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My Letter to Elon Musk: Here’s What Scientists have been Working on Last Week
Musk demanded a letter from federal employees describing what they’ve achieved. Read it and weep.
Dear Mr. Musk,
Here’s what has been keeping us scientists busy above and beyond our standard obligations at work.
During the time we should be recharging so that we can develop new cures and advance fundamental knowledge, we’ve been calling and writing our representatives to stand against the catastrophic damage the Trump administration is inflicting upon our nation’s scientific enterprises. These sudden and savage funding cuts have thrown sand into the gears of our nation’s prized biomedical research machine.
Research is instrumental to accelerating knowledge and developing new treatments for millions of Americans suffering from all kinds of diseases and disorders. If the humanity of this mission isn’t enough, you should be aware that these endeavors also greatly benefit our nation’s economy. In other words, the cuts are not only delaying life-saving medical research, but they are also jeopardizing national prosperity.
We are struggling to understand how you are qualified to judge the complexities of these systems and how the random firing of such highly trained employees is going to make America great. Our federal research systems are the envy of the world, yet the Trump administration is thoughtlessly trampling them like a bratty bully kicking down another kid’s sandcastle at the beach. Could you enlighten us as to the purpose of this demolition? We don’t believe that Americans would characterize research into Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, bird flu, and many other diseases as “government waste.”
To take a wrecking ball into these institutions is like caring for a heart attack by removing the heart. If you truly want to make America great, their budgets should be increased. We simply can’t make America healthy by gutting research.
We’re also struggling to keep up morale. Science was already hard enough due to the chronic underfunding of research institutes for the past three decades. The latest round of cuts, including the abrupt and steep reduction of indirect (operating) costs that keep the lights on, will rapidly extinguish…
