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United States Science

US Scientists Flee Abroad as Research Funding Cuts Deepen: Nature (nature.com) 199

US scientists are fleeing abroad in record numbers as the Trump administration slashes research funding, according to exclusive data analysis by Nature. Applications from American researchers for international positions surged 32% between January and March 2025 compared to the same period last year, while US-based users browsing overseas jobs jumped 35%.

The exodus accelerated in March as the administration intensified science cuts, with job views spiking 68% year-over-year. Applications to Canadian institutions increased 41%, while interest from Canadians in US positions plummeted 13%. Recent months have seen more than 200 federal HIV/AIDS research grants abruptly terminated, cuts to NIH COVID-19 funding revealed, and a $400 million reduction in research grants at Columbia University. "To see this big drop in views and applications to the US -- and the similar rise in those looking to leave -- is unprecedented," said James Richards, who leads Global Talent Solutions at Springer Nature.

European institutions are capitalizing on the talent migration. Aix-Marseille University launched its "Safe Place for Science" initiative with $17.2 million to sponsor researchers, while Germany's Max Planck Society created a Transatlantic Program offering positions to scientists "no longer able to work in the United States." The trend extends beyond Europe, with US-based views of Chinese science positions increasing 30% in the first quarter of 2025.

US Scientists Flee Abroad as Research Funding Cuts Deepen: Nature

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  • by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2025 @10:48AM (#65323045) Homepage
    So much winning! D=
    • by zlives ( 2009072 )

      and thus spoketh the profit(sp?)
      "We're gonna win so much you may even get tired of winning and you'll say please please it's too much winning we can't take it anymore"

    • Re: Make it stop!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2025 @11:13AM (#65323141)
      You can bet Donald Trump is winning right now. American citizens have done their job so why would they matter?
  • It's real (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PineGreen ( 446635 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2025 @10:53AM (#65323063) Homepage

    I work for a big national lab and I can make a few observations:

    a) Postdocs that have already accepted a job are having second thoughts. Statistically speaking, the likelihood of being detained by the ICE with a valid visa is probably about the same as the airplane suffering a catastrophic issue, but for human perception this does not matter. US is just not attractive any more. Nobody wants to enter a country where you are looked up with suspicion. The fact that the salary just dropped 10% in EUR is also not promising.

    b) You would be shocked just how much US research institutions rely on foreigners. It seems immigrants support both ends of the economic chain: slaughterhouses and agri jobs on one end and high tech jobs at the other with natives filling in the middle. There are grants for which you need to be a citizen and they are so much easier to get simply because there are so few of them.

    c) The mood is totally depressed. We had cuts this year despite CR with draconiam further cuts next year. And I'm talking about physics, not sociology of woke people. Everybody is sniffing for an exit.

    • Re:It's real (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2025 @10:58AM (#65323087)

      The government is aggressively anti-education/pro-fundamentalist Christianity. It's isolationist and racist. It's economically self-destructive. It's anti-press.

      To be a scientist in the US right now is to wonder if your funding will be blocked because you are researching something the government has decided is bad, wondering if you're going to be kicked out of the country (if you're not a white native-born with an English-sounding name who attends the right church regularly and never says a bad word about Trump), if you're going to get paid next year or be able to afford to live on what you do get paid, and if you'll be permitted to publish if your research gets to that point.

      If you're a boffin or boffin-in-training and you're NOT trying to get out right now, you're probably not bright enough to have excelled in your field anyway.

    • Is it just me, or are we also seeing an increase in catastrophic air disasters?
      • I was just thinking the same thing.
      • You're probably just seeing more reporting on it, which isn't unusual in the wake of a particularly bad disaster. If you look at the data [ntsb.gov] it's not out of line with previous years. I can't even say if there's even a change on the amount of reporting either, as it's also possible that hasn't changed either and you're just experiencing the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. I know that there have been a fair number of articles here over the past several years about accidents related to Boeing, but outside of the large
    • US is just not attractive any more. Nobody wants to enter a country where you are looked up with suspicion.

      But Trump has such a friendly warm glow about him! They won't come to the US simply for a chance to bask in the light that is your president?

    • There are a whole bunch of programs that only are available to foreign students. That's because everyone involved is in on a rather nasty scam.

      The universities like the foreign students because they pay a lot more.

      Companies like the foreign students because They don't come out of college with citizenship so they can be bullied to work longer hours.

      Where the whole thing gets skeezy is how the college is get paid. It's loans from the federal government but if the students get out of college and th
  • We'll take all you've got! We know what makes a country stronger in the long run.

    • To be fair, our answer to date was, "hitch our wagon to that convenient massive economy on our southern border and other than a bit of bitching now and then, don't think about it".

      I am not sure that counts as "we know what makes a country stronger in the long run".

      However, we appear to be smartening up faster than the global fascism trend can overtake our society, which is encouraging for the future.

  • by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2025 @11:19AM (#65323173)
    The percentages can be deceiving. A 60% increase in scientists leaving the US? I need the real numbers to assess. If last year 10 scientists left the US and this year is 16, it's totally irrelevant.

    If last year was 10,000 leaving and this year it's 16,000, that's a major sign that the country is decaying, and I'll be packing my bags and polishing my resume, but I probably should have been doing that stuff last year.

    Once a brain drain sets in, it's usually a doom loop for the country. But, US scientists will have a hell of a time finding other STEM positions. Have you seen how much we spend on R&D compared to other countries? No other country even comes close. Every unhappy liberal US scientist currently wants to go to Canada. They'll all be competing over the 15 university openings and the 25 national lab researcher positions. Their R&D budget is about 1/30th of ours, if I did the rough calculation properly. Also, if anyone thinks the US is hostile to immigrants, they'll be in for a big shock if they try to emmigrate somewhere else. Most of those "enlightened" countries are wwaaaayyyyyy more closed to immigrants than us. Even under Trump, the US is pretty open to migrants by worldwide standards.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2025 @11:37AM (#65323227) Homepage Journal

      Usually you need a *lot* of numbers to understand a real world situation. Both total numbers and marginal changes are part of the big picture.

      Almost certainly we aren't losing a significant fraction of our scientists going by raw numbers. But changes at the margins tell you something to. I'm sure very few senior scientists who have houses and families in school are looking to go overseas, but I can tell you that young scientists I know starting their careers are looking at Europe as a better option than the US. The ones who actually go will be small in number, but it'll be the ones who can get a position anywhere in the world. If you had a choice of a postdoctoral fellowship in German and the US, and you weren't sure the US fellowship would be funded for a full five years, why would you go to the US? If funding for scientific research is drying up in the US, why would you start your career here?

      Which brings me to the next point: numbers don't always tell the full story. The number of scientists leaving the US may not be very large, but when it's the top young talent it's a problem. You won't see that problem in ten years, but in twenty it will have a big effect on the scientific leadership of the US. People forget, we're just 4% of the world's population. Our overwhelming technological leadership is dependent upon keeping the best of our talent here, and attracting the best of talent from overseas.

      • Our overwhelming technological leadership is dependent upon keeping the best of our talent here, and attracting the best of talent from overseas.

        And it's almost entirely the latter. Since WWII (at least) we've been incredibly successful at brain draining the whole world, skimming most of the cream of that 96% and attracting them here with our open society that encourages free expression, our wealth and resulting good lifestyles, and our first class research facilities and organizations. All of these things have formed a powerful virtuous cycle, and that is what has kept us on top, technologically. Our own native population has contributed, but thos

    • by dskoll ( 99328 )

      Canada spends about 1/2 per capita on R&D compared to the USA. I think there will be plenty of political will to increase this... we're days away from an election and this seems like an obvious issue to seize upon. Oh look... the front-running party promises to increase R&D funding [liberal.ca]

      • by dskoll ( 99328 )

        BTW. the 1/2 per capita is based on percentage of GDP... that might have been unclear.

    • by Arrogant-Bastard ( 141720 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2025 @11:59AM (#65323299)
      You're correct that the raw numbers matter, although I will argue that the percentages matter too. But:

      I work with colleagues in over 60 countries. I don't get a chance to speak with everyone every month, but I do talk to everyone at least once a quarter. And so far, every single one of them has noted that their country views the exodus of US scientists as a once-in-a-century opportunity to boost their own R&D in any/every field they possible can, and they're willing to do whatever it takes to attract those people. Three of those countries are seriously discussing starting entirely new universities -- from nothing -- and staffing them with ex-US scientists. (Whether they can or will do that remains to be seen, of course, but the fact it's even on the table for discussion is a reflection of how badly they want these people.) This includes countries that aren't particularly known for strong university/research institutions, because this is their chance to jumpstart that ecosystem.

      Five of those countries have put together employment/housing/etc. packages that are really quite nice. Over twenty of those countries have sent recruiters to the US to talk to scientists in person. And so on. And this has all happened in a matter of just a few weeks.

      All of this will take time -- which means that it'll take time to see the real effects of the anti-science/education/research/etc. policies of the US. But the fact that it's happening at all should set off every possible alarm bell, because once these people are gone -- in a few years -- it will take decades to replace them.
  • by bferrell ( 253291 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2025 @11:55AM (#65323281) Homepage Journal

    in the 1930 the germans drove the scientists out
    Maga/DJT is doing it here now

  • Otherwise this discussion is gobbledygook.
    I once spent a week at a Holiday Inn Express because it was the best option for my price/location needs at the time. That doesn't make me an "HI Expressian".

    Clearly the entire article and all the infographics are written to say Trump Bad. Which, I mean, does anyone doubt that? The dude is neither admirable nor articulate. He's been very successful at staying famous, a dubious honor, because so is Dahmer. But this article is clearly a preformed conclusion that went i

    • Talk about mental gymnastics.

      • Talk about mental gymnastics.

        I know right?
        This /. story and TFA are at Cirque du Soleil levels of acrobatics in order to manufacture the impression that American scientists are hitting the Underground Railroad to desperately escape from the country, and thus skies shall fall!

        It makes no journalistic, reasoned effort whatsoever to examine whether the previous levels of funding and subsidy were healthy, sustainable, or even well-understood and desired by voters. It merely takes everything before 1/20/2025 as Normal Good Times and then, h

        • So scientists that fled their native country to get an education and career in America are considering returning to their native country or a Bigger Better Deal elsewhere? Wow. That's big news!

          Were they US Scientists, or were they scientists that were recently working in the U.S.?

  • I clicked into the article and did not see any quantitative numbers only percentages. That doesn't tell me much. Especially since it seems to report increased over the previous rate. So if 10 researchers applied for positions in Canada the year before and now it's 13 this year, that's a 30% increase which sounds really dramatic but, would only be 3 people.

    The only quantifiable numbers I saw in the article were the total number of open positions hosted on their board. Which sound dramatic but it doesn
  • I'm not seeing a number for how many have actually left. I did read about one guy, who was born in England to American parents and brought up mainly in England, iirc, but then got a job eventually at some American U. Does he count?

    When I was thinking about getting a job at a European U. or research inst., it turns out it was not easy to get a visa for that.

  • Billy Bob has watched a lot of rumbles on vaccines and is ready to step in to fix the NIH. A lot.
  • As we've learned after watching so many international organizations come to a complete halt after USAID's funding was withdrawn, the US spends a *lot* of money on "research", and a lot of that finds its way into the EU, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Australia.

    So the French and the Germans are launching multi-million dollar initiatives to "sponsor" researchers. I'm fine with that, as long as those millions are from yet another US government cut-out.

    Frankly, we're spending way too much here. We absolutely n

  • Applications from American researchers for international positions surged 32% between January and March 2025 compared to the same period last year, while US-based users browsing overseas jobs jumped 35%.

    Specifically:

    Applications from American researchers for international positions surged 32%

    "Applications" doesn't mean anyone "fled" the U.S.

    US-based users browsing overseas jobs jumped 35%

    "Browsing" is a form of window shopping, it doesn't mean anyone "fled" the country.

    These metrics prove "curiosity" about overseas opportunities, nothing more...

    Accomplished scientists likely have pensions, retirement plans, generous vacation and other benefits, and to simply walk away from all that is a big decision - being curious about "what's out there" doesn't mean they have quit their jobs and left for opportunities overseas...

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