The hosts describe a funding crisis hitting American science in 2025 and 2026, with over 7,800 federal research grants suspended and a $3 billion shortfall across the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. They link this to a brain drain of roughly 10,000 doctoral-trained STEM and healthcare professionals leaving the US, and to a new Office of Management and Budget mandate imposing centralized political oversight on grant making, which they argue threatens the curiosity-driven basis of federally funded research.
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The hosts frame the crisis against the backdrop of upcoming budget negotiations for the 2027 funding cycle, where public pressure on Congress could still change outcomes.
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One host argues science funding is a small fraction of the federal budget and not where deficit-cutting efforts should focus, pointing instead to unspecified larger sources of waste.
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The hosts call for NASA to be funded for science, citing the James Webb Space Telescope as an example, rather than being treated primarily as a military-adjacent agency.
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2:15:00help the stock market price of some biotechnology company. But we've had hundreds of thousands, millions of researchers scientists and institutions dedicate their lives to exploring the world around us. That has given us so many of the conveniences, the advancements, the health benefits that we get to experience every day and sometimes take for granted. And that has been funded almost primarily by the federal funding system of grants, uh, research grants and other programs. And unfortunately, in the 2025 and 2026 time period, there's been a suspension of
2:15:41over 7,800 federal research grants and a $3 billion shortfall across the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, which is now triggering an existential crisis within the American Scientific Ecosystem, which is now driving some of our best people to find stability elsewhere because they have families, they have partners and kids, they have mortgages and needs to survive. And it is so important that we understand the value of this fundamental science research ecosystem which we've tried very hard to expose through this incredible deep dive journey which again you can always go back to at
2:16:22ffpod.com/ame250 to see and understand all of these great things that curiositydriven science has given us and we hope will continue to give us for decades and centuries and millennia to come. But it is not possible if we take away the very funding that enables it to happen in the first place. And it is a slightly morbid place to end our episode. But unfortunately, this is the reality. >> This is the reality we live in today. And I just I want to give you an opportunity to speak to this as well before we wrap up the episode. >> Yeah. I mean, look, American science has
2:17:04dominated for a reason. It's because of taxpayers like us. And I I am incredibly proud as an American taxpayer of all of these things that our people have been able to contribute to humanity. Just a few little numbers, right? Um over the past year, 7,800 research grants across the NIH and the NSF have been cancelled. um totaling $3 billion in lost and frozen funding. And what that means is you were alluding to a brain drain. Something like 10,000 doctoral trained STEM and health care professionals have left America for greener pastures. It's it's a massive
2:17:47massive thing. There's a new mandate from the Office of Management and Budget that introduces a centralized political oversight to grant making which I think is extremely dangerous. Um the whole idea of of curiositydriven research and basic research is to do is is to pursue questions that are interesting because of that reason only. They are interesting. Okay. Not because of some political agenda and blah blah blah blah blah. I think I think um we're really going backwards. It's not over yet. >> It's not. >> And um I do think that American infrastructure in science is going to bounce back. Um, but it's going to take
2:18:28an effort from, I think, average taxpayers like us to call our representatives in Congress, to call our senators, and to pressure them to make things right when it comes to funding the NIH, funding the NSF, funding NASA science. NASA shouldn't just be like a military wing, okay? It should be something that makes things like the James Webb Space Telescope. So, you know, I'll get off my soap box, but >> no, I think it's important. And one of the ways we will try to help, you know, this is an active process that is happening now. There are budget negotiations that are going into the what will now be the funding cycle for 2027. And they're going to be ways in
2:19:11which we can impact that process. Uh we are working on a couple of initiatives to help you understand what does that look like? How does the science funding actually work? What is the number? How big is it? You'd be surprised how small it actually is. And if we want to talk about ways in which we can attack the deficit, this is not really the best place to look because I promise you are wasting money in much more egregious places uh in much larger ways. But it's important to talk about the data first and understand from first principles how science funding and policy really works. And that's an initiative we look forward to working on in the wake of again our 250th America celebration on the history
2:19:53science innovation and the ecosystems and infrastructures that have enabled that within the US for such a long time.