In Episode 7 of The Week in Science, host Scott Turner, Director of Science Programs at the National Association of Scholars, takes on how science strangled its own intellectual independence, why Trump-era budget cuts aren’t the end of the world, and what a new study says about boys, girls, and math.
First up: Science magazine published a fretful editorial by Michael Harris, a professor of higher education at Southern Methodist University, lamenting that federal funding cuts are “strangling intellectual independence.” Harris pins the blame on Donald Trump, arguing that a “perfect storm” of politicized attacks and slashed budgets is destroying science.
Turner begs to differ.
Science, he argues, sold its soul 75 years ago when it accepted a Faustian bargain: billions in federal funding in exchange for obedience to the government’s tune. Since 1950, gushers of federal research money have flowed through academic science, over $100 billion this year—money with strings attached. Scientists were fine with those strings when the politics aligned, but now that the tune has changed, they cry foul. Intellectual independence? You can’t have it both ways, Turner says, when one hand’s begging for grants and the other’s shaking a fist.
Next, a Science news piece by Cathleen O’Grady worries that Trump hijacked science’s reform movement. The “irreproducibility crisis”—in which up to 90 percent of studies published from 1990 to 2022 are now considered scientifically worthless—prompted calls for reform. Groups like the Center for Open Science led the charge, promoting fundamental principles such as hypothesis pre-registration and falsifiable methods.
Then Trump endorsed them.
His executive order, Restoring Gold Standard Science, embraced the reformers’ ideals, sparking warnings that the reform movement had become a pawn in an “anti-science” agenda. One scholar from the University of Bristol cautioned that integrity is fine—unless “Orange Man” endorses it. The Center for Open Science, suddenly radioactive, tried to distance itself from its own ideas.
Then there’s the math gender gap. A massive new study in Nature tracked 2.5 million French students from first through second grade. It found that boys and girls begin with near-identical math scores—girls even slightly ahead. But by second grade, boys pull ahead, creating what the authors call a “rapid emergence” of a math gap. Their conclusion? Systemic bias, demanding intervention from day one.
Turner isn’t convinced, however.
Why not consider biology? Maybe boys’ and girls’ brains develop differently, and boys—statistically—show math aptitude earlier. It’s not a proven cause, but it’s a valid hypothesis. And yet it’s too taboo to touch. Larry Summers, for example, lost the Harvard presidency for raising the question.
Finally, while Science hand-wrings over astronomy budget cuts, Turner notes the sky isn’t falling. (I wrote recently that among the Trump administration’s most interesting science cuts was funding for the Laser Interferometry Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO—the system that detects gravitational waves, those “ripples in spacetime” from black hole collisions and other cosmic events. The cuts mean the U.S. will go from two interferometers to one. However, even though two detectors are required for accurate readings, LIGO instruments already exist in Germany, Japan, and Italy, with another planned for India. Thanks to global cooperation, effective detection doesn’t require the U.S. to bankroll both.)
To Turner, astronomy is booming. A Nature feature by David Castelvecchi profiles the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, home to a 3.2-gigapixel camera the size of a car. Set to launch its Large Synoptic Survey next week, it will scan the night sky every four days, offering an unprecedented view of the universe.
Meanwhile, the NSF’s pivot from the controversial Mauna Kea site in Hawaii to the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile shows practical thinking. Add in the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, South Africa’s 11-meter mirror, and plans for an Extremely Large Telescope, and the picture is clear: private philanthropy and international partnerships—not bloated federal budgets—are keeping astronomy very much alive.
Watch the episode below or on YouTube:
Follow Jared Gould on X and visit our Minding the Science column.
