Science Against Suppression
Against an attack on public science
Public science is currently under assault in the United States. There’s no other way of putting it. Budgets are being slashed, and agencies hollowed out. Specific research programs are being actively suppressed: a key example being research into climate change. This includes the removal of a mass of previously publicly available data from government websites. This assault is not restricted to the US: international science programs have suffered too. The result is chaos, and a deep threat to the future of US scientific research.
A year’s a long time in writing, especially when the tectonic plates of global politics shudder. My book What Lies Beyond was written in 2023-4, under very different circumstances. The arguments in that book still, I think, hold up but they also reflect the broader social and political context of what already seems a lost age.
In the book I’m critical of some dogmas within science and I’m critical of scientism. I also point to the problematic, historical associations between science, colonialism and globalised capitalism. When writing, I trusted readers to know the difference between these sorts of focussed critiques and simply being ‘anti-science’.
However in current circumstances, with public science facing existential threats, some of these arguments might be misunderstood. So I’m offering some clarification of my position. I’m going to talk about the problem with dogma in science, and why it can lead to censorship and suppression. I’m going to look a little more at the current situation in the US — which is a case study in scientific suppression and censorship. And I’m going to voice my strong support for open, public scientific research and opposition to any and all politically inspired suppression of scientific research.
Dogma and Censorship
In What Lies Beyond, I’m critical of what has been called scientific materialism. This is the assumption that science must always equal materialism. Along with this comes a number of assumptions about the nature of the universe that very often hover tacitly in the background of research, especially in the natural sciences. These include the claim that reality is mechanical, or machine-like, that matter is unconscious, that nature is purposeless, that memory can be understood as material processes that do not survive death, that minds are confined to heads and are ‘nothing but’ brain activity and that psi phenomena like telepathy are illusory (Sheldrake, 2020).
Briefly, I’m critical of these assumptions for the same reason biologist Rupert Sheldrake is critical of them — I think that they unnecessarily restrict science and need to be reconsidered, especially in the light of ongoing problems with consciousness.
One key problem with such dogmas is that they can lead to censorship. This has happened with parapsychology. The dogma that psi is illusory has led at times to an active suppression of parapsychological work (Cardena, 2015). But censorship happens in quite a few fields. Work on retrogenes, which seemed to support ‘heretical’ Lamarckian evolution, was also suppressed; although today this work is generally accepted as part of the discipline of epigenetics (Steele, 1999). Science can also be censored from outside, for reasons of political dogma. An example is where science was suppressed in the Soviet Union under Stalin to conform to Marxist dialectical materialism.
I oppose both types of censorship and suppression and support free thought and speech within institutional science. I think open debate and open research are both preferable to active censorship. I see dissent within science as an integral part of the scientific process and can point to numerous cases where the suppression of dissent has been damaging. Researchers must also have the right and freedom to offend people and interest groups, so long as their work is of good quality and performed in good faith. The ideals of disinterested skepticism and openness to novel ideas seem to me worthy ones.
Finally, I’d like to stress the difference between a critique of some aspects of science with a critique of science itself, or simply being ‘anti-science’. This difference is often difficult to see because of certain, common ways of talking about science. Very often, ‘science’ is talked about as if it is monolithic, basically a neutral, objective and unified body of knowledge (Martin, 1996). This presentation of science as a unity ignores things like dissent within science. Even worse, such a framing makes it very easy to label dissenters within science as ‘anti-science’. This is typically done in order to dismiss their arguments.
This sort of nuance is important in an age of extreme political polarisation and information warfare. It is important because dissenters within science now risk getting lumped with political factions who aggressively oppose scientific findings they find unwelcome. But scientific dissenters typically support science; many are scientists themselves. Briefly, I am concerned that the current situation, where public science is under aggressive attack, might lead to the censorship and suppression of scientific dissent in the name of defending ‘science’ from this attack.
But we also need to remember that the assault on science is unfortunately very real.
Assaulting Public Science
At the time of writing, the full-bodied attack on institutional science in the US continues apace. A Nature editorial summarised it in the following terms:
Almost immediately after being sworn in as president on 20 January, Trump put his signature to piles of executive orders cancelling or freezing tens of billions of dollars in funding for research and international assistance, and putting the seal on thousands of lay-offs. (Nature Editorial, Feb 25, 2025).
By April, another news feature in Nature was asking whether science would survive Trump 2.0 (Tollefson, Garisto & Ledford, 2025). One particular target has been research into climate breakdown and other environmental problems. In particular, Trump has sought to halt the climate research of a key agency, NOAA by cutting its budget by 75% (24,F, 2025). But other agencies have not gone unscathed: on May 2nd, the Planetary Society issued a statement opposing a “deep, damaging” 24% cut in NASA’s budget (Gunn, 2025). Just as terrible are proposed budget cuts of 37% to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and more than 50% at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the country’s two major science funders (Trump’s proposed budget would mean “disastrous” cuts to science, 2025). (UPDATE: A Forbes article dated May 9th, 2025 stated that the NSF is pretty much being dismantled). This is an appalling situation that puts public research in the US at existential risk.
I’d like to highlight the ideological dimension of this situation. The Trump administration has emphasised its opposition to ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’, which has functioned as a justification to some cuts. It has targeted HIV/AIDS prevention (Trump 2.0: an assault on science anywhere is an assault on science everywhere, 2025). And administration officials have claimed that their assault on climate breakdown research is justified because of “climate alarmism”. (24, F., 2025). These rationales reflect Trump’s ties with the fossil fuel industry and the right’s obsession with LGBTQI+ issues as political wedges. In other words, there is a direct parallel here between the suppression of politically inconvenient science in Soviet Russia and the current wave of suppression in the US.
In Defence of Science
So at risk of spelling out the obvious:
I remain strongly supportive of scientific research, and oppose any and all attacks on science with every fibre of my being. Science is crucial for thousands of very practical reasons, especially in the current moment of existential risk for global civilisation. In fact, scientific knowledge forms the basis of that global civilisation. I also accept the statement that science and democracy are (at least potentially) indispensable partners.
…And I think one of the best defences of science and democracy I’ve yet seen in response to Trump’s assaults is that by the great Science Fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson (‘Stan’) given at UCLA in March 2025. Go there for further discussion of these issues, in the context of the existential risk of climate breakdown.
So it is necessary at this time to offer a robust defence of science. This is not a time for ambiguity: it is a time for drawing lines against the corruption or even destruction of what Stan calls the ‘crowd sourced’ collective process of science. Yes, I still have issues with some aspects of the culture of science. Yes, I still think that it is not only valid but important to allow dissent in science, and also to call out unethical and questionable research and vested interests within science itself. But these critiques are intended to contribute to the improvement and broadening of the scientific enterprise. This improvement cannot happen if science gets wrecked by the champions of antidemocratic, anti-intellectual, fundamentalist and fascist ideologies.
Take-home Points
The current all-out assault on science in the US is totally unacceptable and must be opposed.
Science as an institution must be protected wherever possible because it is crucial, not only for the creation of new knowledge about the universe but also for the survival of civilisation at a time of existential crisis and for human flourishing.
At the same time;
A critique of some aspects of science is distinct from an attack on science itself.
Such critiques are intended to improve and broaden the practice of science.
And finally:
A broad-brush defence of science should not be used as a pretext for suppression and censorship within science itself. The right to dissent within science needs to be honoured and protected.
This is because dissent and critical thinking remain an important part of the practice of science.
References
24, F. (2025, April 11). Trump wants to halt climate research by key agency: reports. France 24; FRANCE 24. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250411-trump-wants-to-halt-climate-research-by-key-agency-reports
Cardena, E. (2015). The Unbearable Fear of Psi: On Scientific Suppression in the 21st Century. Journal of Scientific Exploration 29: 4, pp. 601–620. https://windbridge.org/papers/unbearable.pdf
Gunn, D. (2025). The Planetary Society condemns deep, damaging 24% cut to NASA’s budget. The Planetary Society. https://www.planetary.org/press-releases/the-planetary-society-condemns-damaging-cuts-to-nasa-budget
Martin, B. (1996). Review of Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 315 pp., US$25.95, ISBN 0-8018-4766-4. Social Studies of Science 26:1, pp. 161-173.
Sheldrake, R. (2020). The science delusion (2nd ed). London: Coronet.
Tollefson, J., Garisto, D., & Ledford, H. (2025). Will US science survive Trump 2.0? Nature.com. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01295-6
Trump 2.0: an assault on science anywhere is an assault on science everywhere. (2025). Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00562-w
Trump’s proposed budget would mean “disastrous” cuts to science. (2025). AAAS Articles DO Group. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.zeukjo2