In Episode 5 of The Week in Science, Scott Turner, Director of Science Programs at the National Association of Scholars, offers a timely critique of the growing media narrative around a so-called “Trump brain drain”—the claim that scientists are fleeing American institutions due to MAGA-led funding cuts. Turner says that what is actually driving scientists away isn’t political hostility to science but a realignment of funding priorities that scientists don’t like.
Despite fears of a brain drain, Turner notes that America still vastly outpaces every other country in research funding—even after proposed cuts. And while China is aggressively recruiting American scientists, those who take the bait will find little academic freedom in a tightly controlled, authoritarian system.
In short, Turner doesn’t take the panic over a brain drain all that seriously.
He then pivots to evolutionary biology, challenging the oft-repeated claim that humans and chimpanzees share 99 percent of their genetic material. That figure, he explains, has been overturned by recent analyses of the genomes of the great apes.
More importantly, the similarity of genomes doesn’t measure the massive functional differences—especially in cognition, language, and moral reasoning—between humans and chimps. Will museums rise to the challenge? Given the capture of elite institutions like the Smithsonian, it’ll be a close-run thing.
Watch the episode below or on YouTube:
Follow Jared Gould on X and visit our Minding the Science column for in-depth analysis on topics ranging from wokeism in STEM, scientific ethics, and research funding to climate science, scientific organizations, and much more.
Image: “Aren’t these humans funny? Bryan the chimp at Monkey World in Dorset” by Ian Duffy on Flickr
“In short, Turner doesn’t take the panic over a brain drain all that seriously”
Anyone who believes you can cut the NSF budget by half and not have a brain drain, is just a fool.
Assuming that there were brains there to begin with.
TRUE scientists have not always needed to have the shiniest new toys and the newest buildings — although if their science has any merit, there are lots of rich people who can be encouraged to help fund it.
But when you eliminate the purported science that can not be duplicated, and the ideological science that is directed toward predetermined political results (e.g. climate science), you’ve already eliminated over half of what the NSF funds, and losing those schmucks would BENEFIT science.
Today, we feed way more people with way fewer farmers than we did in 1950.
We can do the same thing with science — we have to because we are broke.