"A hard time to be in science in this country"
Things I said/wrote in September-ish
October is here, the leaves are turning, and the government is shut down. Here are some things I’ve been up to recently.
What’s it like to be an autism scientist funded by the Trump administration? In a head-spinning contradiction (during an era of many), the government is funding respected scholars to study autism’s causes while simultaneously sowing misinformation about that very topic, experts say. After the president peddled the unproven claim that taking Tylenol during pregnancy causes autism, I spoke to the grantees of the $50-million Autism Data Science Initiative. They’re a group of respected scientists from prominent institutions, much to the relief of the scientific community. Because when the NIH first announced this initiative, many were skeptical. “People were nervous it was either not going to be used for rigorous science, or it was going to turn into a way for weird things to happen in science,” one told me. At the same time, it was an impossible-to-ignore opportunity — a potential way out of “a challenging spring, a hard time to be in science in this country,” as another researcher put it.
Also in September, I had the privilege of being invited to speak on two podcasts. For a Nature podcast about errors in science, I discussed the role that journalists can play in combating research misconduct. As I told the host, “We can give voice to people who may need to speak or share information anonymously because they fear retaliation ... We can write stories that are vetted by lawyers to minimize the risk of defamation lawsuits. And most importantly, I think we can draw public attention to a problem and use the specter of public pressure to try to get people to answer things on the record.”
And for College Matters, our podcast at The Chronicle of Higher Education, I talked to my colleague Jack Stripling about the Trump administration’s attempts to eliminate research about marginalized communities and other subjects it’s ideologically opposed to, and what this destruction means for the future of science and innovation in the U.S.
On Thursday, October 9, I’ll be discussing how I’m covering (or trying to cover…) the chaos in federal science funding as part of a webinar hosted by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. I’ll be in conversation with the brilliant Katherine J. Wu of The Atlantic and Scott Delaney, cofounder of Grant Witness, which has become a go-to resource during this crisis. Journalists, join us!
Hope you’re taking care of yourself!