The Attack on Science is not new
It accelerated during the first George W. Bush administration but not enough people paid attention
Right now the 47 Regime is crushing science with one of those machines that turns whole automobiles into metal pancakes. You can see for yourself on this searchable list of canceled grants at the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. Some people will lose their livelihoods. Others will die. Some aleady have. The list of canceled grants is beyond enumeration, and the damage to our U.S. science agencies is probably beyond repair. That is why some of our best science policy experts have resigned from the NSF and the Library of Congress. And I haven’t even mentioned the Executive Order targeting the Smithsonian and other federal museums.
This has been in the works for while, people. I just re-read an essay I wrote 21 years ago. At the time Bush II and his Republican allies had not graduated to using a car crusher. A sledge-hammer worked well enough to soften up the target. And the science establishment, which believed too strongly in its own inevitability, and was too arrogant to imagine how things might go 20+ years into the future, figured it could get by. Give in a little on a museum exhibit, continue to play footsie with big business interests, and look the other way as the right wing softened them up for the knock-out punch. Below I reproduce how it looked to me in 2004. It was not so different then, except that at the time it was a punch in the ribs. Now it is a knock-out blow.
