“Well now, what can a poor boy do
‘Cept to sing for a rock-n-roll band?
‘Cause in sleepy London Town
There’s just no place for street fighting man”
– The Rolling Stones (1968)
It is once again a scary time to be a scientist in America. Donald Trump is president again and he has wasted no time initiating an attack on our work. By freezing the engines of American science, the NSF and NIH, Trump has signaled that nothing precludes him from directly undermining the basis of our country’s scientific infrastructure. Continued assaults on science are far more than just attacks on his perceived enemies; Trump is attacking American exceptionalism. We should not be afraid to say that.
As a young scientist, I am pretty angry right now. I am angry about how ignorance is going to preclude our scientific community from doing the work we love. I am furious about all the progress that will not be made, all the knowledge that we will not grasp and all the lives that we will not be able to save or better.
It is hard in part by design to grasp the seriousness of the moment. New Haven, which I have called my academic home for six years now, feels the same. I start my car, snag a cup of coffee in the morning from my go-to deli and try to be a few minutes early to my teaching assistant gig. I see friendly faces of professors I know, bright-eyed students I teach and the curators and collections staff I work alongside.
Yet, today feels very different from 2016. Trump won the popular vote. The dejection in the air from those worried about this so far anti-science administration is palpable.
My fellow young scientists, it is once again our time to push. If you feel the way I do, let’s get mad, stand up and get going together. We are the passionate, energetic future of our field and unfair though it may be, the time for us to fight for our work is now. That means holding ourselves to the highest standards in research ethics, vigor and originality, not making the mistakes or sacrificing scientific integrity for career advancement that some of our predecessors did when given great positions of power. I truly think that no cohort has ever been as qualified as ours to act at this moment. We reached academic maturity in a global pandemic that taught us to use science as our greatest weapon for the public good.
We cannot be afraid to critique and correct the scientific literature and most of all to engage with the public as we do. This builds street credit. Let us not make the mistake of thinking that not engaging with those who possess less expertise than us makes us better or more moral scientists. Every time we fail to speak to the public, we make our ivory tower taller.
Progress through observation is the defining feature of science. What can a scientist do, except to write and speak?
CHASE DORAN BROWNSTEIN is a second year graduate student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and a member of the Yale College Class of 2023 from Pierson College. He can be reached at chase.brownstein@yale.edu.