We built American science like a skyscraper — centralized, concentrated, dependent on a single foundation. More than half of university research budgets flow from one federal source. Indirect cost structures can be weaponized by a Friday-afternoon policy change. On April 24, the White House terminated all 22 members of the National Science Board in a single email, leaving the agency that funds American basic research with no board, no director, and no deputy. …
Science built an ivory tower when we needed a garden. The tower is beautiful — I mean that. It contains real knowledge and hard-won discoveries. But a tower is vertical, singular, closed. A garden is horizontal, distributed, open. And a garden is resilient precisely because no single point of failure can kill the whole thing.
Nowhere is it written that science must occur only on college campuses or in the halls of academic medicine. Science happens in barbershops and living rooms, in basements and farmer’s fields. The wisdom we produce as a community is what knits the enterprise together — not the overhead rates, not the agency letterheads, and certainly not the approval of any particular administration.
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