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Anger, despair, and defiance from a voice within the US federal research system
"How can our leaders see this as a win when our neighbours and families will die?"
The BMJ · Anger, despair, and defiance from a voice within the US federal research systemPeople around the world are watching with disbelief as the new US government closes down its aid programme, withdraws from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris agreement on climate change, deletes datasets that do not fit with its ideology, refuses to pay adequate overhead to universities—so halting research and bankrupting many, and insists that certain words are not used in federal documents, including federally funded research. The words that must not be used include bias, biased, women or female, and it’s impossible to see how scientifically valid research can be conducted without these words: we won’t, for example, be able to write about risk of bias in a sample of women, who make up half the population.
The speed with which this has been done has created the intended shock and awe among the opposition, which has been slow to respond. What is happening upends everything we have been taught about the checks and balances of our nation. We begin now to see opposition, not least from journals and lobbying groups. But one group you may not hear from are those inside the federal system. You have not heard from us because we are terrified of the response—not just having our research cancelled and being summarily dismissed, but also set upon …