The wasting disease threatening US science and ‘Patient Earth’

It’s a concerning time for basic science. Newly proposed changes to federal rule-making threaten to alter the entire scientific landscape. If these new rules are approved, they will diminish US science for generations. This is a personal perspective on what is at stake.

I was recently diagnosed with a serious illness. This diagnosis was enabled by basic science: Routine blood tests revealed abnormalities in platelet numbers. Less-routine blood tests identified cancerous protein markers on the surfaces of antibody-producing cells. Sophisticated CT scans made three-dimensional images of the organic machinery of my body, pinpointing bone mass irregularities.

All of this was made possible by decades of research within the fields of physics, chemistry, and biology.

Without prior investment in basic science, my prognosis would be much poorer. Science gives me justifiable hope for my future.

Science also gives me hope for the future of the planet we share. It gives me hope for the survival of our little oasis of life in the cold, limitless darkness of space.

Just as basic science enabled my diagnosis, it has enabled the diagnosis of “Patient Earth.” Scientists used spectrometry and remote sensing to measure changes in the chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere. They tracked changes over time in the concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. They measured isotopes of carbon and oxygen. They learned from those isotopic measurements that burning fossil fuels is responsible for most of the large increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution.

Bad stuff like cancer has tell-tale signatures in blood proteins. In a similar way, fossil fuel burning has unique signatures in lighter and heavier isotopes of carbon. This is not woke science. It’s essential science.

Basic science helped us understand that these human-caused changes in greenhouse gases significantly altered Earth’s climate. We’ve monitored hundreds of different climate markers. In the oceans. In the atmosphere. On land. Taken together, this body of evidence is every bit as compelling as the blood chemistry and cell morphology tests that help doctors to diagnose cancer. We now know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that human influences on climate—which my colleagues and I spent decades searching for—imperil the health of our planetary life-support system. The system health signs are no longer benign green or “proceed with caution” yellow. They are flashing bright red.

Living in fantasy land—say, by ignoring serious health issues—isn’t conducive to longevity.

You can’t treat a disease effectively if you don’t know its causes. You can’t treat the disease if you don’t understand the complex system you’re dealing with. You can’t treat the illness if you stifle scientific innovation that seeks to find cures. This is true in terms of both personal health and the health of ‘Patient Earth.’

Basic science has given us remarkable tools for combatting illness, medical wonders like COVID vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and CAR-T therapies. And basic science has given us amazing space-borne instruments that track the status of “Patient Earth,” measuring across the electromagnetic spectrum to sense variations in the chemistry and climate of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.

Such basic science is now under siege. If the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) prevails in its new federal rule-making effort, then the funding of US science, in all agencies and at all levels of government, will be placed under the control of political appointees. Peer-review of the quality and importance of the science will be secondary to other considerations: Whether the science comports with President Trump’s political agenda; whether the science involves collaboration with scientists in other countries; whether the science is deemed to be woke. Charting the way forward for the US scientific enterprise will be left to political functionaries whose defining characteristic is loyalty to the president—not subject matter expertise.

If this rule-making effort is implemented, US science will suffer. It will be stricken by the disease of willful ignorance. Ignorance is a wasting disease, a death of a thousand cuts. A gradual “falling behind” the rest of the world, not only in the ability to advance basic science, but also in the ability to educate, innovate, and retain the best and the brightest minds.

The health of the planet is not an abstract academic concept. Nor is it a woke construct. If we don’t live on a healthy planet, we won’t live healthy lives. Full stop; mic drop. Basic science helps us to live healthy lives on a healthy planet.

I don’t want to be the prisoner of a small number of abnormal cells. Nor do I want the citizens of this country to be prisoners of willful ignorance; ignorance that locks in the demise of US science. The time to speak and vote against such ignorance is now.