A National Science Foundation Elegy
Holding space for scientists' grief
This past month, I’ve been completely blocked as a writer. Each day I’ve sunk deeper and deeper into a furious daze as the scientific ecosystem in the US is further and further damaged.
I probably don’t need to summarize everything here, as the national press seems to finally be covering some of this, but just in case: this Republican administration has banned, blocked or threatened grants or fellowship programs that reference diversity, equity, and/or inclusion. In defiance of court orders, funding for research remains frozen at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is at least partly frozen at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Thousands of workers at federal agencies, including NIH and NSF, were fired over the weekend. Enormous budget cuts are proposed for NSF. You can read a summary of everything, with lots of links, here.
I’ve felt helplessness and fear. I’ve felt almost constant anger. I’m sleeping poorly, been short with my daughter, and been quick to take offense with my husband.
It wasn’t until yesterday that I felt grief. It was this article that got me, where an NSF staffer is quoted as saying, "I don't know what NSF is going to be now, but it's not more efficient. It's just a mess.” This expression of uncertainty and chaos just killed me, and I ugly cried for much of the evening. I ate Doritos-flavored Smartfood popcorn and white chocolate chip cookies for dinner (both delicious; combined, not recommended). I took an Ambien.
Today, I still feel helpless, afraid, angry and grief-stricken. But I also finally have the wherewithal to write something. I want, in some small way, to honor the outsized role that NSF has played in my life as a academic scientist. So that is what I hope to do here.
Disclaimer: I’m not going to spend time justifying basic research (research that is done purely for the pursuit of knowledge, the goal of NSF as an agency). I’m sorry, I know it’s not very #scicomm of me. All I can muster is: 1) it’s important to understand the world, 2) basic research feeds into important innovations, 3) industry cannot and will not support the kind of curiousity-driven research that provides the insights they are good at building upon, 4) everyone has the right to do science if they wish, and 5) we have a moral imperative to help break down the barriers to full inclusion.
NSF as a really good parent
Like most institutions, NSF has a certain persona. Perhaps because it’s been a part of my career as a scientist almost since it started, I see NSF as a quiet, nerdy, parent. Supportive yet firm. The one that is proud of you when you do well, but also letting you know that you can do even better. The one that both gives you independence and steers you in a particular direction. The parent I’m frankly not being right now.
NSF made my graduate education possible through a pre-doctoral fellowship. It also was my lab’s bread-and-butter funding throughout my independent research career. My first grant as a faculty member (to study the role of mechanosensitive ion channels in chloroplasts) was from NSF, as was my last grant (to study mechanosensitive ion channels in pollen). An NSF CAREER award the year I went up for tenure (to study mechanosensitive ion channels broadly) contributed to our success as a lab and my promotion to Associate Professor.
NSF funded the Center for Engineering Mechanobiology, a Science and Technology Center based at Wash U and Penn that connected me to all kinds of new ideas and gave me some (semi-disastrous) experience with multi-institutional leadership.
Like any good parent, NSF wasn’t purely supportive. It nudged me, gently but firmly, to incorporate mathematical modeling into my research. In fact, it funded a workshop I helped organize on mathematical modeling in cell biology, which led to a fruitful collaboration.
It also pushed me to think about ways to have an impact outside of my tiny research field, something I was initially resistant to. Eventually, NSF helped fund our podcast aimed at young members of the plant biology field, which turned into a very rewarding aspect of my latter career. I also benefitted directly from NSF grants awarded to other people, such as the Research Coordination Network (RCN) grants that funded a workshop on pollen biology, training in using the arts to broaden participation in the plant sciences, and a scientific summit that attempted to articulate a vision for the future of plant science.
The political theater of Ted Cruz’s “woke DEI” grant list
One of the most painful things I’ve witnessed this month from the Republican administration (and there are a lot of contenders) was Ted Cruz posting a literal Excel spreadsheet of NSF funding that, according to his press release “was diverted toward questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.“ I refuse to link to the database here, because it distorts reality to the point of absurdity, but let me just give you a few details with which I am familiar.
Cruz’s list of “woke DEI” NSF grants includes several that fund Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) programs. REUs are summer research residency programs that provide a the opportunity for undergraduates to get research experiences that might not be available at smaller schools. Furthermore, because they provide housing and a stipend, they make summer research a possibility for students without the economic resources to do research for credit or as a volunteer. Small programs like this have (or, I should say, had) the potential to make scientific careers accessible to everyone.
Almost every student that graduated with a PhD in my lab had a summer REU experience, including one REU that can be found on the Cruz hitlist. My last graduate student went to a small Missouri state university, then attended the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center REU program the summer between her junior and senior year of college. It helped her develop her bench and coding skills, and fed her interest in plants—which eventually led to doing her thesis in my lab. Now she works at a venture capital firm in St. Louis, helping them understand and invest in agribusiness. This is a perfect example of a basic science training experience that led to a job in the private sector.
Calling this kind of program “pushing far-left ideology” is ridiculous unless you think recruiting more students into plant biology is far-left. Furthermore, the assertion that compiling a list of REU grants “exposes how the Biden administration weaponized federal agencies” is a total fabrication. There’s nothing new about including aspects that aim to diversify the scientific workforce in NSF grants.
A little bit of history
Why did Ted Cruz’s team find the concept of diversity everywhere in NSF proposals? Because that is part of the mandate for NSF and has been since the agency was founded in 1950 by Harry Truman. To wit, the Act that established NSF (Props to Raychelle Burks for pointing this out on LinkedIn) includes the following language:
Section 10(b) : "The Director shall ensure program outreach to recruit fellowship applicants from fields of study that are in areas of critical national need from all regions of the country, and from historically underrepresented populations in STEM."
Since 1997, NSF grant proposals have included two sections, Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts (they were more elaborate before that but still required elements of both sections). In the Broader Impacts section, scientists are asked to explain how their proposed work will benefit society—essentially, how it helps taxpayers. Broader impacts of research can be through the research itself, like understanding climate change or developing a new kind of solar cell, or through the act of recruiting and training the next generation of researchers.
In summary, building a diverse scientific workforce is an explicit goal of NSF and always has been, so Ted Cruz’s “gotcha” spreadsheet is nothing more than political theater at the expense of science and scientists.
Wrap-up
I wish I had something inspiring or revelatory to write here, but I don’t. I’m just holding space for the scientists, administrators, journalists, and writers that are doing their best in a terrible time. I’m trying to bear witness to the things we are losing, day by day. I’m finally writing something, which is a little bit better than nothing. And I’m going to spend this evening cooking and listening to music with my daughter, trying to be a good, nerdy parent.
Discussion Section
Scientists, share your experiences with NSF. Were you nudged into considering Broader Impacts the way I was?
Any actions to recommend, links, resources?
Thank you for this Liz ❤️
NSF support has meant a lot to me, starting with funding my grad PI, then in the form of a postdoctoral fellowship that gave me an opportunity that I would not have otherwise had. 20 years later, as a staff scientist at a university (after 13 years in industry), I was a co-PI in one of the NSF centers for innovation. The relative flexibility in the NSF directives meant that I could do this without being a tenure-track faculty member.
I was considering becoming a program officer there for the last few years of my career, but obviously that is off the table now.
I once did the math and figured out that I had paid off all of my 'training' NSF support in the form of income taxes a few years after I started working in industry.
Although overhead costs are confusing, the fact remains that research is even more expensive in industry. Back when I was in industry our FTE rate was around $500k/year for a scientist, which was appx 5x the salary at the time. The company I worked at started out as a technology development company that partnered with big chemical companies. We developed the infrastructure and did the research. Over the years we also started selling the equipment and software, but around 2007-8 management started to pivot more towards software, since the cost to scale it were less. It's kind of reminiscent of what the DOGEbros are pushing now with AI. Eventually the company got rid of the research and equipment units and 'merged' the software unit with another company, in what was essentially just a big payout for investors and senior management.
After this experience, I was burnt out on Silicon Valley/tech culture and moved to a university in 2010. I am absolutely appalled at how much worse it has gotten since then.