The Cost of Gutting Science Is Invisible Yet Enormous

Intelligence agencies often complain that they are judged unfairly because you hear about their failures, not their successes. It’s hard to evaluate anything based on what didn’t happen — even when that’s really the important thing. The problem is just as salient for those trying to create a better future as trying to avert a worse one. When it comes to research, we can see technologies and industries that exist. We can’t see the ones that were never invented because the science that should have created them was defunded.

Consider the 22 emails went out on a late Friday afternoon in April from the White House terminating the recipient’s appointment to the National Science Board, which has set policy for the National Science Foundation (NSF) since 1950. No reason was given. The Trump administration’s explanation was that a 2021 Supreme Court ruling — about administrative patent judges, not advisory boards — raised constitutional questions about non-Senate-confirmed appointees. That’s no explanation. The firings come on top of huge cuts to the NSF’s budget and the loss of more than 30% of NSF staff since January 2025. They are the latest step in the administration’s evisceration of the NSF and the American science it supports.