Marcia McNutt gave a “State of science” speech to the National Academies of Science yesterday.
In a time when researchers are feeling shock, uncertainty, and volcanic anger at the actions taken against them, McNutt failed spectacularly to address the harm that is being done to US science now.
McNuss started with a couple of quotes that she said shows that everyone wants the US to be a world leader in science. The lived experiences of too many scientists say otherwise. Marcia, I hate to break it to you, but there are a lot of people in the current federal government who change their tune depending on who they are talking to.
She goes back to 2007 report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, to make it seem as though the current problems are just a continuation of what has been happening for years. This is sanewashing. 2025 is not an extension of the 2007 to 2024 trendline.
McNutt proposes seven action items.
#1: Her first item is to “build on a culture of innovation.” (19 minutes into the talk). She says, “We need a radical new US innovation enterprise.”
She worries that peer review is “too conservative” and reviewers look for reasons not to fund, hinting they do so to improve their own chances of grant success. Her solution is to look for better peer preview to select “truly innovative” proposals.; a.k.a., “Just get better at picking winners.” This has never worked. You know how to fund more innovative proposals? Fund more proposals, period.
#2: Create a national research strategy. The current disruption, she says, gives us a chance for change! Find the silver lining in that storm cloud! Your diagnosis of life-threatening disease is a great chance for a makeover!
Researchers are in existential crisis and being told to look on the bright side. Talk about salt in the wound.
She argues that the US has no national strategy for research. She assumes the current government wants one. In one of her more pointed criticisms, she says she doesn’t think people should pay for disaster warnings; it should be a federal responsibility. This is something that I think many people would agree with, but Project 2025 called for privatizing the national weather service anyway.
#3: Better K-12 education. She says this is a high priority for Americans. But popular does not translate into political action. Otherwise, there would have been a lot more “common sense gun regulations” than consistently enjoy high support in public polling.
McNutt this is a state responsibility and there is not much the federal government can do. She partly blames this on Department of Education for a lack of leadership. This seems like a bit of a DARVO tactic to appease Republicans, many of whom have wanted that department abolished for years.
McNutt also buys into the “school choice” rhetoric, cloaking this as a chance to do controlled experiments in education. Interestingly, she admits her daughters go to religious schools “only after I interviewed the science departments.”
And then, oh no, she has a slide of “Better directions” in education that lists “Explore AI as tutoring aid for students who need help” and “Provide AI as teacher's assistant. Apparently she hasn’t read the article about how badly teachers are getting screwed over by rampant use of chatbots. ” I saw a great presentation from Khan Academy" which is a company with a product to sell. Yeah, I heard the same from Bill Gates about Khan Academy in a TED Talk in 2011.
#4: Build the STEM workforce of the future. “We can't fill the jobs we have now.” McNutt claims, which leads me to ask why the hell so many scientists cannot find jobs.
McNutt wants to know why students cannot get six figure salaries with a bachelor’s degree and a couple of years of extra training. It’s because businesses don’t value them. McNutt does not see the connection between “We don't have enough people” and “Why don’t scientists get paid more?” McNutt seems too enamoured of industry to suggest that they could solve their own problems.
McNutt describes the National Defense Education Act that was a response to Sputnik, and says, “We are facing another Sputnik moment.” Marcia, the call is coming from inside the house. This isn’t a Cold War moment where the country is uniting against an external foe. This is a federal government that does not value the things that scientists value and is determined to shrink science.
Then she argues that one of the problems with academia is that there are too many grad students and postdocs and we should use AI to get rid of them. See above comments on how businesses could solve this by creating entry level science positions with six figure salaries.
Edit, 5 June 2025: Chemjobber writes about the slide shown,
I’m sorry to be so graphic, but if I kidnapped the children of 20 full professors and said “You get your kid back if you give me a definition of ‘molecular engineering’”, I would get 40 different definitions.
That someone at the National Academies think these projections are credible is concerning.
Chemjobber also has comments about how “unmet workforce need” is calculated and why it seems suspicious.
#5 is deregulation. I bet this made the conservatives in the audience happy. McNutt says that researchers lose 44% of time is lost to paperwork. I.m willing to be a lot of that time lost to paperwork is grant proposals, which could be fixed by more funding. And she suggests again that AI will relieve researchers of the burden of paperwork. (AI seems to be her go to answer for all of science’s problems.)
#6 is international collaborations, which McNutt calls an “unforced error.” “The trend recently is to do just to opposite.” Look, I get that she doesn’t want to call Republican politicians right wing nationalists, but surely she could call this more than a “trend.” The way people are being treated and detained is more than a “trend.”
#7 is the one that annoys me the most. McNutt wants scientists to “Rebuild trust with the public.” Last year, Pew Research showed that 74% of Americans have positive perceptions of scientists. McNutt even shows a slide of it! “The public” is not the problem here. She correctly says trust in science is not uniform across the political spectrum. She can’t even bring herself to say “Republicans” here.
McNutt points out that very few people were alive when polio was a big problem, as an example of things that people take for granted. But a lot of people were alive when covid killed over a million people in the US and a vaccine was developed in less than a year and widely deployed in less than two. Why doesn’t she say that? I suspect she doesn’t want to say that because she knows that the federal government’s position is that covid wasn’t a big deal and that vaccines are bad.
She ends by saying she wants to make science a bipartisan issue again. She has no recommendations for what that will take. (Maybe she thinks that too can be solved with AI.) There's no way she would say it out loud because that would require here to criticize, and criticize one party more than the other.
McNutt is trying to being facts to what is an ideological fight. She touts the economic benefits of science, which have never been disputed. The economic benefits of allowing scientists to immigrate is not going to persuade people who held up “Mass deportation” signs at the Republican convention last year.
I almost wish I hadn’t watched this talk. It alternates between “What?” and “Please no,” and sometimes hits both at the same time. McNutt values not upsetting anyone more than accurately describing what is happening mere blocks from the National Academies headquarters.
Scientists deserve better leadership.
Update, 5 June 2025: John Timmer reaches similar conclusions about the astonishing lack of urgency in McNutt’s speech.
I also want to point out that McNutt’s speech is in line with her Science editorial right after the last American election.
Update the second, 5 June 2025: Dr. Kiki was nice enough to draw my attention to the news that the National Academies are facing a terrible balance sheet and are laying people off. Moreover, McNutt had faced internal criticism of her timidness:
McNutt faces challenges that go beyond finances, including complaints that NASEM leaders are timid at a time that calls for outspokenness in defense of science. “I [have] tried to convince, unsuccessfully, Marcia McNutt … to take a public stand,” Schekman says, “and I have received no encouragement and some considerable resistance” from her. (McNutt did not respond when asked to comment on his statement.)
Related posts
Okay, stop. Saying “science isn’t political” will not keep science safe from political attacks
External links
The State of the Science Address 2025
Public trust in scientists and views on their role in policymaking
Teachers are not OK
US science is being wrecked, and its leadership is fighting the last war
National Academies, staggering from Trump cuts, on brink of dramatic downsizing
