A crowd of Louisiana scientists gathered Friday at the State Capitol to protest the Trump administration’s proposed research funding cuts.
The gathering of over 100 professors, students and other researchers was part of a nationwide “Stand Up for Science” demonstration, with scientists from across the country walking out of their labs in defense of their profession.
In his first weeks in office, President Donald Trump and his administration have made drastic moves to upend how science is funded. The White House has paused funding for many scientific projects believed to be related to diversity, equity and inclusion and proposed slashing resources for administrative costs related to research funded by the National Institutes of Health.
“[The administration is] throwing the regular conduct of science into chaos, and so it’s extraordinarily detrimental,” Ravi Rau, an LSU physics professor of more than 50 years, said in an interview.
The group, some of them clad in long white lab coats, held signs with slogans such as “Science Makes America Great,” “Defunding science is defunding the future” and “Defunding U.S. science gives China the win.” They also sung out chants like “no science, no future.”
Their protest came with a warning: Any loss of funding for American research would have catastrophic impacts for the United States’ global standing and for local economies across the nation.
While the Trump administration’s federal funding cuts are largely on pause amid ongoing litigation, universities are preparing for the possibility of major reductions in government research dollars. LSU could lose $12 million if the administration’s proposed cut to indirect costs for National Institutes of Health grants are allowed to go into effect and would lose tens of millions more if other agencies followed suit.
Any major loss in federal research funding would ultimately impact the economy, as each dollar spent by universities on research has a ripple effect. One report found each dollar spent on NIH-funded research has an economic impact of $2.46 dollars.
Louisiana universities have active NIH grants worth about $300 million, creating an economic impact for the state of over half a billion dollars. Hundreds of millions of more grant dollars went to hospitals and other organizations in the state.
Loss of federal grants also risks the pipeline that educates graduate students to take jobs in academia and in private industry. Many graduate students, both those seeking master’s degrees and Ph.Ds, have their salaries and tuition covered by federal grants, as well as the research they conduct in pursuit of their degree.
“By threatening the sources of research funding, we’re harming our own economy, and we’re restricting our own workforce,” said Sam Bentley, a geology professor at LSU. “Most people can agree, regardless of political bend, that sensible economic growth and having a highly trained, successful workforce is really important.”
Brandon Shuck, a professor of geophysics at LSU, warned that the loss of workforce development could impact the oil and gas industry in Louisiana, one of the state’s legacy industries.
Offshore drilling involves complex technology, Shuck said, and requires highly-trained scientists like those educated in his department to prevent disasters like the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 rig workers.
The 2010 accident off the coast of Louisiana was the largest marine oil spill in world history, releasing approximately 134 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.
“We learned a lot from that scientifically about why that happened and how we could prevent it,” Shuck said. “So we need science in order to do these things. And I think if we don’t have a steady pipeline of scientists in Louisiana, the state will suffer from that.”
Students at the rally expressed fears their futures are evaporating in the heat Trump is putting on universities.
Cullen Hodges, a biological sciences Ph.D. student, said the hiring freezes universities have implemented amid the uncertainty in federal funding has made him fearful for how he will provide for his 7-year-old daughter.
“I am going to be competing against so many people for the few remaining jobs in a country that has demonstrated a complete lack of respect or regard for the dignity of scientists,” Hodges said.
“It seems that I am swimming upstream against the current, and they just dammed the river,” he added.
While critics have argued federal funding should not go to scientific research that does not have direct applications, the scientists gathered on the steps all agreed that there is no applied research without basic science.
Investing in that research now is necessary for the applied science of the future, Jonathan Snow, a geology professor at LSU, said in an interview at the rally. While the value of basic scientific research may not be readily apparent to the public, scientists are in agreement that this research is necessary for life saving discoveries and other scientific breakthroughs.
“Basic science basically won World War II,” Snow said. “Basic science drove innovation in all kinds of war-making technologies, from radar to the atomic bomb.”
“None of those were commercial products for before the war … they were all developed out of academic scientific enterprise,” he added.
Beyond the economic impact, protesters raised concerns about how attacks on academia impact the fabric of American society.
Rau, the physics professor, said universities have played a key role throughout history in preserving knowledge necessary for Western Civilization’s existence.
Without research and the preservation and dissemination of knowledge, society cannot thrive and may struggle to survive, Rau said.
“They’re certainly risking our society,” he said of the Trump administration. “They’re certainly risking our country and its stature within the society.”