No. 77 of 108
August 29, 2025
“Science or Trump?” (a headline for an article on the removal of the Center for Disease Control director, who refused to resign). “The director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced his resignation today, 16 months before his 6-year term ends, in a letter to staff obtained by…”. “Climate scientist Sarah Cooley has been fired, rehired and fired again.” “In a major blow to hundreds of scientists who had National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants terminated earlier this year…” “Terms in this field are those that appear in the grant’s title, abstract, or public health relevance statement and match a list of words the administration has reportedly used to identify grants for termination.” “About 16 fired scientists worked in fisheries and a half dozen on hurricanes, sources said.”
There is systematic purging of scientists and science, a negation and erasure of past, current, and future inquiries and discoveries. What are we to make of science itself being a threat to a government and its rulers? Science, by its nature, is not absolute. Science is a persistent question, a test to be tested. Yes, science can be infuriating when inconclusive. And it has its limitations in the departments of understanding, resolving, and plain (name a language here other than the language of science) translation. Science is an informed endeavor by humans to make sense of the universe we are a teeny tiny part of. So the na‘au – our guts -- should grumble a warning, the hair should rise on the back of our necks, the ding-ding-ding bell in our mind’s eye should go off when scientists and science are purged, negated, and erased by a government and its rulers. Hug a scientist today! Urge the human part of them to please continue (with science, and speaking languages other than science for the sake of science). For the sake of humanity.