A sense of doom is overwhelming U.S. biomedical researchers

“Our research … [has] been demolished with a sharpie,” said a researcher we asked about how federal funding changes have affected their work.

As soon as a list of prohibited words from the National Science Foundation was leaked in February, it became clear U.S. scientific research had entered a new era. Whereas in the past federal agencies had supported expanding research to include marginalized populations, both as researchers and as participants in research studies , suddenly it seemed that work was likely to be at risk. Soon enough, grant terminations , which had previously been quite rare, started happening, canceling research related to trans people , the broader LGBTQ+ community , climate change , Covid , HIV , misinformation and disinformation , workforce devel