The phrase, “E pur si muove,” (or in English “and yet it moves”) is attributed to the Italian natural scientist Galileo Galilei, who allegedly uttered it sometime after being brought before the Inquisition and forced to recant his claim that the earth moved around the sun and not the other way around, as was the dogma of the time.
I thought about this recently as I watch what is happening in our country with regards to the relationship between the federal government and the world of science and all it encompasses, from funding for basic science research through labs and universities and beyond.
Cristiano Banti (1857): “Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition”
A recent article in Nature puts is bluntly: “In just the first three months of his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump has destabilized eight decades of government support for science.”
A large part of this destabilization involves drastic budget cuts. For instance, the federal budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 includes substantial reductions for key science and engineering research agencies including the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Energy, and NASA.
Many of these agencies played a central role in the creation of the so-called “American Century,” the period from about the 1940s onward that saw the rise of American political, economic, technological, and cultural dominance globally. Government research efforts contributed to America’s technological dominance, particularly through the space program and its competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War period. It also helped to build out the vast research university infrastructure we have today, with the familiar path of research and discovery and commercialization that follows.
Drastic funding cuts are one way to hobble the machinery of science and research and development. But it isn’t just about funding. There is a growing atmosphere of denial about reality, a suspicion of experts, and a shift towards what might generously be called a preference for populist narratives and solutions. Think vaccine skepticism and climate change denial.
Along with that is the waning of independent, objective regulatory oversight that supports the public good in favor of siding with industry and corporations in their drive to remove oversight and regulation at every turn.
It’s myopic to think that these moves will have little to no effect on the larger scientific and technological enterprise. The effects are already here, in the growing turn away from expertise and knowledge towards ideologically driven narratives that are fundamentally at odds with reality.
The danger is that we slide into a kind of Lysenkoist scientific culture, a political and ideological view named for Soviet scientist Trofim Lysenko, who together with the Soviet government, waged a political campaign against genetics and science-based agriculture in favor of largely discredited pseudoscientific ideas. When loyalty to an ideological stance, no matter how hazy or ill-defined, trumps science and freedom of inquiry, the warning lights should be flashing.
Think back to President Trump in 2019 using a black marker to alter a map showing the impacts of Hurricane Dorian extending into Alabama. Beyond the obvious ridiculousness and absurdity of that moment, it is nevertheless a neat summary of the challenges ahead — do we acknowledge reality as a collective consensus of objective observations and collective knowledge, or is reality the whims of a want-to-be monarchical ruler? That is the question.
And will our answer be, along with Galileo, “E pur si muove”? Or something else?
Miles Budimir
Senior Editor
Filed Under: Commentaries • insights • Technical thinking, NEWS • PROFILES • EDITORIALS
