H Holden Thorp’s research while affiliated with American Association for the Advancement of Science and other places

In these days of political instability, geopolitical tensions, and social discontent around the world, there are continued threats to the principles, conduct, and findings of science. This assault on science has been fueled by flooding the public with confusing information from both traditional and digital media. One concept that creates misunderstanding is “scientific consensus.” It’s time to stop using this shorthand and make clear what it really means.

The chaos, conflicting information, firings, and hurtful rhetoric of the Trump administration’s approach to science over the past month are causing anxiety, grief, and concern for the scientific community in the United States. The dramatic events are reverberating around the globe, especially among international scientific collaborators. Not surprisingly, scientists in the US and around the world do not agree on the best approach to preserve science during this onslaught. A diversity of thought has always been a strength of the scientific enterprise but at the same time, there are principles around which all scientists unite—those of evidence, independence, process, and inclusion. These common values must now propel everyone in the scientific community to work together as never before to stand up for science. Although the individual messages and actions of the various players might seem inadequate on their own, it is their collective power that matters.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration set off a frenzy in the US scientific community when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that indirect cost reimbursement for federally funded research would be capped at 15%, a drastic cut from a usual range of 50 to 70%. In the American system, a federal research grant comes with one component that pays the direct costs of research—covering salaries of the researchers and supplies and equipment they use—and a so-called indirect component that represents the government’s contribution to facilities and administration—the overhead necessary to do the work. The indirect contribution does not cover everything needed to support the research; the remainder is provided by the university. This agreement between higher education and the government has been a hallmark of the funding system for 70 years. The scientific community must unite in speaking out against this betrayal of a partnership that has enabled American innovation and progress.

As in his earlier term, US President Donald Trump’s misguided announcement that the US will withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate continues a long history of confusion—mostly created intentionally—over the intersection of climate science and US climate policy. The tactics and consequences are no different from what opponents of climate science and action have been using for almost 50 years. For decades, political discourse on climate has blurred the lines between scientific reality and political ideology, treating established facts like debatable opinions, providing shifting reasons for making decisions, and turning what should be reasoned policy debates into ideological battlegrounds.

As the calendar turns to 2025, the unflagging pace of advancement in science and technology promises to break new ground in areas as profound as humanity’s relationship with artificial intelligence (AI), gene editing in medicine and agriculture, climate change mitigation, and more. Meanwhile, as research across all fields becomes more complex, the challenge of maintaining research integrity and the reliability of scientific findings becomes more important than ever for informing public policies and bolstering trust in science. All organizations in the scientific enterprise have a responsibility to ensure that sound practices and ethical standards are at the heart of their operations and missions. This includes scientific journals.

Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the Scopes trial, a 1925 court case in the US state of Tennessee on the teaching of evolution in public schools. John Scopes was tried for violating the Butler Act, a state rule that declared unlawful any teaching that denied the creation of man according to the Bible. The highly publicized event put an intense spotlight on William Jennings Bryan, a populist presidential candidate and religious fundamentalist who was counsel for the government, and on Clarence Darrow, a liberal agnostic and social justice advocate who defended Scopes. Scopes was found guilty, a verdict that was later overturned on a technicality. The trial was one of the first to be dubbed the “trial of the century” and has since been discussed, taught, and reflected on in books, plays, and movies (most notably, it was fictionalized in Inherit the Wind ). A century later, the politics and sociology of that moment are still relevant, with implications for tolerance in today’s world.

In the highly acclaimed 1991 play Angels in America , which explores AIDS in the United States in the 1980s, one of the characters muses about the nature of knowledge and novelty: “Imagination can’t create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions.” Although the scene’s intent is to ponder the limits of human experience and how the constraints of day-to-day reality are inescapable, the description of imagination aptly describes the creative shuffling that can lead to breakthroughs, like the ones recognized by Science at this time every year. In naming the drug lenacapavir as the 2024 Breakthrough of the Year, Science acknowledges the next, but by no means final, step in the drive to fight HIV/AIDS, where the rigors of the laboratory and the needs of humanity are inseparable.

The Pew Research Center survey on trust in science and researchers is eagerly awaited every year by science policy experts and communicators. This year’s results, released last week, give a small, but meaningful, reason to be optimistic: Trust in scientists, which took a substantial hit during the pandemic, is starting to recover. The survey, conducted in October 2024 with 9593 adults across the United States, estimates that 76% of Americans now have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests. That’s a modest uptick from 73% last year and a hopeful sign that the page may be turning on some of the pandemic-era skepticism. Although the increase is barely outside the margin of error, it may mark the end of a troubling 3-year decline. However, the data reveal a persistent problem—a considerable portion of the public continues to harbor negative views of scientists’ personal qualities, particularly their communication skills. This reality should be worrisome to the scientific community and drive a collective conversation about rebuilding public confidence.