For Nature, Virginia Gewin spoke to 19 current and formal federal agency scientists at the EPA, CDC, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the National Institutes of Health. Her article serves as a resource documenting the kind of work that federal agency scientists have historically done and are no longer able to do.
VIRGINIA GEWIN; https://www.virginiagewin.com/contact
Gewin is an independent environmental journalist with a focus on issues in agriculture, food security, and land use.
Gewin told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “In the last year, I have been reporting on the cuts to science funding by the Trump administration, and its impact on scientists and researchers. The scientists are reeling. Everyone you talk to is scrambling to keep money going and scrambling to fund students. But the message is that for federal agency science, these cuts impact the public… This [article] is a go-to spot to show what all that we have lost in the process [of these cuts]. Researchers have something to point to now to show the consequences.
“This is a beast of a story. It deserves a lot of attention. We need to document the knock-on impacts. What I’m seeing play out is that this whole episode is going to cost the scientific community decades in lost productivity––and [a lost] pipeline of qualified researchers willing to go into this area, given the uncertainties.”
Gewin emphasized that in addition to “science being lost, more scientists themselves are willing to talk on the record. They are speaking out because they realize the narrative is getting written for them, and they are rewriting the narrative about why science has been done the way it was done, especially science that has been challenged by this administration. They are defending their work and the misinformation being put out there… That’s a really hopeful sign.”