Science’s need to sell itself
Early in his second term, President Trump cut $1.8 billion cut to scientific research funding that will impact breakthroughs in areas like cancer and Alzheimer’s research. During that funding fight, and after the cuts, there was shock, awe, and whiplash.
As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo put it, “The world of biomedical research has close to no experience operating in a political context—and especially in the context of mass politics...The White House has relied on researchers’ unfamiliarity with political fights, using their sole reliance on bureaucratic channels of funding and review — which the universities and the federal government set up together going on a century ago — against them.”
Marshall notes that when the general public finds out about what’s happening to cancer and Alzheimer’s research, “[T]hey get mad. That, quite simply, is political power for good.”
But the scientific community hasn’t been leveraging its political power.
In recent years, a pocket of the right wing, including Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, and Elon Musk, targeted Dr. Peter Hotez, the renowned vaccine expert. It was part of the larger anti-vaxxer political movement that has grown considerably and begun to shift a slice of public opinion against vaccines.
The percentage of Americans who believe childhood vaccinations are important dropped 18 points in five years. That’s a spectacular drop in support from 2019 to 2024.
Many scientists will balk at being political. But having political savvy means communicating a clear message to win people over. It means defending science from attacks and showcasing the vital role science plays in our lives. All of this “political” work can be done without being partisan.
"Defending" science in the public sphere means talking about it in the most effective way. The science brain is trained on data and evidence—as it should be. But everybody else’s brain is wired for stories.
And that’s where the disconnect is —and where those who oppose vaccines or discredit climate science are finding a foothold. Anti-vaxxers are out-communicating the pro-vaccine/ pro-science contingent.
A 2017 piece in Slate by Tim Requarth of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine has stuck with me all these years later. “[T]he obstacles faced by science communicators are not epistemological but cultural,” Requarth wrote. “The skills required are not those of a university lecturer but a rhetorician.”
Professions like science tend to skip the step between the proverbial research lab and the public marketplace. They forgo the translation process — the process smart politicians and businesses do —required to bring data-backed ideas to market.