April 11, 2025
ALTERNET
Co-authors working on a scientific paper abruptly pulled its publication because it was a paper on evolution -- and feared retaliation from President Donald Trump's administration.
The paper “was months of work, but at the same time I know the current situation, and I’m scared for my friends in the U.S.,” said a European evolutionary biologist speaking anonymously for fear if retaliation. “I told them, ‘If you think it is too dangerous, don’t do it.’”
The co-authors, who are legal immigrants, told fellow researchers they feared deportation for daring to publish a paper on evolution, according to Washington Post reporter Mark Johnson. One of the co-authors had just lost a job because of a canceled government grant and the other feared more canceled grants for even broaching the topic in a nation riddled with anti-science. Both worried they might lose their residency if their names appeared on a “controversial article” despite being in the U.S. legally, Johnson writes.
One of the paper’s editors, European astrobiologist Michael L. Wong, confirmed authors pulled their submission from the Royal Society journal because of the nation’s embrace of anti-science.
“I was so looking forward to reading this paper because I think the ideas in it are potentially transformative,” said Wong. “But the fact that people, scientific researchers, are afraid of just engaging in normal scientific discourse, putting their well thought out ideas into the public sphere so that everybody can see them, read them, come to their own conclusions about them and then debate them ― it is so disheartening.”
United States officials have detained French scientists entering the United States after daring to criticize President Donald Trump's cuts to science funding, and international scientists are increasingly leery of traveling to the U.S. The Washington Post obtained an email from the French National Centre for Scientific Research advising U.S. visitors that they could have their laptops and cellphones seized and examined at the border and their spoken or written criticisms of U.S. government used against them while in the country.
“I have friends who are currently afraid to have a layover in the U.S.,” a University of Toronto molecular biology student told the Post. The student also spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation.
Read the full Washington Post article at this link.
Co-authors working on a scientific paper abruptly pulled its publication because it was a paper on evolution -- and feared retaliation from President Donald Trump's administration.
The paper “was months of work, but at the same time I know the current situation, and I’m scared for my friends in the U.S.,” said a European evolutionary biologist speaking anonymously for fear if retaliation. “I told them, ‘If you think it is too dangerous, don’t do it.’”
The co-authors, who are legal immigrants, told fellow researchers they feared deportation for daring to publish a paper on evolution, according to Washington Post reporter Mark Johnson. One of the co-authors had just lost a job because of a canceled government grant and the other feared more canceled grants for even broaching the topic in a nation riddled with anti-science. Both worried they might lose their residency if their names appeared on a “controversial article” despite being in the U.S. legally, Johnson writes.
One of the paper’s editors, European astrobiologist Michael L. Wong, confirmed authors pulled their submission from the Royal Society journal because of the nation’s embrace of anti-science.
“I was so looking forward to reading this paper because I think the ideas in it are potentially transformative,” said Wong. “But the fact that people, scientific researchers, are afraid of just engaging in normal scientific discourse, putting their well thought out ideas into the public sphere so that everybody can see them, read them, come to their own conclusions about them and then debate them ― it is so disheartening.”
United States officials have detained French scientists entering the United States after daring to criticize President Donald Trump's cuts to science funding, and international scientists are increasingly leery of traveling to the U.S. The Washington Post obtained an email from the French National Centre for Scientific Research advising U.S. visitors that they could have their laptops and cellphones seized and examined at the border and their spoken or written criticisms of U.S. government used against them while in the country.
“I have friends who are currently afraid to have a layover in the U.S.,” a University of Toronto molecular biology student told the Post. The student also spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation.
Read the full Washington Post article at this link.
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