Bipartisan Support Secures Science Funding Amid Global Competition and Trust Deficits

Key Quotes

"Look, damage was done in 2025, and I want to start by saying that my colleagues in the scientific enterprise, they feel it because of the uncertainty that was there. They feel it because of grants that were either terminated or slowed down before they finally made it out the door. They saw it in reduced numbers of students going into the sciences."

Sudip Parikh explains that the scientific community experienced negative impacts due to funding uncertainty in 2025. These impacts included the termination or delay of grants and a decrease in students pursuing scientific fields. This highlights how instability in funding directly affects the people and progress within scientific research.

"Well, the legislative body, our Congress, just released numbers for a big part of the scientific enterprise, the National Science Foundation, NASA, other parts of federal funding, and they look good. What they show is that the bipartisan support for science in Congress is not just still there, it actually is strong. It is strong. We're going to end up seeing small increases in some of these agencies."

Sudip Parikh notes that recent congressional releases for science funding agencies like the NSF and NASA appear positive. He emphasizes that this indicates strong, bipartisan support for science within Congress, which is expected to result in modest funding increases for some agencies. This suggests a resilient political backing for scientific endeavors.

"It was the fact that there was advocacy. It was the fact that we went to the trouble of saying why should we be champions of science, and there was a concerted effort to do that."

Sudip Parikh attributes the positive funding outcomes not to a sudden change of heart by politicians, but to deliberate advocacy efforts. He explains that a focused campaign was undertaken to champion science and articulate its importance. This underscores the crucial role of organized advocacy in securing support for scientific funding.

"Uncertainties are a really crazy thing. So let me give you a really specific example. The National Science Foundation funds something called Graduate Research Fellowships. And these are fellowships that go to our best potential graduate students in the country. They're going to go in every field: mathematics, the physical sciences, biology, the life sciences, social sciences. And we funded 2,000 of them in 2024, 2,000, the 2,000 top, top young graduate students. In this year, because of all the uncertainty, the National Science Foundation had to pull back on what they were going to fund because they couldn't, they didn't know for certain what they were going to get from Congress. And so they cut that down to 500 at first, so really taking a three-quarters cut to the total number of these fellowships."

Sudip Parikh illustrates the disruptive effect of funding uncertainty by detailing cuts to NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. He explains that due to unpredictability in congressional funding, the NSF initially reduced the number of these prestigious fellowships from 2,000 to 500. This demonstrates how funding ambiguity directly hinders the support for top-tier graduate students across various scientific disciplines.

"And so what I hope that we can get to in trust in science is that if scientists are more engaged and able to build those relationships, either in person or virtually through long form, that we start to rebuild that trust, not around institutions, not around brand names, but around actual scientists and actual people, individuals, individuals, because that's where it's at right now."

Sudip Parikh proposes that rebuilding trust in science requires scientists to actively engage and form relationships with the public. He suggests that this trust should be built around individual scientists and their authentic motivations, rather than solely on institutions or brand names. This approach aims to foster genuine connection and understanding in a world where trust is earned through personal interaction.