Much of what you discussed was thought provoking and certainly raised valid concerns on how to fund basic research. A good conversation to have, but your premise of why the funds were cut is erroneous and is an example of media narrative shift.
The left loves to blame DOGE for a lot of things but funding cuts to Harvard have nothing to do with DOGE. Trump ordered those cuts because Harvard refused to cancel DEI and switch from an equity based enrollment system to a merit based one. There were other issues involved, but basically Harvard said nobody can tell us who to enroll and we will discriminate if we so choose. Kind of hard to justify discrimination so hence the narrative shift to DOGE.
Whether Trump's position is accurate is another conversation, but his removal of funds is legal based on one of his executive orders.
Harvard's response it to threaten to shoot the puppy, as detailed in an excellent substack by "El Gato malo". Cliff notes: Harvard's endowment of $53 billion earns $4.9 billion per year. Harvard can easily replace the funds Trump cut, and continue to support research projects like the ones you described. It is Harvard's callous decision to use these research projects as leverage to get their way by pushing the Narrative that Orange Man's DOGE is evil.
The obvious response should have been for Harvard to support meritocracy and cancel the dubious values offered by DEI based policies. Harvard could also have tighten up their fiscal base by cutting administrative waste and research that was not worthwhile. Instead, they played martyr for their progressive donner base. Their choice, but the narrative should be framed accurately.
Point taken. You are correct--I paid little attention to the actual framing of why the cuts were made, and swept it all into the category of DOGE. Indeed, my correspondent (here in the comments as HarvardAnon) said, in one of his communications with me, "it seems to have been done under the guise of combatting anti-semitism and 'woke ideology', but has gone far from this intent." So this is my error, not his.
Because the framing of why the cuts have been done is not a primary point of mine here, I am giving the piece a new subtitle, and footnoting my use of the term DOGE when it first appears in the piece. Thank you for the clarification.
Not a big deal. What I enjoy most about substack writers is their willingness to listen and correct misunderstandings. Somthing you don't often see in the propaganda media. You raised some valid concerns on what is the appropriate vehicle for funding research; private or government. As a scientist with experience in that arena, I would be interested to hear your take. In the Harvard situation it appears politics is indeed the malevolent actor but the perpetrator is Harvard not DOGE.
Without denying that DOGE is faultless and making mistakes, I would agree that it was Harvard that cut funding for research, not Trump, and deflected responsibility onto DOGE for these funding cut backs. It is clear that Harvard is getting money from others who want to keep woke ideology in place at any cost. This is not about research or politics. It is about power and money and who can push who around. Thinking otherwise is to misconstrue the entire battlefield.
Grok says Harvard’s endowment is $53 billion. Donors gave Harvard that money to spend on science and scholarships, not to hoard and invest. As between needs like disaster relief, infrastructure, social security, and Medicare, one hand, and funding science at schools that could readily spend their own money doing the same thing, the choice is not very hard. Anonymous MD PhD will lead a more fulfilling life once gov funding is separated from, and stops fully corrupting, science.
(1) Harvard can easily, and trivially, keep this good Dr-to-be's research going. The reason his funding is cut is because Harvard deemed his research not worthy of funding from their endowment, which exists in significant part because donors wanted to fund research. His complaints should be directed at the cynical and hyperpolitical leftist Harvard administration, not at the Trump administration.
(2) It would be easy for Harvard to solve this defunding, which is not coming from DOGE. All Harvard has to do is comply with utterly reasonable (until a few years ago) federal funding regulations regarding discrimination and stop thumbing their noses at the American taxpayer. If you think that the Trump administration really wants to defund research, you probably were dumb enough to think that same administration wanted to have giant tariffs on our trading partners' goods. You have to be a special kind of stupid (or a Harvard administrator, but I repeat myself) to not see that this is a negotiation. As soon as Harvard starts being reasonable, they will get their funding back.
Yes--of course this is a negotiation, and presumably the Harvard administrators know that too, and are playing the same kind of game in their public statements as Trump is (albeit rather more poorly--he is a master negotiator after all), leaving us to wonder what is actually going on behind the scenes.
I don't know to what extent any university's endowment exists "because donors wanted to fund research." In my head, donors give to their alma maters because they either want to relive/honor their college days, or (at larger amounts), see their names on buildings and in endowed professorships and the like.
Could Harvard keep all of the research happening under their auspices going from their endowment? I think so, yes. But it would require a massive change in expectations, in framing, in everything, and even if we all decided that it would be for the best if they did so, the fact is that a future administration is likely to reinstate the current system, so the "best" move for Harvard is not to become independent, but to push back hard until their version of reality gets restored.
Personally, as I say in the piece, I think the public funding of science is a large part of the answer of how we should fund science. And HarvardAnon has done nothing to deserve this. However, my own bias is also that, an MD-PhD program such as the one that HarvardAnon is in should be funded by the institution. His degree isn't going to say Federal Government on it; it's going to say Harvard University. Research that is funded by NIH has to report that in the papers that result; degrees that are funded by NIH don't.
My own graduate degree was not funded by the federal government, so far as I know, although I did apply for and receive a (very small) NSF grant to fund travel to a conference to present my research. My actual research was funded by in-house grants (that were also competitive); and my time on campus, including the courses I took, preliminary exams, etc, was funded by 10 semesters of TAships that I was promised on admit. There are a lot of biology undergrads that need to have labs and seminars taught for them, and while actual professors were still standing at the front of large classrooms, it was grad students like me who taught the labs and seminars. That said, that system will work best for fields with lots of undergrads, and biology of course has tons of "pre-health" students who need instruction.
Thus, perhaps my opinion--that institutions should fund their own degree programs--is more fueled by own bias and experience than is warranted. And again, I want to say that this opinion has nothing to do with whether HarvardAnon deserved this outcome. His acceptance letter from Harvard presumably did not explain that actually, the federal government would be funding his degrees.
Typical of Heather's posts, this one presents important content, and presents it with minimal bias.
I have a few thoughts, but no conclusions:
The writer says, " I am also a three-time Trump voter from Washington State, and as one among few conservatives at Harvard, I think my perspective is quite unique." Why is he one of the few conservatives? He glosses over a severe bias that probably impacts the quality of the research.
I am a science geek, and taught earth science for a while, years ago. I am increasingly appalled at the politization of scientific research. (And science teaching, for that matter.) That anyone lends any credence at all to Greta Thunberg speaks volumes.
The entire federal government is out of control. It sure doesn't come down to just scientific research. Many suggest that Trump shouldn't be so heavy-handed, that he should take a more gradual approach to reigning things in. But gradual approaches have been tried before, repeatedly. Gradual approaches get steamrollered by powerful interests. None of us like Trump's approach, but I've thought about it, and I think his is the only effective approach.
Coincidentally, Reason magazine recently addressed this very issue. I think they did a good job with it. And I think we all know the issue of government funded research is now on the front burner and will stay there for the indefinite future. We have a lot to work out.
A lot of us are white-knuckling this, holding on, trying to remain optimistic, believing that this is likely the only way to rein things in for precisely the reasons that you lay out here. At this point, I am still optimistic about Trump's ability to do right by us, while also hoping for more input from some voices (Kennedy), and far less from those who are patently not wise on some subjects they have been given domain over (Musk).
The Reason article begins strong, but then falls into what I see as the typically naive position that TEM-positive people make. That's TEM--Technology, Engineering and Math--in which the Science has been dropped, because hey, that's going to get wrapped up into the tech and engineering, right? I see this error over and over and over again. It's a large part of why I stepped down from my role as one of five founding trustees of the University of Austin. Many people on the left think that you can "follow the science" when actually they're following autocrats who are modern-day pied pipers of Hamelin. Many people on the right think you can do only the research that has, in advance, obvious positive human ramifications, and everything will be fine. Both camps are wrong.
I get everything you're saying. But there can be huge price tags on research that has no immediate monetary value, and may never have any. That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile, but when a government is hemorrhaging money, something's gotta give.
I think Trump is far more comprehensive in his thinking than people give him credit for. It may take years, no fault of Trump's, to sort things out and get worthwhile research done with funds that are properly budgeted. And it certainly should not all fall on the federal government. If you don't want autocracy running the research, then you don't want the federal government running the research.
I am in 2 minds on this. On the one hand, I feel for the individual person that presumably did nothing to deserve this. If I have a contract, I expect the other side to keep their side of the contract, or face some consequences.
But Harvard can easily afford to fund all the research if it was that important to them. What else do they have a slush fund for? These cuts are in response of them standing on their "principles" to keep DEI. One would think this would be exactly the type of rainy day that one keep a slush fund around for.
I think in the end it feels like "fruit from a poisonous tree" Even if I innocently buy a stolen hand bag I am still participating in a crime. How much bending of the knee did this person do to get to this position? How many little things (like the DEI statement for grants) did they participate in (kindly assuming they did that unwillingly) or turn a blind eye to to get to their position? But then again, did they have much choice if they wanted to continue their research?
In the end I think the rot is just too deep to simply use a scalpel.
Thank you to Dr. Heying for agreeing to share my story. I knew I would be coming into the Lion's Den with this one, but ultimately, academic research is a public good for the citizens, not a privilege of the scientist. Your critiques of academia, elitism, and scientific funding have always been spot on, so I could think of no better person to share this with. And though at times I disagree, your voice in this conversation is critical to rebuilding something great.
All Americans deserve a say in how taxpayer dollars should be allocated and awarded. Indeed, it is a shame that I and so many trainees have lost federal funding, especially when I know each and every one of them by name and the stellar work they do. I want to make clear as I have seen this mentioned in several comments: in the aftermath of the federal cuts to Harvard, the University is continuing to fund our research and training grants on its own dime. However, Harvard will not be able to do this forever. Just my lab alone spends ~3M/FY.
I want to envision a scientific ecosystem where I as a scientist do not have to be bogged down with considerations towards the economic utility of scientific discovery; one never knows from where the next greatest discovery will come from. Economic utility is the concern of industry and pharma, not academia (when properly oriented, of course). Funding of academic research allows individuals like myself to pursue a hypothesis to its logical conclusion in a slow and dispassionate fashion. This is unlike scientific industry where I would have a vested interest in ensuring that anything I produce has potential for commoditization, which is where we see corrupted interests really start to have harmful effects on the broader population.
I think a lot of this fell on its head with COVID. Prior to COVID, though we are notoriously untrusting of institutions and elites regardless of political leanings, Americans had broad faith in their physicians. And I think this is because the community of physicians which exists had thoroughly prioritized its commitments to, at all levels, endeavoring to act in the best interest of patients - to do no harm. We make a promise when we first enter the profession as we take the Oath. But the infiltration of a noble profession by corrupt incentives led many to feel betrayed by people with whom they believed to be incorruptible. Where I may differ with commenters here is that I do not lay these errors at the feet of physicians, but a system that silenced any alternative perspective. One can imagine a situation where the COVID vaccines did in fact do everything that public health officials claimed it would do, but by steamrolling over physicians and scientists who really should be the primary arbiters of such claims, scientists and physicians thus became scapegoated. And to those who would say that physicians are complicit, I would remind them that physicians, to no fault of their own, were all reading the same papers from a corpus of literature which at the time was quite one-sided. I am quite sure that physicians by-and-large were not under the impression that advocating for vaccination or avoiding alternative therapies was doing harm, as evidence supporting this perspective were not being widely disseminated/digested.
Now, I find it quite surprising that we don't hold the field of science to the same level of duty that we hold physicians. Why do scientists not make an oath to the public with regards to their scientific endeavors? Why do scientists not make public promises to do no harm, to pursue the truth and only the truth, that their discoveries might only yield positive impact for society? Scientists, in my opinion, are just as much bedrocks to the development and flourishing of society (I guess I kind of have to believe that as an MD-PhD-to-be). But the only way that scientists can really accomplish their work is to not be swayed by ulterior motives e.g. the drive for publication, the acquisition of funding, chasing the dreams of prestige, etc. And yet, we see the consequences of an adulterated system today where scientists are incentivized to only publish positive results, in that manner they can accrue more funding, do more research, publish more, and get more funding etc.
I'm not sure where the solution lies. Dr. Heying and I clearly are not in agreement between a scalpel and a sledgehammer. Perhaps tearing it all down is what must be done. Perhaps a scalpel is indeed too detail oriented. But I would say this: today, we have surgical approaches called laparoscopy which are minimally invasive techniques. In the setting of an appendectomy, only three small incisions need to be made to remove your entire appendix with relative ease and subsequently sew you back up. And while we have these devices now, there was indeed a time where this surgery would have been performed entirely with a scalpel. It was more invasive than laparoscopy, and caused a bit more pain, but overall still got the job done without nicking the iliac. Scalpels can do some heavy lifting when you wield them right.
Thank you to everyone's engagement on such an important topic, as your voices are just important as the story I share. I'd love to hear others perspectives on how this all gets fixed. And thank you again to Dr. Heying for sharing.
"I think a lot of this fell on its head with COVID. Prior to COVID, though we are notoriously untrusting of institutions and elites regardless of political leanings, Americans had broad faith in their physicians. And I think this is because the community of physicians which exists had thoroughly prioritized its commitments to, at all levels, endeavoring to act in the best interest of patients - to do no harm. We make a promise when we first enter the profession as we take the Oath. But the infiltration of a noble profession by corrupt incentives led many to feel betrayed by people with whom they believed to be incorruptible. Where I may differ with commenters here is that I do not lay these errors at the feet of physicians, but a system that silenced any alternative perspective. One can imagine a situation where the COVID vaccines did in fact do everything that public health officials claimed it would do, but by steamrolling over physicians and scientists who really should be the primary arbiters of such claims, scientists and physicians thus became scapegoated. And to those who would say that physicians are complicit, I would remind them that physicians, to no fault of their own, were all reading the same papers from a corpus of literature which at the time was quite one-sided. I am quite sure that physicians by-and-large were not under the impression that advocating for vaccination or avoiding alternative therapies was doing harm, as evidence supporting this perspective were not being widely disseminated/digested."
Thank you for joining in here at NS. Appreciated. Some of this paragraph I agree with, but some not so much. I think COVID exposed today's 'medicine'. We believed things about clinicians, about "medicine" that just aren't true anymore. It became glaringly clear that medicine is so specialized anymore that even your family FP/GP handed you off to strangers in a hospital setting when you became ill with COVID. Zero interest in treatment, zero interest in managing your care. The ER physicians bore the brunt of it, as they do now; they are IMO the best doctors out there. But what they were up against... well, a multitude of tornadoes. So I think COVID exposed that what you and most thought was true about physicians wasn't; hasn't been for decades. I also disagree that most did the best they could with information from "the same papers from a corpus of literature which at the time was quite one-sided". Yes, it WAS quite one-sided, but there was a chorus of dissenting and meaning-to-be-helpful voices out here. Our family GP, who retired after all this, did not embrace everything fed to him from Jan/Feb 2020 onward. He read many studies that weren't mainstream. He was willing to entertain questions and had his own.
Our son died after our family all got COVID (other than the teen) in early 2021. He was 25. He was given the usual protocol which was: nothing; stay home, go to the ER if you get into trouble. He died 5 days after being admitted. The GP didn't even know he'd died until one of our daughters called his office and informed them there. Such is medicine in America at present. In his defense, he was deeply stricken and went over and over his records to see if he had missed anything. Yes, he felt he might have been somewhat responsible. If he was, it was a collective 'guilt'. IMHO.
Thank you for joining us and giving us your view, which is unique because it is inside Harvard/research. Again, it's appreciated.
I just wanted to say, I am so sorry for the loss of your son. I am not religious, but I believe in heaven simply because I have to believe that there’s a hell that some of these people will go to for the devastation that they caused.
Thank you. Yes, they all deserved to be treated as irreplaceable. The heartache is itself enough without having to acknowledge the disappointment of how their last days were valuated.
I do believe our son's team wanted to save his life, and tried. I don't believe they had the tools. A year into the pandemic.
I read the scientific literature as well and decided to get the Covid vax due to my age. Every study I read showed increased adverse events the younger people were. All of the literature pointed toward damage to younger people, yet physicians promoted it to children. I was very upset as I was basing my decisions on papers published by the NIH.
Funding with tax dollars is inherently corrupting as we have seen in other areas such as our schools. We need to form more voluntary associations to meet the needs of all.
Let Harvard endowments fund the research if they deem it worth doing. I am sorry for the real scientists losing their grants. But I am also sorry for the working class Americans paying for bullshit science while barely making ends meet. I think it needs to burn down before we can build it up again.
I feel bad for the kid. I do. However Trump is not cutting “science” but rather “science at Harvard” with its 70% Overhead rate. He isn’t cutting science at my daughter’s school for instance.
Somehow I could see a scenario where the team relocated to a new university w say a 20% overhead.
Harvard could fund the research with income from its endowment, it chooses not to. I feel bad for this researcher and can only hope a better system will come up out of the ashes. One funded by private donations instead of off of the backs of the public with tax dollars and no accountability. How much money ever made it to the lab and how much went to administration? The innocent researcher would have no idea.
As a fellow Washington State unofficial Harfraud alumni Trump-voter, I don't understand what DOGE is actually achieving. Seems like a one-bit psyop to distract MAGA and conservatives from Trump's overall increasing of federal spending (i.e. "Forget about our $37T debt, look at all this woke stuff we canned!") If I were Orange King for a day, I'd cut both the welfare and the warfare, but that could only ever be achieved by first (as the hashtag goes) #EndTheFed.
I suppose the clarification I seek is in the acronym itself: Department of Government EFFICIENCY. It's not "Easing" (or "Evaporation" would be funny; "Government Ebbing" anyone?) But no, it's just: "Efficiency". Trump and Elon never said they'd be shrinking government overall. Or did they? Not that I recall.
And not sure what to say about the honorable graduate researchers finding themselves as collateral damage to this political game. As harsh as it may sound, I suspect that no amount of artificial intelligence, kinase signaling, and mass spectrometry will end cancer, nor will it make his late mother any more proud of him than she already was.
Eventually everyone trapped in the Ivy League realizes, hopefully sooner than later: there's nothing to prove. There are ways to prevent cancer as a medical practitioner (and honor the memory of his mother) outside of this overfunded bastion of prestige.
As I understand it, and I could be very wrong, this is a pause and Harvard has the chance to correct its behavior but doesn't want to. It's trying the route through the courts - and public opinion. Is this correct?
Though it was originally a pause, as of last week the NIH grants specifically have been completely terminated. The only chance of those grants being rescued is if in the July 21st court case between Harvard and DOJ (I believe, but could be HHS I can't recall) is if they rule that the federal funding freeze is unconstitutional and there is subsequently an injunction. I believe in this circumstance funds would be repatriated. I really have no comment on the merits of the court case because, as I mention in the article and in my comment, I certainly empathize with the need to gut erroneous expenditures and weed out corruption. I really just want to continue measuring molecules. And to be honest, I think the public would want me to continue my work as well, if under the auspices of a more reliable institution.
And Harvard tried to get Prasad fired at UCSF because of his positions on Covid. And I am still trying to get Harvard’s Implicit Bias Test banned because it is fake. Instead of capturing race bias, it captures left/right hand dominance at the keyboard.
While I sympathize with ethical PI’s research needs, Harvard’s woke double-standard is unprofessional. And I note especially after the recent DC Jewish Museum shooting that Harvard cares more about preserving DEI-antisemitism than it cares about scientific research.
1) What if it is the other way around, that federal funding of basic research makes it unprofitable for companies to pursue basic research?
2) Do we have a false dichotomy here between basic and applied research? I work at start-ups and often enough have basic research questions come to mind. I usually just run an experiment or 2 and don't make too much of a big deal about it. After all, if you don't know something then you have a hole in your understanding that could be a barrier to your goals. Perhaps it is better to not think of basic and applied teams, but move between the two at will. Good companies support this. Almost anything that could be labeled basic will be of value in the future.
Much of what you discussed was thought provoking and certainly raised valid concerns on how to fund basic research. A good conversation to have, but your premise of why the funds were cut is erroneous and is an example of media narrative shift.
The left loves to blame DOGE for a lot of things but funding cuts to Harvard have nothing to do with DOGE. Trump ordered those cuts because Harvard refused to cancel DEI and switch from an equity based enrollment system to a merit based one. There were other issues involved, but basically Harvard said nobody can tell us who to enroll and we will discriminate if we so choose. Kind of hard to justify discrimination so hence the narrative shift to DOGE.
Whether Trump's position is accurate is another conversation, but his removal of funds is legal based on one of his executive orders.
Harvard's response it to threaten to shoot the puppy, as detailed in an excellent substack by "El Gato malo". Cliff notes: Harvard's endowment of $53 billion earns $4.9 billion per year. Harvard can easily replace the funds Trump cut, and continue to support research projects like the ones you described. It is Harvard's callous decision to use these research projects as leverage to get their way by pushing the Narrative that Orange Man's DOGE is evil.
The obvious response should have been for Harvard to support meritocracy and cancel the dubious values offered by DEI based policies. Harvard could also have tighten up their fiscal base by cutting administrative waste and research that was not worthwhile. Instead, they played martyr for their progressive donner base. Their choice, but the narrative should be framed accurately.
Dick Minnis
removingthecataract.substack.com
Point taken. You are correct--I paid little attention to the actual framing of why the cuts were made, and swept it all into the category of DOGE. Indeed, my correspondent (here in the comments as HarvardAnon) said, in one of his communications with me, "it seems to have been done under the guise of combatting anti-semitism and 'woke ideology', but has gone far from this intent." So this is my error, not his.
Because the framing of why the cuts have been done is not a primary point of mine here, I am giving the piece a new subtitle, and footnoting my use of the term DOGE when it first appears in the piece. Thank you for the clarification.
Not a big deal. What I enjoy most about substack writers is their willingness to listen and correct misunderstandings. Somthing you don't often see in the propaganda media. You raised some valid concerns on what is the appropriate vehicle for funding research; private or government. As a scientist with experience in that arena, I would be interested to hear your take. In the Harvard situation it appears politics is indeed the malevolent actor but the perpetrator is Harvard not DOGE.
Dick Minnis
removingthecataract.substack.com
Without denying that DOGE is faultless and making mistakes, I would agree that it was Harvard that cut funding for research, not Trump, and deflected responsibility onto DOGE for these funding cut backs. It is clear that Harvard is getting money from others who want to keep woke ideology in place at any cost. This is not about research or politics. It is about power and money and who can push who around. Thinking otherwise is to misconstrue the entire battlefield.
Agree completely, DOGE is just a typical media attempt to reframe the discussion away from the real issues.
Grok says Harvard’s endowment is $53 billion. Donors gave Harvard that money to spend on science and scholarships, not to hoard and invest. As between needs like disaster relief, infrastructure, social security, and Medicare, one hand, and funding science at schools that could readily spend their own money doing the same thing, the choice is not very hard. Anonymous MD PhD will lead a more fulfilling life once gov funding is separated from, and stops fully corrupting, science.
Agree with you Heather and the commenters here.
(1) Harvard can easily, and trivially, keep this good Dr-to-be's research going. The reason his funding is cut is because Harvard deemed his research not worthy of funding from their endowment, which exists in significant part because donors wanted to fund research. His complaints should be directed at the cynical and hyperpolitical leftist Harvard administration, not at the Trump administration.
(2) It would be easy for Harvard to solve this defunding, which is not coming from DOGE. All Harvard has to do is comply with utterly reasonable (until a few years ago) federal funding regulations regarding discrimination and stop thumbing their noses at the American taxpayer. If you think that the Trump administration really wants to defund research, you probably were dumb enough to think that same administration wanted to have giant tariffs on our trading partners' goods. You have to be a special kind of stupid (or a Harvard administrator, but I repeat myself) to not see that this is a negotiation. As soon as Harvard starts being reasonable, they will get their funding back.
Yes--of course this is a negotiation, and presumably the Harvard administrators know that too, and are playing the same kind of game in their public statements as Trump is (albeit rather more poorly--he is a master negotiator after all), leaving us to wonder what is actually going on behind the scenes.
I don't know to what extent any university's endowment exists "because donors wanted to fund research." In my head, donors give to their alma maters because they either want to relive/honor their college days, or (at larger amounts), see their names on buildings and in endowed professorships and the like.
Could Harvard keep all of the research happening under their auspices going from their endowment? I think so, yes. But it would require a massive change in expectations, in framing, in everything, and even if we all decided that it would be for the best if they did so, the fact is that a future administration is likely to reinstate the current system, so the "best" move for Harvard is not to become independent, but to push back hard until their version of reality gets restored.
Personally, as I say in the piece, I think the public funding of science is a large part of the answer of how we should fund science. And HarvardAnon has done nothing to deserve this. However, my own bias is also that, an MD-PhD program such as the one that HarvardAnon is in should be funded by the institution. His degree isn't going to say Federal Government on it; it's going to say Harvard University. Research that is funded by NIH has to report that in the papers that result; degrees that are funded by NIH don't.
My own graduate degree was not funded by the federal government, so far as I know, although I did apply for and receive a (very small) NSF grant to fund travel to a conference to present my research. My actual research was funded by in-house grants (that were also competitive); and my time on campus, including the courses I took, preliminary exams, etc, was funded by 10 semesters of TAships that I was promised on admit. There are a lot of biology undergrads that need to have labs and seminars taught for them, and while actual professors were still standing at the front of large classrooms, it was grad students like me who taught the labs and seminars. That said, that system will work best for fields with lots of undergrads, and biology of course has tons of "pre-health" students who need instruction.
Thus, perhaps my opinion--that institutions should fund their own degree programs--is more fueled by own bias and experience than is warranted. And again, I want to say that this opinion has nothing to do with whether HarvardAnon deserved this outcome. His acceptance letter from Harvard presumably did not explain that actually, the federal government would be funding his degrees.
Typical of Heather's posts, this one presents important content, and presents it with minimal bias.
I have a few thoughts, but no conclusions:
The writer says, " I am also a three-time Trump voter from Washington State, and as one among few conservatives at Harvard, I think my perspective is quite unique." Why is he one of the few conservatives? He glosses over a severe bias that probably impacts the quality of the research.
I am a science geek, and taught earth science for a while, years ago. I am increasingly appalled at the politization of scientific research. (And science teaching, for that matter.) That anyone lends any credence at all to Greta Thunberg speaks volumes.
The entire federal government is out of control. It sure doesn't come down to just scientific research. Many suggest that Trump shouldn't be so heavy-handed, that he should take a more gradual approach to reigning things in. But gradual approaches have been tried before, repeatedly. Gradual approaches get steamrollered by powerful interests. None of us like Trump's approach, but I've thought about it, and I think his is the only effective approach.
Coincidentally, Reason magazine recently addressed this very issue. I think they did a good job with it. And I think we all know the issue of government funded research is now on the front burner and will stay there for the indefinite future. We have a lot to work out.
The Reason magazine article:
https://reason.com/video/2025/05/19/eisenhower-warned-us-about-the-scientific-elite/
A lot of us are white-knuckling this, holding on, trying to remain optimistic, believing that this is likely the only way to rein things in for precisely the reasons that you lay out here. At this point, I am still optimistic about Trump's ability to do right by us, while also hoping for more input from some voices (Kennedy), and far less from those who are patently not wise on some subjects they have been given domain over (Musk).
The Reason article begins strong, but then falls into what I see as the typically naive position that TEM-positive people make. That's TEM--Technology, Engineering and Math--in which the Science has been dropped, because hey, that's going to get wrapped up into the tech and engineering, right? I see this error over and over and over again. It's a large part of why I stepped down from my role as one of five founding trustees of the University of Austin. Many people on the left think that you can "follow the science" when actually they're following autocrats who are modern-day pied pipers of Hamelin. Many people on the right think you can do only the research that has, in advance, obvious positive human ramifications, and everything will be fine. Both camps are wrong.
I get everything you're saying. But there can be huge price tags on research that has no immediate monetary value, and may never have any. That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile, but when a government is hemorrhaging money, something's gotta give.
I think Trump is far more comprehensive in his thinking than people give him credit for. It may take years, no fault of Trump's, to sort things out and get worthwhile research done with funds that are properly budgeted. And it certainly should not all fall on the federal government. If you don't want autocracy running the research, then you don't want the federal government running the research.
I am in 2 minds on this. On the one hand, I feel for the individual person that presumably did nothing to deserve this. If I have a contract, I expect the other side to keep their side of the contract, or face some consequences.
But Harvard can easily afford to fund all the research if it was that important to them. What else do they have a slush fund for? These cuts are in response of them standing on their "principles" to keep DEI. One would think this would be exactly the type of rainy day that one keep a slush fund around for.
I think in the end it feels like "fruit from a poisonous tree" Even if I innocently buy a stolen hand bag I am still participating in a crime. How much bending of the knee did this person do to get to this position? How many little things (like the DEI statement for grants) did they participate in (kindly assuming they did that unwillingly) or turn a blind eye to to get to their position? But then again, did they have much choice if they wanted to continue their research?
In the end I think the rot is just too deep to simply use a scalpel.
Thank you to Dr. Heying for agreeing to share my story. I knew I would be coming into the Lion's Den with this one, but ultimately, academic research is a public good for the citizens, not a privilege of the scientist. Your critiques of academia, elitism, and scientific funding have always been spot on, so I could think of no better person to share this with. And though at times I disagree, your voice in this conversation is critical to rebuilding something great.
All Americans deserve a say in how taxpayer dollars should be allocated and awarded. Indeed, it is a shame that I and so many trainees have lost federal funding, especially when I know each and every one of them by name and the stellar work they do. I want to make clear as I have seen this mentioned in several comments: in the aftermath of the federal cuts to Harvard, the University is continuing to fund our research and training grants on its own dime. However, Harvard will not be able to do this forever. Just my lab alone spends ~3M/FY.
I want to envision a scientific ecosystem where I as a scientist do not have to be bogged down with considerations towards the economic utility of scientific discovery; one never knows from where the next greatest discovery will come from. Economic utility is the concern of industry and pharma, not academia (when properly oriented, of course). Funding of academic research allows individuals like myself to pursue a hypothesis to its logical conclusion in a slow and dispassionate fashion. This is unlike scientific industry where I would have a vested interest in ensuring that anything I produce has potential for commoditization, which is where we see corrupted interests really start to have harmful effects on the broader population.
I think a lot of this fell on its head with COVID. Prior to COVID, though we are notoriously untrusting of institutions and elites regardless of political leanings, Americans had broad faith in their physicians. And I think this is because the community of physicians which exists had thoroughly prioritized its commitments to, at all levels, endeavoring to act in the best interest of patients - to do no harm. We make a promise when we first enter the profession as we take the Oath. But the infiltration of a noble profession by corrupt incentives led many to feel betrayed by people with whom they believed to be incorruptible. Where I may differ with commenters here is that I do not lay these errors at the feet of physicians, but a system that silenced any alternative perspective. One can imagine a situation where the COVID vaccines did in fact do everything that public health officials claimed it would do, but by steamrolling over physicians and scientists who really should be the primary arbiters of such claims, scientists and physicians thus became scapegoated. And to those who would say that physicians are complicit, I would remind them that physicians, to no fault of their own, were all reading the same papers from a corpus of literature which at the time was quite one-sided. I am quite sure that physicians by-and-large were not under the impression that advocating for vaccination or avoiding alternative therapies was doing harm, as evidence supporting this perspective were not being widely disseminated/digested.
Now, I find it quite surprising that we don't hold the field of science to the same level of duty that we hold physicians. Why do scientists not make an oath to the public with regards to their scientific endeavors? Why do scientists not make public promises to do no harm, to pursue the truth and only the truth, that their discoveries might only yield positive impact for society? Scientists, in my opinion, are just as much bedrocks to the development and flourishing of society (I guess I kind of have to believe that as an MD-PhD-to-be). But the only way that scientists can really accomplish their work is to not be swayed by ulterior motives e.g. the drive for publication, the acquisition of funding, chasing the dreams of prestige, etc. And yet, we see the consequences of an adulterated system today where scientists are incentivized to only publish positive results, in that manner they can accrue more funding, do more research, publish more, and get more funding etc.
I'm not sure where the solution lies. Dr. Heying and I clearly are not in agreement between a scalpel and a sledgehammer. Perhaps tearing it all down is what must be done. Perhaps a scalpel is indeed too detail oriented. But I would say this: today, we have surgical approaches called laparoscopy which are minimally invasive techniques. In the setting of an appendectomy, only three small incisions need to be made to remove your entire appendix with relative ease and subsequently sew you back up. And while we have these devices now, there was indeed a time where this surgery would have been performed entirely with a scalpel. It was more invasive than laparoscopy, and caused a bit more pain, but overall still got the job done without nicking the iliac. Scalpels can do some heavy lifting when you wield them right.
Thank you to everyone's engagement on such an important topic, as your voices are just important as the story I share. I'd love to hear others perspectives on how this all gets fixed. And thank you again to Dr. Heying for sharing.
"I think a lot of this fell on its head with COVID. Prior to COVID, though we are notoriously untrusting of institutions and elites regardless of political leanings, Americans had broad faith in their physicians. And I think this is because the community of physicians which exists had thoroughly prioritized its commitments to, at all levels, endeavoring to act in the best interest of patients - to do no harm. We make a promise when we first enter the profession as we take the Oath. But the infiltration of a noble profession by corrupt incentives led many to feel betrayed by people with whom they believed to be incorruptible. Where I may differ with commenters here is that I do not lay these errors at the feet of physicians, but a system that silenced any alternative perspective. One can imagine a situation where the COVID vaccines did in fact do everything that public health officials claimed it would do, but by steamrolling over physicians and scientists who really should be the primary arbiters of such claims, scientists and physicians thus became scapegoated. And to those who would say that physicians are complicit, I would remind them that physicians, to no fault of their own, were all reading the same papers from a corpus of literature which at the time was quite one-sided. I am quite sure that physicians by-and-large were not under the impression that advocating for vaccination or avoiding alternative therapies was doing harm, as evidence supporting this perspective were not being widely disseminated/digested."
Thank you for joining in here at NS. Appreciated. Some of this paragraph I agree with, but some not so much. I think COVID exposed today's 'medicine'. We believed things about clinicians, about "medicine" that just aren't true anymore. It became glaringly clear that medicine is so specialized anymore that even your family FP/GP handed you off to strangers in a hospital setting when you became ill with COVID. Zero interest in treatment, zero interest in managing your care. The ER physicians bore the brunt of it, as they do now; they are IMO the best doctors out there. But what they were up against... well, a multitude of tornadoes. So I think COVID exposed that what you and most thought was true about physicians wasn't; hasn't been for decades. I also disagree that most did the best they could with information from "the same papers from a corpus of literature which at the time was quite one-sided". Yes, it WAS quite one-sided, but there was a chorus of dissenting and meaning-to-be-helpful voices out here. Our family GP, who retired after all this, did not embrace everything fed to him from Jan/Feb 2020 onward. He read many studies that weren't mainstream. He was willing to entertain questions and had his own.
Our son died after our family all got COVID (other than the teen) in early 2021. He was 25. He was given the usual protocol which was: nothing; stay home, go to the ER if you get into trouble. He died 5 days after being admitted. The GP didn't even know he'd died until one of our daughters called his office and informed them there. Such is medicine in America at present. In his defense, he was deeply stricken and went over and over his records to see if he had missed anything. Yes, he felt he might have been somewhat responsible. If he was, it was a collective 'guilt'. IMHO.
Thank you for joining us and giving us your view, which is unique because it is inside Harvard/research. Again, it's appreciated.
I just wanted to say, I am so sorry for the loss of your son. I am not religious, but I believe in heaven simply because I have to believe that there’s a hell that some of these people will go to for the devastation that they caused.
Thank you Lizelle.
I have not the words. Your son deserved so much better. Him, and many like him.
Thank you. Yes, they all deserved to be treated as irreplaceable. The heartache is itself enough without having to acknowledge the disappointment of how their last days were valuated.
I do believe our son's team wanted to save his life, and tried. I don't believe they had the tools. A year into the pandemic.
Thank you again, for your kindness.
I read the scientific literature as well and decided to get the Covid vax due to my age. Every study I read showed increased adverse events the younger people were. All of the literature pointed toward damage to younger people, yet physicians promoted it to children. I was very upset as I was basing my decisions on papers published by the NIH.
Funding with tax dollars is inherently corrupting as we have seen in other areas such as our schools. We need to form more voluntary associations to meet the needs of all.
Let Harvard endowments fund the research if they deem it worth doing. I am sorry for the real scientists losing their grants. But I am also sorry for the working class Americans paying for bullshit science while barely making ends meet. I think it needs to burn down before we can build it up again.
I feel bad for the kid. I do. However Trump is not cutting “science” but rather “science at Harvard” with its 70% Overhead rate. He isn’t cutting science at my daughter’s school for instance.
Somehow I could see a scenario where the team relocated to a new university w say a 20% overhead.
Harvard could fund the research with income from its endowment, it chooses not to. I feel bad for this researcher and can only hope a better system will come up out of the ashes. One funded by private donations instead of off of the backs of the public with tax dollars and no accountability. How much money ever made it to the lab and how much went to administration? The innocent researcher would have no idea.
As a fellow Washington State unofficial Harfraud alumni Trump-voter, I don't understand what DOGE is actually achieving. Seems like a one-bit psyop to distract MAGA and conservatives from Trump's overall increasing of federal spending (i.e. "Forget about our $37T debt, look at all this woke stuff we canned!") If I were Orange King for a day, I'd cut both the welfare and the warfare, but that could only ever be achieved by first (as the hashtag goes) #EndTheFed.
I suppose the clarification I seek is in the acronym itself: Department of Government EFFICIENCY. It's not "Easing" (or "Evaporation" would be funny; "Government Ebbing" anyone?) But no, it's just: "Efficiency". Trump and Elon never said they'd be shrinking government overall. Or did they? Not that I recall.
And not sure what to say about the honorable graduate researchers finding themselves as collateral damage to this political game. As harsh as it may sound, I suspect that no amount of artificial intelligence, kinase signaling, and mass spectrometry will end cancer, nor will it make his late mother any more proud of him than she already was.
Eventually everyone trapped in the Ivy League realizes, hopefully sooner than later: there's nothing to prove. There are ways to prevent cancer as a medical practitioner (and honor the memory of his mother) outside of this overfunded bastion of prestige.
As I understand it, and I could be very wrong, this is a pause and Harvard has the chance to correct its behavior but doesn't want to. It's trying the route through the courts - and public opinion. Is this correct?
Though it was originally a pause, as of last week the NIH grants specifically have been completely terminated. The only chance of those grants being rescued is if in the July 21st court case between Harvard and DOJ (I believe, but could be HHS I can't recall) is if they rule that the federal funding freeze is unconstitutional and there is subsequently an injunction. I believe in this circumstance funds would be repatriated. I really have no comment on the merits of the court case because, as I mention in the article and in my comment, I certainly empathize with the need to gut erroneous expenditures and weed out corruption. I really just want to continue measuring molecules. And to be honest, I think the public would want me to continue my work as well, if under the auspices of a more reliable institution.
Thank you. The pause ended in termination because Harvard didn't respond positively/correctively?
Correct, the letter sent by HHS and GSA to Harvard had the following stipulations requiring:
- Governance and leadership reforms
- Merit-Based Hiring Reform
- Merit-Based Admissions Reform
- International Admissions Reform
- Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring
- Reforming Programs with Egregious Records of Antisemitism or Other Bias
- Discontinuation of DEI
- Student Discipline Reform and Accountability
- Whistleblower Reporting and Protections
- Transparency and Monitoring
You can find the full letter here: https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11.pdf
El Gato Malo had an interesting perspective that I'd like to share:
https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/peak-hostage-puppy?r=zct4n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Here’s another perspective
https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/peak-hostage-puppy?r=wgq8&utm_medium=ios
Very good.
"if they will not fund it, why should we?
“good enough to spend your money on but not our own” is hardly a ringing endorsement of “too vital to stop.”"
As were the cats. Very good. Thanks.
And Harvard tried to get Prasad fired at UCSF because of his positions on Covid. And I am still trying to get Harvard’s Implicit Bias Test banned because it is fake. Instead of capturing race bias, it captures left/right hand dominance at the keyboard.
While I sympathize with ethical PI’s research needs, Harvard’s woke double-standard is unprofessional. And I note especially after the recent DC Jewish Museum shooting that Harvard cares more about preserving DEI-antisemitism than it cares about scientific research.
2 questions come to mind:
1) What if it is the other way around, that federal funding of basic research makes it unprofitable for companies to pursue basic research?
2) Do we have a false dichotomy here between basic and applied research? I work at start-ups and often enough have basic research questions come to mind. I usually just run an experiment or 2 and don't make too much of a big deal about it. After all, if you don't know something then you have a hole in your understanding that could be a barrier to your goals. Perhaps it is better to not think of basic and applied teams, but move between the two at will. Good companies support this. Almost anything that could be labeled basic will be of value in the future.