More than three-quarters of scientists in the U.S are weighing leaving the country and are looking at Europe and Canada as their top relocation spots, according to a survey released Thursday.
The scientific journal Nature poll found that 75.3 percent of scientists are considering leaving the U.S. after the administration cut funding for research. Nearly a quarter of respondents, 24.7 percent, disagreed.
The highest contingent of researchers who are looking to move out of the country were those who are early in their careers. Nearly 550, out of 690 who responded to the survey, said they are considering leaving the U.S. Out of the 340 Ph.D. students, 255 shared the same inclination, the poll found.
The administration, along with tech billionaire and close Trump adviser Elon Musk, with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency, has terminated entire agencies and made cuts in the last two months in an effort to shrink the size and scope of the federal government.
Some of those reductions were felt at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where all grants for equity issues, which encompass studying Black maternal health and HIV, were canceled. The cap on indirect costs of NIH grants was capped at 15 percent.
The NIH was also ordered recently to halt efforts to terminate the funding for grants intended for hospitals, universities and other institutions by a federal judge after numerous lawsuits.
Former Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she was concerned about the recent cuts to grants flowing through the NIH.
"I'm worried on a lot of fronts," Sebelius said Wednesday. "The kinds of cuts that were just announced are devastating and will set science back and set research back."
These cuts have also affected the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has been hit with layoffs.
More than three-quarters of Americans, 76 percent, said they have a great or fair amount of confidence in scientists to do what is best for the public, according to a Pew Research Center survey that was published in mid-November last year. The figure was a minor uptick from October 2023, when 73 percent of respondents said the same.
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