Overview

• Leaders of the Royal Swedish Academy said cuts to research funding and academic freedom are undermining the foundations that yielded many U.S. Nobel prizes.
• Since January, the NIH has canceled about 2,100 grants totaling roughly $9.5 billion and contracts worth $2.6 billion, with impacts reported in cancer, Alzheimer’s, climate and vaccine research, according to Grant Watch.
• New Physics Nobel laureate John Clarke said the policies will paralyze a large share of U.S. research and could take up to a decade to recover from once reversed.
• Officials warned the disruption risks a brain drain as other countries recruit U.S. scientists, with particular attention to China’s rising investment in research.
• Despite the turbulence, several of this week’s Nobel winners work in the United States, while a court ruling overturned an attempt to strip Harvard of research funds as unconstitutional.