Scientist warns Trump’s 'muzzling of science' will have 'huge chilling effect' on research

24 January

One scientist who studies disease outbreaks is warning that President Donald Trump's campaign of retribution against his political enemies is stifling important research.

In a Friday interview with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding blasted Trump's recent decision to halt communications, travel and hiring for the National Institutes of Health, which oversees more than $47 billion dedicated to funding scientific research and experiments across the country. Science magazine reported this week that the announcement from the Trump White House was causing "uncertainty, fear and panic" among the scientific community.

Dr. Feigl-Ding said the explanation that the announcement was just a "temporary pause" until February doesn't change the fact that the abrupt cancellation of grant review panels, hiring and trips to present new research will be debilitating to important ongoing projects. He lamented that that this week marked the first time in decades that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn't publish its weekly Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

"These in-person meetings actually will be probably rescheduled two, three, four months from now. And the impact of that research is we're talking about medical research, clinical trials that cannot pause, but they are scattered around the U.S., around the world trying to find cures for all these diseases," Dr. Feigl-Ding said. "So the impact on universities will be humongous."

"Entire university budgets might be frozen for quite an extra-long period of time," he continued. "It's devastating because now it also, even if they restart it, there will be this, you know, eerie silence, this unspoken, 'you better not publish anything that we don't want you to publish,' which again, during the pandemic, we know the Trump administration muzzled MMWR scientific reports on the pandemic. Anything that he doesn't like. So they will have a huge chilling effect."

Currently, the United States is in the midst of an avian flu outbreak, which has resulted in poultry farms having to cull entire flocks of chickens who have the virus. This has caused the price of eggs to skyrocket to an all-time high, despite Trump's promises that he would lower the prices of grocery staples like eggs under his administration. Dr. Feigl-Ding called on his fellow scientists to take a stand against the politicization of their research and embrace being "public advocates" for their work.

"The scientific community can't stand back while misinformation, disinformation and the muzzling of science is ongoing," he said. "I think this second Trump administration is truly the time when scientists will hopefully stand up and realize that they can't just rely on doing the science."

Watch the video of Dr. Feigl-Ding's full segment below, or by clicking this link.

From Your Site Articles