America’s retreat from science has far-reaching implications for global research and innovation

The immediate impact on US science and global health is devastating, but the implications for global science go further and we need to protect it.

This post is adapted from my recent editorial in the Journal of Health Services Research & Policy.

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The loss of science within the United States

Since January 2025 the US government has terminated or frozen hundreds of grants across the health, the climate, the environment, and NASA. Thousands of researchers have been dismissed and entire research programmes disrupted including climate change, vaccine development, social-media misinformation studies.

Universities are under sustained attack. Elite universities have had the most federal funding cut, are threatened with investigations over student Gaza protests, and are being asked to give up independence in hiring and curriculum decisions. Visa approvals for new international students and staff have slowed or been revoked outright.

International collaboration has been devastated. For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been ordered to stop working with the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has halted grant funding involving foreign partners, and threatened the prestigious international Fulbright scholarship.

The attacks on US science have been devastating for those working in science or considering science careers in the US. But the rest of the world is poorer for it as well. The impact of the cuts to global health programmes, including US AID, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPfAR), the Global Vaccine Alliance, and withdrawal from the World Health Organization are devastating and will result in millions of additional deaths around the world.

But there are also wider global implications of the US attacks on science and public health that I want to highlight in this post.

Science is not as mobile as you might think

The billions of dollars now lost to research are unlikely to be replace by other nations, although that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. But even if we could replace the money, scientific networks are not as moveable as scientific ideas or individual scientists. State-of-the-art labs, clinical trial and data infrastructures, and funding ecosystems have grown around US agencies and universities and can’t be quickly or easily built elsewhere.

Scientists themselves are people, not automatons. Most will stay in the US because of family, friends, and love for their home even if it means stopping or changing their research focus. Those that do leave the US need time to adjust to their new environment. Productivity usually drops when groups are uprooted. International students and early career researchers are crucial to global science – they spread new ideas and talent. The US is not the only country restricting entry of overseas students and researchers – recent moves to tighten visa rules in the UK and Australia are a worrying development.

A copy-and-paste example for authoritarians

US actions are emboldening governments that already mistrust independent expertise. When the United States - historically a vocal champion of academic freedom - makes the suppression of inconvenient science into official state policy, it legitimises similar moves elsewhere. In the UK for instance, leading figures on the populist right talk openly about leaving the World Health Organization, rolling back climate commitments and attacking universities.

Health and technology risks

The wider health consequences of the US retreat from science are immediate. The US administration’s actions in undermining the CDC or casting doubts on vaccines with disinformation, has resonance far beyond US borders, with vaccine hesitancy increasing worldwide while trust in public health officials is challenged. Just this week a child tragically died of measles in Liverpool, where a shocking quarter of all children haven’t received their measles vaccinations. Additionally, US agencies supply crucial data that underpin global surveillance for new potential pandemics, and so the deliberate stepping back from this role imperils everyone – especially with bird flu rife in American dairy herds.

Apart from pandemics, the erosion of American science also coincides with a crucial period in the development of artificial intelligence and green technologies that needs more international collaboration, not less. The US hosts many of the large‑scale data repositories and almost half of the world’s data centres on which global researchers depend. A political climate that normalises withholding data for ideological reasons, or weaponising export‑control legislation to block collaborations, threatens both basic discovery and applied health services research. This is already happening.

What can the international science community do?

Diversify funding and governance. Over-reliance on a single nation - whatever its science excellent- creates systemic risk. Scientific agencies must broaden their donor base where possible and give low- and middle-income countries a larger share of agenda-setting seats. Not only is this fairer, it is more resilient. Academic freedom clauses should be written into grant agreements and trade pacts to protect funding for ongoing projects.

Strengthen regional capacity. The Africa CDC’s pathogen-genomics network and Latin American vaccine-manufacturing consortia are practical examples: they put specialised facilities closer to outbreaks and reduce dependency on the US. Europe’s move to protect EU science from political interference is an important step.

Make the case to the public. Evidence only turns into effective policy when voters trust the science and institutions that produce it. Public Health researchers can explain and quantify the cost of anti-science policies - lost life expectancy, higher healthcare spending, slower pandemic response - and translate the evidence into clear messages for journalists, parliamentarians and local officials .

This stuff matters

American science will not recover quickly, even if the political climate changes with the next presidential election in 2028; you can break things quickly but rebuilding capacity takes time. The current situation in the US is a stress test for the international research ecosystem. If the rest of the world can build up resilience now - diverse funders, distributed data hubs, legal protections for academic freedom - we will be better prepared for, and less likely to see, future populist anti-science governments. A plural, politically insulated research system is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.