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Former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle once said, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind." Well, you know what else is a waste? Cutting or terminating grant funding for a scientific project before the work is done. Well, that is what's been happening this year to many, many different scientific projects that had been fully supported by the National Institutes of Health or National Science Foundation before 2025 with an emphasis on the words "had been."
If you haven't noticed, this year the Trump administration have been treating funding for science like cheese and been cutting the cheese in all sorts of ways. This has included the mass canceling of scientific grants and withholding scientific grants from universities for non-scientific political reasons, as I've described previously in Forbes. That's left a lot of scientists out of jobs or struggling to hold on to their jobs. At the same time, it's left a lot of science on the table with many partially finished projects that either have to somehow be rescued or otherwise thrown into the garbage heap forever. And every time science gets thrown into the garbage heap, it can move the U.S. that much closer to being thrown in that heap too.
The trouble is scientific projects typically are not like the Twilight series, which was originally under development at MTV and Paramount but then picked up by Summit Entertainment. Science projects don't usually feature emo vampires. And when a science project loses federal funding before it's completed, it's very difficult to find an alternative funder. Most philanthropies do not have comparable resources. Companies usually won't fund a project unless it clearly and directly benefits them.
Moreover, since this year's rapid slashing of federal support for scientific projects has been unprecedented, many scientists are now left in a WTF situation. The NIH has not offered much guidance on what to do and how best to continue the science that the agency is abandoning. It's a bit like when Rose said in the movie Titanic, "The water is freezing and there aren't enough boats." Few places are offering rescue boats for all this scientific research that's now been left floating on the open water, ready to sink at any time. This folks is what a titanic scientific disaster to the U.S. looks like. So what can be done to preserve at least some of this science and the time, effort and resources spent over the past several years?
Publish Whatever You Can, Wherever You Can
A recent publication in PLOS Biology did suggest recording and documenting scientific findings in a public manner as soon as possible -- in a publish-as-you-go manner. A challenge is that many established scientific journals will not accept publications on partially finished work. Historically, journals will wait until the results provide "a strong answer to a research question," in the words of Megan Hastings Hagenauer, Stacey J. Winham, Alexandra L. J. Freeman, Paul W. Sternberg and Benedict J. Kolber who authored the PLOS Biology publication. Many of these scientific journals also are now charging an arm and a leg, along with other body parts, in publications fees, too, to the tune of thousands of dollars.
These authors also pointed to a growing movement for such "modular publishing," -- which is "sharing smaller component parts of a study as they are produced" -- a movement that started even before 2025. There are arguments that modular publishing approaches better reflect how science proceeds.
Since most current peer-reviewed scientific journals aren't yet set up to accommodate such approaches, the authors did list platforms that would allow modeular publishing such as Open Science Framework (OSF), Octopus.ac, ResearchEquals, and Research Ideas and Outcomes. The other benefit of these platforms is that publication in them is usually the f-words. That's free and fast as opposed to the scientific journals that can take months and even years to get a manuscript reviewed, accepted and published.
The PLOS Biology publication also listed some online tools that can help researchers search for different publishing solutions. These include Fiddle, Jane, Journal Finder, Transpose, ASAPbio , re3data, FAIRsharing, and DataCite. In most cases, posting preliminary findings and data on alternative platforms won't necessarily preclude the publishing of more complete findings in the future in traditional scientific journals. However, you may want to be careful about anything that may be sensitive such as human subjects data.
Preserve Research Materials However You Can
Another challenge will be preserving the material used to do the research themselves. This includes things like cells, body tissue and fluid samples, partially constructed devices, incomplete programming code and other stuff. Not all of these can be completely represented by publications or other types of documentation alone. And some of these things require particular infrastructure and conditions such as freezer space and specialized laboratory equipment. Moreover, such research materials need to be stored indefinitely at this point in conditions or formats that will allow them to be readily picked up again should the opportunity arise.
Find Ways To Do The Above With Limited To No Funding
Of course, all of the aforementioned things require time, effort, resources and, thus, money. This is a problem since what created the need for all the above was the cutting of funding by the Trump administration. One option is to petition the NIH for stopgap funds to soften the big blows that the NIH has delivered. Don't do this by yourself, though. Instead, enlist the assistance of your institution and whatever legal help is available. Also, notify your Congressional representatives to see if they will actually help. In the meantime, carefully document everything that has occurred.
Without any financial support to save your science, you may have to do everything as cheaply as possible. This could entail teaming up with other researchers or using artificial intelligence tools. AI tools can assist with documentation, organizing materials, creating diagrams and searching for appropriate venues to post or publish work. Be careful, though; AI tools can make a number of mistakes. Plus, the companies offering these tools could end up claiming rights to any materials that you put through their AI.
It remains to be seen what initiatives may emerge to fund and otherwise support the preservation and even the continuation of such suspended scientific projects. Will scientific journals provide discounts on their publication fees, for example? How much might the non-federal funding landscape change to accomodate the continuation of at least some of the suspended science?
The abrupt cuts in scientific funding in 2025 constitute in many ways a disaster to the U.S. that will have negative ramifications on all the people in this country in years to come. I've always maintained that the most important person on Gilligan's Island was The Professor because he designed everything that kept the rest of the castaways alive. Similarly, science is what has made America great. It would be, in turn, be such a waste for Americans to lose what the country's top scientific minds have already produced.