Awaiting Trump, Scientists Are Caught Between Hope and Fear

As with many other Americans now warily imagining the reality of a President Donald J. Trump, the nation’s research scientists are not sure what to expect.

Mr. Trump has certainly given ammunition to both doubters and optimists. On the one hand, he has rejected the scientific consensus on climate change and on vaccines, and threatened the future for many foreign citizens in the United States. On the other, he has offered support for the federal role in funding research, especially as it concerns human health and alternative fuels.

With many of his policy positions amorphous and seemingly open to interpretation and revision, many leaders of the university research community are choosing to keep an open mind about the possibilities.

“Political campaigns are political campaigns,” said Mary Sue Coleman, president of the Association of American Universities, which represents the nation’s top research institutions. But now that the election is over, she said, research universities fully expect the incoming Trump administration to take seriously their concerns.

Already, she said, the AAU has been offering the Trump transition team the names of potential candidates for top federal positions. “A lot of decisions need to be made, and we think that we’ll have something to add to the conversation,” said Ms. Coleman, who is a former president of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Even though Mr. Trump has made some comments that seem to disregard scientific fact, she said, “I think we have to keep trying.”

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society, also kept a calm tone. “We stand ready to work with the president-elect’s administration” and the Republican-led Congress, the AAAS said in a statement.

Certainly there are researchers with darker moods. A former director of the National Science Foundation, Neal F. Lane, an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, has said Mr. Trump’s election “does not bode well for science or most anything else of value.” Michael S. Lubell, a professor of physics at the City College of New York who serves as director of public affairs at the American Physical Society, said the consequences of the election “are going to be very, very severe.”

Underlying the split in overall attitudes is another division, between those who hope to maintain university research’s role as a robust commercial enterprise, for which Mr. Trump has given more encouraging signs, and those chiefly concerned with the roles of science and the scientific method as guiding principles in American life.

Contradictory Positions

Mr. Trump and his fellow Republicans, who hold majority control of both houses of Congress, have regularly preached regulatory relief, a chief policy goal of American research-university administrators. Mr. Trump and Republican leaders have also spoken warmly of medical science, the top category of federal spending on basic research. One of Mr. Trump’s key political allies, Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, called last year for the budget of the National Institutes of Health to be doubled.

Mr. Trump did raise worries with a radio interview last year in which he said: “I hear so much about the NIH, and it’s terrible.” But Mr. Trump didn’t elaborate, and he hasn’t repeated such complaints. And in response to a 20-item questionnaire published in September by ScienceDebate, a coalition of scientific organizations, Mr. Trump offered a clear endorsement of the federal commitment to financing research.

“Though there are increasing demands to curtail spending and to balance the federal budget,” he wrote, “we must make the commitment to invest in science, engineering, health care, and other areas that will make the lives of Americans better, safer, and more prosperous.”

It’s one of many instances in which Mr. Trump seems to have taken multiple and perhaps contradictory policy positions. In other responses to the questionnaire, Mr. Trump, who railed against government regulations on the campaign trail, said: “Science will inform our decisions on what regulations to keep, rescind, or add.”

Mr. Trump also suggested during one presidential debate that childhood vaccines given on the recommended schedule can cause autism. Yet in responding to the ScienceDebate questionnaire, he said: “We should educate the public on the values of a comprehensive vaccination program.”

And while his campaign stoked fears that foreigners would take American jobs, Mr. Trump made clear in the questionnaire his support for letting legal immigrants who come for college remain in the country “if they want to contribute to our economy.” He added: “It makes no sense to kick them out of the country right after they achieve such extraordinary goals.”

Much of the uncertainty about Mr. Trump centers on the question of what promises he really cares to keep, or even can keep. Mr. Trump may be receptive in some sense to science spending, but perhaps not enough to save it from cuts, given all his other stated priorities, including cutting taxes, raising military spending, and preserving Social Security and Medicare.

That shortlist of priorities could mean deep cuts through the rest of the federal budget, with science “caught in the crossfire,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. Mr. Atkinson has served as a policy adviser in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations.

Cabinet Concerns

One somewhat hopeful sign for science in the federal budget is the leadership of the appropriations committees. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey is likely to take over as chair of the House panel, and Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri survived an election challenge to remain as head of the Senate subcommittee responsible for the NIH budget. Both have expressed support for federal spending on science. And Mr. Trump has made a point of emphasizing support for some types of space exploration.

Aside from Mr. Trump, there’s the question of what a Republican-led Congress, freed from the constraints of a Democratic administration, might attempt. As chairman of the House science committee, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas has led repeated charges to impose ideological limits on research projects supported by the NSF, including restrictions on the social sciences. Mr. Smith easily won re-election last week and is expected to remain the panel’s chairman unless he wins an administration appointment.

A Stunning Upset

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Republicans in Congress have also tried to block scientists from working with embryonic stem cells — a position endorsed by Mr. Trump’s running mate, Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Mr. Pence has also cast doubt on evolution, the role of smoking in causing cancer, and the value of needle-exchange programs in reducing infectious disease. Mr. Trump’s own list of anti-scientific impulses includes fanning fears of widespread Ebola contamination, suggesting that fluorescent lamps cause cancer, and denying the effects of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer.

Another possible source of alarm, given Mr. Trump’s reputation for making quick decisions and relying heavily on trusted advisers, concerns his coming choices for top federal positions. Among the names reported to be in serious consideration are Ben Carson, a Republican presidential candidate and former director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, who has questioned evolution, among other points of scientific consensus. He is seen as a possible choice to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of health and human services or secretary of education.

Other cabinet possibilities include the oil-industry titans Harold Hamm and Forrest Lucas to head the Departments of Energy and the Interior. And Mr. Trump has chosen Myron Ebell, an activist known for strenuously rejecting the science of climate change, to lead an overhaul of the Environmental Protection Agency.

A Biotech Boom?

Academic freedom is also a point of concern for the scientific community, given Mr. Trump’s history of denigrating comments about immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and women. In a speech in August he suggested reviving a Cold War-era practice of “an ideological screening test” for admitting foreigners into the country. Already some foreign scientists at American universities have responded to Mr. Trump’s election by saying they feel it’s time to consider returning to their home countries. The effect could be a pronounced weakening of scientific talent in the United States, given the heavy role played by foreigners in American research labs.

One benefit for the American university-science enterprise might be realized in the value of licenses and patents. Biotech stocks rose after the election on the expectation that the Trump administration would not act to rein in exorbitant drug prices. But that kind of financial gain for universities could be short-lived, Mr. Atkinson suggested, if Mr. Trump acts on a mistaken belief that private industry will pick up the slack for any reductions in federal spending on medical research.

It’s not clear, he said, that Mr. Trump will have the patience to digest detailed studies explaining the intimate and interdependent nature of federal and private spending on research. “I think the tendencies in that administration are much more about acting rather than analysis,” Mr. Atkinson said.

Mr. Lubell said his widely quoted comment about the election having “very, very severe” consequences for science was delivered with Mr. Trump’s personality in mind. Mr. Lubell’s American Physical Society, in its official statement, struck a far different tone, flattering Mr. Trump with the suggestion that his administration will pursue policies in science that will “make America great again.”

The two messages reflect a basic principle of negotiation — which Mr. Trump himself has emphasized as central to deal-making — by both setting a “strong point” from which to negotiate and allowing for opportunities to work together, Mr. Lubell explained. The sharp criticism was intended to get the attention of Mr. Trump’s team, and “basically say if you are not anti-science, prove it.”

“The one thing that I admire him for is that he does understand deal-making,” Mr. Lubell said on Thursday. Yet shortly afterward, other leaders of the American Physical Society removed the conciliatory statement from their website, replacing it with a message that read: “We apologize and regret the offense it has caused.”

Paul Basken covers university research and its intersection with government policy. He can be found on Twitter @pbasken, or reached by email at paul.basken@chronicle.com.