SCIENCE sciencemag.org 14 FEBRUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6479 723DATA: WHITE HOUSE
as consultants in Indonesia could be targeted
using the same law, he says. (Erik Meijaard, a
Dutch primatologist based in Brunei, says he
no longer works in Indonesia because it’s un-
clear what counts as research under the law.)
Gaveau is not the first foreign researcher
to leave the country. Last year, PanEco, a
Swiss conservation group working on Suma-
tra, fired two scientists who had published a
paper about a hydroelectric dam that threat-
ens the tiny habitat of the Tapanuli orang-
utan, the rarest of the great ape species.
PanEco long opposed the dam but made a
sudden about-face after a meeting with In-
donesian politicians last year, announcing
it would help mitigate the project’s impact
(Science, 13 September 2019, p. 1064).
Conservation biologist Jatna Supriatna,
a senior member of the Indonesian Acad-
emy of Sciences, says, “Miscommunication
between scientists and government” is at
the root of most disputes. Supriatna doesn’t
believe Gaveau’s departure had anything to
do with his research: “I have published re-
search on deforestation, but none of it was
criticized by the government,” he says.
KLHK has also ignored work by Indone-
sian scientists, however. In 2018, it removed
five species of songbirds and 10 species of
wood plants—including a dipterocarp tree
once believed to be extinct that produces
high-quality timber—from a list of pro-
tected plants and animals without consult-
ing LIPI scientists. The ministry ignored
LIPI’s recommendation to add the Papuan
blue monitor lizard, which is threatened by
illegal trade and deforestation, to the list.
KLHK “made the decision by themselves,”
says Evy Arida, a herpetologist at LIPI. (In
an interview with environmental news web-
site Mongabay, a KLHK spokesperson said
the decisions were based on field research
into the species’ abundance.)
Herlambang, who founded the Indone-
sian Caucus for Academic Freedom, agrees
the climate is worsening for local research-
ers. He cites the case of Basuki Wasis, an
environmental scientist at IPB University
who served as an expert witness in the trial
of Nur Alam, a former governor of South
East Sulawesi convicted of graft in 2016.
Wasis testified that Alam’s governance had
caused almost $200 million in environmen-
tal losses; in response, Alam sued Wasis for
about $220 million. (Wasis won the suit,
with Herlambang’s help.)
“We are witnessing an ecological crisis
and human rights violations,” Herlambang
says. “We will never overcome these prob-
lems if we don’t have a chance to develop
our academic freedom.” jDyna Rochmyaningsih is a science journalist based
in Deli Serdang, Indonesia.NEWSTrump’s new budget cuts all but
a favored few science programs
NIH, NSF, NASA, and energy research again take hits
in 2021 request, but “industries of the future” on the rise
U.S. FUNDINGF
or the fourth straight year, President
Donald Trump has proposed sizable
reductions in federal research spend-
ing. To be sure, it’s no longer news that
the president wants deep cuts to the
budgets of the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), the National Science Founda-
tion (NSF), and science programs at the De-
partment of Energy (DOE) and NASA (see
table, below). And in past years, Congress
has rejected similar proposals and provided
increases. But Trump’s 2021 request brings
into sharper focus what his administration
values across the research landscape—and
what it views as unimportant.
During a 10 February teleconference on
the research portion of the $4.8 trillion
budget request, administration represen-
tatives refused to address the proposed
cuts to many areas of basic research and
instead highlighted the few bright spots
for science. For example, when asked
about research on climate change, a dis-
cipline targeted for cuts, White House sci-
ence adviser Kelvin Droegemeier changed
the subject. “We want to keep this focused
on artificial intelligence [AI] and quantum
information science [QIS],” he said—two
fields the administration has selected for
spending increases.
Droegemeier also insisted that the presi-
dent’s overall request of $142 billion for re-search would be a 6% increase. In fact, it
represents a 9% decline over 2020 spend-
ing; the 6% increase is based on Trump’s
2020 request, which Congress ignored.
No one from NIH, whose $42 billion bud-
get makes it by far the government’s larg-
est funder of basic research, was present
at the briefing to defend Trump’s proposed
$3 billion, 7% cut in biomedical research.
And NSF Director France Córdova, who
steps down on 31 March after completing
her 6-year term, promised only that her
$8 billion agency would “continue to sup-
port science and science education” despite
facing a proposed cut of 6.5%.
The unquestionable stars of the show
were research investments in what the
Trump administration calls “industries of
the future.” They consist of AI and QIS, as
well as 5G communications, biotechnol-
ogy, and advanced manufacturing. In par-
ticular, the administration wants to double
federal spending on AI to nearly $2 billion,
and on QIS to $860 million, over the next
2 years. “Together, [these fields] are vital to
the nation’s global competitiveness and the
health, prosperity, and security of the Amer-
ican people,” the budget proposal declares.
Many members of Congress share the ad-
ministration’s passion for this small group
of disciplines with direct commercial appli-
cations. Last month, the chair of the Senate
science committee introduced a bipartisan
bill with similar spending goals for these
fields, and Michael Kratsios, the White
House’s chief technology officer, praised it
in testifying before the committee.
However, the president’s passion for in-
creased spending on AI and QIS doesn’t
extend to the rest of the physical sci-
ences. A group of Republican lawmak-
ers in the House of Representatives last
month proposed a 10-year doubling of the
leading federal agencies that support the
physical sciences—NSF, NASA, DOE’s Of-
fice of Science, and the National Institute
of Standards and Technology. But when
asked whether he supported that proposal,
Droegemeier said he doesn’t comment on
pending legislation.
In fact, those agencies are headed in
the opposite direction under Trump’s re-By Jeffrey MervisA sea of red ink
Most of the federal government’s major science
funding agencies would see deep cuts under the 2021
request, but spending on a few programs would rise.AGENCY2020 BUDGET
($ BILLIONS)2021 REQUEST
($ BILLIONS) % CHANGE
NIH 41.68 38.69 –7.2%
NSF 8.28 7. 74 –6.5%
NASA science 7. 1 4 6.3 –11.8%
DOE Office
of Science7 5.84 –16.6%NOAA 5.35 4.63 –13.6%
USGS 1.27 0.97 –23.6%USDA-AFRI 0.43 0.6 41.2%Published by AAAS