Over the past month, our fears as scientists have come to fruition as we have observed the new administration make significant funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which underwrites much of the research conducted in the US. Following this story, along with concerns regarding the future of Medicare, Medicaid and the National Science Foundation, has made me rethink what is necessary for scientific research, dissemination and implementation to continue in this country. Put succinctly: What is our future?

History is always a good teacher in times of crisis. As the scientific philosopher, Thomas Kuhn pointed out over sixty years ago, science advances not along a gradual continuum, but by “revolutions,” which he described as paradigm shifts which proceed outside of normal science. Paradigm shifts are uncomfortable, and not necessarily popular with either scientific colleagues or the general public. As a result, those who initiate such revolutions may fear not only for their careers, but their lives as well.

A well-known example is the astronomer Galileo, who the Catholic Church tried for heresy based on his claim that the earth orbited the sun as opposed to the geocentric view that put the earth at the center of the universe. Centuries later, Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger (of Schrödinger’s cat fame) recalled in his autobiography escaping to Italy, Switzerland, France, and eventually England to escape Hitler’s advance. Some scientists on the Allied side did not fare much better. Englishman, Alan Turing, credited with inventing the Universal Turing Machine utilized in much of the foundational research on AI and computer science, as well as designing the computer used to break the Nazi’s Enigma code, was gay at a time when a same-sex preference was considered to be pathological and subject to prosecution. He was successful in concealing his sexual identity for most of his life but was eventually discovered and forced to take female hormones as punishment. He took his own life shortly thereafter.

Following the War, neuroscientists Alan Hodgin and Andrew Huxley, both of whom served with the Allied forces, returned to their laboratory in Cambridge, England, to continue their work on current-voltage relations in the axons of the giant squid, Loligo. Their manuscripts published in 1952 in the Journal of Physiology, secured a share of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1963. It had not been an easy journey. What they found upon returning to their research was a nation devoid of resources. Unable to gain access to an early digital computer in Cambridge, Huxley utilized a pre-War era Brunsviga model 20 calculator to calculate action potentials from photographs taken during oscilloscope recordings of electrical signal transmission in the squid axon. It took him three weeks to calculate a single action potential.

It takes great courage to be a scientist. Most of us don’t expect our lives to take turns in the order described above. But in a field that has typically advanced by revolution and not evolution, we should expect to be challenged. This is our call to action. We must reconsider our resources, methods, and strategies for making science happen.