It’s over already. It’s going to take decades to come back from this, if at all since the reputation is shaken at the core, and that is very difficult to rebuild.

The funding cuts and uncertainty and stifling is speech is shocking, but this is already affecting young scientists. There are cuts to summer research stipends, grant pausing means no work for some researchers. It’s the future that will really hurt when we don’t have those scientists since they either didn’t pursue science or went to other countries.

America has held a very central seat of science for quite some time, but that’s done. Europe is going to replace is—and already is. It’s a shame too since American higher Ed is structurally setup to be much more agile in how it pursues inquiry.