In Brief:
- The National Science Foundation was created to support research in fields that depend on federal backing, including public health.
- Recently, all 22 members of its board were dismissed. The director of NSF resigned a year ago.
- The leader of a nonprofit organization that works to support the public health sector spoke to Governing about the public health implications.
As war spread through Europe in 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt created a new office of scientific research tasked with improving the technological sophistication of the country’s armed forces. The advances in radar, medicine and weaponry that came out of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (including the atomic bomb) were essential to American success in World War II.
The leadership structure of the federal agency created to sustain this momentum, the National Science Foundation (NSF), has been dismantled in the past year as part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to scale down federal agencies. These dismissals have generated concern among some public health experts, who fear the downstream effects.
NSF was created to realize Roosevelt’s desire to see American scientific innovation continue during peacetime. It was conceived in response to a report warning that there were critical areas of science that depend on government support — public health among them. These areas are vital to American progress, the report said, but do not provide immediate benefit to private companies.
The National Science Foundation is the largest federal supporter of “basic research,” work to expand basic knowledge and understanding that drives innovation. NSF grants have yielded discoveries that have led to supercomputers, AI, smartphones and more. The grants have aided public health by deepening understanding of disease transmission, emerging diseases and population-level impacts of infectious diseases. Past programs have sought to understand how to make public health guidance more effective.
NSF board members are meant to guide Congress and the president in directing research investment dollars.
Near the end of April, President Donald Trump fired all 22 members of the board, via a short email that said their position had been terminated. The NSF director had resigned a year earlier; he gave no reason, but he faced the prospect of a 55 percent budget cut, which Congress ultimately rejected.
At this writing, no new director has been nominated or new board members appointed.
Brian Castrucci leads the de Beaumont Foundation, a nonprofit focused on strengthening public health systems. Governing asked Castrucci, who worked as an epidemiologist in several states, for perspective on the impact of the NSF shake-up, particularly as it relates to public health outcomes.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s the significance of these firings for public health?
Independent science advice isn’t really a luxury. It’s the infrastructure of good decision-making, and you really can’t govern complex systems on instinct and opinion.
For decades, administrations of both parties relied on independent science boards because facts don’t change with elections. The greatest concern here is turning an evidence-based government into an opinion-based government.
History tells us that’s dangerous.
(de Beaumont Foundation)
It’s all about the music you dance to. Who’s deciding what is the important public health research; who’s deciding the research agenda for us?
That’s what these folks were there for, and now that they’re not, it opens up a possibility that we will be doing different science. We will not be answering the right questions, we will not be getting people the information they critically need to protect the health of the public.
A lot of this is infectious disease work. Understanding the landscape of infectious disease is critical as we go into possible future pandemics. Most days I drive down the street and everything’s fine, but the day my tire blows out I’m glad there are guardrails so I don’t fall off into a cliff.
We took away those guardrails.
Is there anything that is especially concerning?
Typically, Congress has the purview to cut funding or to award funding. That’s part of the natural ebb and flow of government.
What is not natural is how those decisions are being made in this administration, because an independent advisory board helps to ensure decisions are made on the merits of the science and not on the merits of the politics.
Public health has some very interesting political issues that still warrant investigation with science.
What’s an example of a public health political issue?
Think back to 1980 — 250,000 people died of HIV before [President Ronald] Reagan said the word “AIDS” in public.
Whether it’s abortion or the health of marginalized communities, these are not necessarily things that enjoy bipartisan support for research to show how we can effectively promote certain forms of birth control or communicate more effectively with broad swaths of the public.
There are any number of topics within public health that are about the foundation of our culture and our society, but that do not share broad bipartisan support.
How does DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] fit into this?
Isn’t that the obvious one — disparities research, not under this broad rubric of diversity, equity, inclusion, but simple disparity?
How is it that one group of Americans can have such worse health than another group? That is 100 percent worthy of scientific investigation and then action to remediate that difference. It’s not a value-laden question. Group A differs from Group B and we need to figure out why.
If we lose some of that basic science, the nation is worse off, because it is only as strong as its least healthy person.
How much can state-led efforts, academic institutions or nonprofits fill the gap?
They can’t. We can’t philanthropy our way out of this. No one has pockets deep enough to replace the investment of the federal government.
We have created a scientific reliance on federal money, which was always a risk for our science infrastructure. But science and innovation and health should be national priorities, and they should be funded by the federal government.
There is no guarantee that Congress will actually do that, and now there’s no guarantee that congressional funding mandates will be executed.
I’m worried about the upstream implications of removing these guardrails, because then we will see downstream impacts in our science, in our innovation and whether our nation can stay ahead or if we fall behind.
Are you seeing anyone in Congress speaking up in support of the NSF?
I think that should be a question for the midterms. America can decide what the importance of science is.
I am thankful to be alive because of science. I had congestive heart failure in 2022 and scientific innovations with congestive heart failure give me a very different trajectory today than I would have had 10 years ago.
Science saved somebody sitting next to you in a restaurant. Science saved a whole bunch of people at your church, or your synagogue, or your temple or wherever you worship.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to ignore these people being terminated. These decisions are like grenades. You pull the pin and then you wait for the explosion. We may not see it for some time, but we are less strong because we’ve chosen to eliminate guardrails that protect and advance science.
