Hello friends,
After I sent out this newsletter last week, I headed to an immunology conference to reunite with some dear collaborators and kickstart our science communication projects for the year. But before I had even started my Saturday workshop, we started seeing the news about Alex Pretti.¹ ICE agents killed him that morning, shooting him ten times in the back, and administration officials immediately unleashed a flood of lies about it.

It was painful to have the travesty playing out in real time, while I was introducing researchers to the Just-World fallacy and learned helplessness. But I found some solace in having the language to describe these dynamics, and I found refuge in a circle of grieving, angry friends. That they happen to be some of the most important scientists in the country didn’t matter particularly much to me right then, but I was reminded later in the meeting how very much it meant for others to see the leaders in their field actually leading it. Humanity, humility, and courage are beacons in the dark right now.

This was Year 2, Week 5. Let’s process it together.

What happened in science & higher ed

• I keep being asked why the science community isn’t organizing. I sympathize with the frustration behind that question, and I just keep sharing all the ways that it is happening all around us.

  • Five University of Minnesota student associations are listed first among the hundreds of organizations that called for a national shutdown today. Hundreds of organizations—from museums in LA to restaurants in Seattle and bookstores in Arizona—have responded to the call.

  • Texas A&M just announced that it is overhauling hundreds of syllabi, cancelling some courses, and ending its women’s and gender studies degree, as part of its shocking ban on teaching about race or gender. But yesterday, three hundred people protested these changes on campus and defended academic freedom.

  • My group chats were blowing up over today’s bizarre “Reclaiming Science” event. Credentialled reporters from Science and Nature were not allowed in, but public correction of misinformation still happened in real time.² If you’re worried about this kind of DC shenanigans, groups like Stand Up for Science are very involved behind the scenes, and just announced their next nationwide rally for March 7.

  • Few people are better positioned to confront arcane regulatory maneuvering than academics. Want to understand what’s going on with independent university accreditation? Organized university workers are on it.

• Over at Unbreaking, we dedicated this week’s briefing to a deep dive into medical research funding.³ I hope you’ll read the whole thing, but I want to reinforce that although there have been some important improvements, we must confront “financial maneuvers that create a false sense of normalcy and policy changes that increase ideological control.” So yes, the compromise budget bill⁴ increases NIH funding by $415 million instead of slashing it by billions. And yes, this prevents one kind of catastrophe. But we can’t ignore how power struggles over review panels and institute directorships will determine what those funds support. As we wrote in the Unbreaking briefing, “For decades, American science thrived — and in turn created prosperity — thanks to stable funding. That stability was a bipartisan priority negotiated by Congress, administered by civil servants, and vetted by independent scientists. All of these pillars have now been undermined… [as NIH workings and mission become] “increasingly dictated by the president and White House.”” That final bit comes from Mark Histed’s impassioned new essay. Do read it! And if you’re struggling to summarize and make sense of the world of research funding, I recommend Nature’s big feature US science after a year of Trump and the NYT’s excellent step-by-step breakdown of the trouble with forward-funding.⁵

• Finally, measles. Known infections in South Carolina jumped to 847 cases. This outbreak has surpassed the west Texas cluster, and is now the largest the US has had since 1994⁶. I knew that measles is airborne⁷ and extremely contagious: 9 out of every 10 unvaccinated kids exposed to a classmate with measles will be infected. Each of them will then become contagious from four days before that signature rash appears until four days after onset. What I hadn’t realized is how long the window is for the rash to appear. Quarantine for measles is 21 days.⁸ In South Carolina right now, more than 400 people are in quarantine, mostly children from elementary schools. That means some of these kids won’t be done with quarantine until February 24. That’s so much strain on working parents! But more importantly, I really hope every single kid makes it safely through - the complications can be awful.

And what’s next

There’s just so much to organize around and against, and life doesn’t conveniently stop in between. For me, this week was also bound up in caring for a very good dog who is recovering from surgery.⁹ My partner needed to travel, so I spent my days cleaning up bodily fluids and my nights worrying about terrible things with terrible jargon names like dehiscence and seroma.¹⁰ I kept humming the refrain from a song I like, “I’ve got worries / I’ve got troubles / I’ve wounds to bind”¹¹

I’m not squeamish and I was extremely well briefed.¹² But the first time I was alone, facing a large and gruesome wound, it shook me more than I expected. Confronting the full horror of it, and knowing it was my responsibility to care for, was a shock to my system.

Now when I think of circles of grieving, angry people asking me how we’re ever going to repair all this damage to science, I feel a parallel. Knowing what’s happening isn’t the same as actually feeling it, and truly feeling it can catch you by surprise. The first priority is to keep this thing from getting worse - to prevent infection. I don’t know what the precise antifascist analogy is for the antibiotics I’m so grateful to have in my arsenal. But I do know that there was a kind of relief to finally have this wound out in the open, to force myself to confront it.

Tressie McMillan Cottom describes this best.¹³ She says, “...Sometimes we aren't exhausted because we are aware of too much. We are exhausted because we are doing too little… The more time you spend doing something, whatever it is possible for you to do in your space in the world, the less exhausted you are by the onslaught of information that really wins when it can convince you that the only thing you can do is watch what is happening to you.”¹⁴

Sometimes “doing something” means throwing your body in front of danger. Sometimes it means stacking and ferrying supplies. Sometimes it means letting yourself simply show your emotions and voice your thoughts in professional settings that would otherwise pretend all is well. We need it all.

That is how we manage the pain now, and start finding ways to heal.¹⁵
Liz

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