark, and then, you know, the longer that this happens, you know, the longer that researchers who submitted grants months ago wait to see if their projects even get funded.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And this has huge implications. Right? I mean, there was this study that came out a few years ago about NIH funding showing that every new drug approved by the FDA from 2010 to 2019, with every new drug, the NIH played some role in researching that drug. And so that's new drugs that people listening would have taken. And so now if all. If this funding gets severely cut, I mean, the expectation is that we will have fewer drugs on the market, at least as quickly as we would have otherwise, Right?

[Max Kozlov]

Yes, exactly. And I was talking with the former NIH director, Harold Varmus today, and he was wondering, why industry, why pharma, why biotech? Hasn't been screaming, saying these changes are really bad because they're going to hurt industry, they're going to hurt the economy, and they're going to hurt people. Ultimately, again, this culture of fear is very real. Nobody wants to draw a target to their back because they're worried that the administration, they've shown that they're interested in retribution, that they might be targeted. Next.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

After the break, why you shouldn't write a grant with the word women in it anymore. Plus, why the Trump administration might be going after science. Welcome back. Today on the show, we're talking about the state of science in the US and it is not looking good. I'm chatting with Max Kozlov, reporter for Nature. So Professor Darby Saxby at the University of Southern California received this list of words from a colleague, and the colleague received funding from the National Science foundation and received this list directly from the National Science Foundation. That basically implies that if you use these particular words, it can automatically cause a grant to be flagged, maybe pulled. And this list includes words like women, female activism, black and Latinx, even systemic trauma, biased. So no more talking about blunt force trauma or statistical bias, let alone talking about research into women or black and Latinx, folks. So what is going on with this list? What do we know?

[Max Kozlov]

Basically, NSF staff are going through all of the existing grants and, and looking for examples of these words being used. And they're scouring, you know, tens of thousands of grants, and it's still unclear exactly what they want to do with them. Proposed actions were either modifying the grants so that, you know, these words are removed or potentially in some cases, maybe if they have many of these different flags, archiving or removing the funding altogether, it's still unclear. But just to say that even while that is happening, while the lawsuit keeps going on, the NSF staff are still kind of combing through the grants in preparation for the next step for whatever it is on this crusade to get rid of gender ideology terms. But I also want to push back on the idea, like you mentioned, that these are in some way promoting what they call woke gender ideology. You know, I talked with the researcher who works on women's health issues, and she was very frustrated that women's health was being equated with gender ideology, because it is not gender ideology to study things like endometriosis or menstruation. And that was already, it was a huge hurdle to get funding for those kinds of projects in previous administrations, let alone now. And we're talking again about the lives of millions and billions of women around the world here.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, it's all part of the same package. It's. It's all part of the anti science agenda, whatever you want to call it. I mean, this list is out of control. It's like to call it as to try to pretend that this list is about gender ideology, racial ideology. I mean, it's really just a list that makes many branches of science difficult to function.

[Max Kozlov]

Yeah. And that's exactly what I've been hear. I've been hearing from just so many postdocs who are like, shoot, I used one of these words in my grant application. They don't know what's next for them. And in some cases they had their, their funding pulled in this whole rollercoaster. So just. Everybody just has no idea what's coming next.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

What is great though, is that people with vaginas is still allowed.

[Max Kozlov]

I know.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Just putting that out there. Which, which actually might be more accurate to what some of the people are researching. So. Yeah, yeah, people with vaginas still. Okay. Apparently for now. For now.

[Max Kozlov]

For now.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And by the way, we did reach out to the nsf, the National Science foundation, and they wrote back saying, quote, nsf is working expeditiously to conduct a comprehensive review of our projects, programs, and activities to be compliant with the existing executive orders. And then they sent us to their website on these orders. Now, Max, USAID has been hit really hard. What are the public health implications of what's going on here?

[Max Kozlov]

Yeah, hit hard is an understatement. I mean, it's a whole scale dismantling is. Is what it looks like. I mean, just again, there, there is litigation pending there as well. But even still, we're talking about, we're talking about thousands of employees being put on administrative leave around the world. And USAID is important for so many reasons. So, for example, USAID leads the President's Malaria Initiative. It's a program that funds malaria prevention and research. And that program has also seen funding dry up as a result of all this.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Wow. It's called the President's Malaria. Clearly not this president.

[Max Kozlov]

Yeah, I mean, and, and this program and pepfar, which is big one, that, that funds HIV research and prevention, those were started by Republican President George W. Bush. And it's frequently cited as one of the most impactful global health initiatives in the world. And to see it dismantled in this way, I think has been gut wrenching to so many researchers. USAID funds a lot of clinical trials around the world. And because of the dismantling of usaid, participants were just left Absolutely. Hanging in the middle of a clinical trial, some people on experimental drugs, experimental treatments, and all of a sudden just abandoned. And what this does is it sows distrust of both science and in general, the United States. It's harrowing to hear stories like that.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Absolutely. And so the USAID was on a 90 day freeze, but has it actually just been shut down?

[Max Kozlov]

It's still unclear what will become of usaid. Again, there's litigation pending, but it's not a mystery what the Trump administration is trying to do with usaid. I believe Elon Musk tweeted that it's time to get rid of it. Trump has supported this call. And you don't just try to gut an entire agency. If you were trying to reform it, you're trying to burn it to the ground.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And now that RFK Jr has been confirmed as the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, you know, this is someone who's rejected the science on vaccines, among many other things. What are you most worried about?

[Max Kozlov]

You know, RFK Jr. Has frequently said that he's not an anti vaxxer, that he doesn't want to take away vaccines from everybody. But his actions his entire career would say the opposite. He has worked for an organization that has tried to remove vaccines from the childhood vaccine schedule. And, you know, a lot of people are worried that RFK Jr has a tremendous amount of power. And one of the important things that come with the responsibility is overseeing a key scientific advisory committee called ACIP that makes recommendations as to what should be on the childhood vaccine schedule, what the flu vaccine composition looks like, the COVID vaccine composition, all of it. The secretary is able to pick who's on that committee. The secretary is able to remove people from that committee. They have a tremendous amount of influence on that committee of scientists, and he can easily stack it with people who are more favorable to his opinions about vaccines. So, and in addition to that, he also oversees what's called the Vaccines for Children program. This is a program that provides vaccines to children whose parents might not be able to afford them. And it's a large part of the reason that we're able to achieve herd immunity, to achieve nationwide coverage for diseases like measles that we're now seeing resurgences of. And anything that undermines this program, even if it's just casting fear or casting doubt about vaccines, can make a huge difference in how likely it is that there is a measles outbreak.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

We're hearing about parents in the US Downloading the vaccine schedules for their kids now because they're worried about that information being wiped and changing. Do you think that's an overreaction?

[Max Kozlov]

If you asked me on January 19th, before this administration started, whether they would be taking down thousands of websites relating to a whole slew of random words, I would have said, you're crazy. So I don't think that's an overreaction.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Why do you think the Trump administration is going after science in this way? Is this all just about saving money?

[Max Kozlov]

I think that's a great question. I think that saving money is one. Saving money is the most logical thing I can think of. But this fundamental research pays dividends in a big way in industry, in drugs that are brought to market, that it's absolutely essential to the pharmaceutical industry for this research to be going on. I think people have all kinds of criticisms about how the NIH could be reformed, how we could be more effectively spending our. Our research money. But what we've seen here is not a, what they would consider a good faith effort to try to reform the system. This is a dismantling of the system. You don't just stop funding projects, gum up the entire funding process. If you're trying to reform it, I think you could. Some people have attributed it to retribution. I think the NIH caught a lot of flack after the COVID 19 pandemic by Trump and his allies. So it could be something along those lines.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Wow, they're still pissed about masks. Is that what's going on here?

[Max Kozlov]

I've still yet to see kind of a full scale explanation for what's going on.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

It feels like a war on science, if we call it that. Makes sense because science is how we understand the world and how we can tell facts from misinformation, from lies. And so if you have an administration that just wants to say whatever it says, whatever fits its agenda, whether it's facts or not, science would get in the way of that.

[Max Kozlov]

Yeah, I think that's one interpretation of this all. And I think that. I think that people are really struggling to make sense of it. And I think that's what hurts so much.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I think my last question is, do you? When I talk to academics about this, I think depending on their optimism, they either see this as sort of a bit like Trump's negotiation tactics with the tariffs make it really bad to begin with, then you sort of sidle somewhere in between and it's maybe not so bad. There's some victims along the way. Science survives, having lost an arm or two. But then others tell me they think the war on science is here to stay for the next four years at least. And this is only going downhill. What do you think?

[Max Kozlov]

The changes that have already been made in three weeks will have lasting implications. And so it seems to me that it's not just a threat of tariffs here. You know, I. I talked with researchers who were optimistic or who were willing to give this administration a chance, and I think that in just a few short weeks, that optimism has quickly soured once they realized just the tenor and the vitriol of some of the administration's actions. Who knows what will come after? But that is kind of the reaction I've been hearing so far.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

You got any good jokes?

[Max Kozlov]

Oh, man, good jokes. I need a good one. My God. It's. You know, I live in Washington, D.C. and it's been particularly difficult. I know it's kind of, you know, maybe folks don't care about the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. but this is a whole scale dismantling of the scientific research enterprise. And I think that people, whether you're in a blue state, a red state, or you're living in another country, I think it'll be felt around the world. The impacts here. You asked about a funny joke, though. My God, I've just been relying on my plants to give me some peace and levity in these trying, trying times. They're trying their hardest, but there's only.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So much they can do. That's right.

[Max Kozlov]

Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Thanks so much, Max. Thanks for your time and your work.

[Max Kozlov]

Yeah, of course. Thank you.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That was Max Kozlov, reporter at Nature. We reached out to the White House, the Health and Human Services Department, the nih, and the CDC for comment, but we didn't hear back by the time we published this episode. And Science Verses will be back in your ears in March, and we'll be using a lot of those forbidden words, I promise. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.