Dr. Katie Suleta: Coordinated Attack on Science, Grants and Brain Drain

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/06

Dr. Katie Suleta is a public health researcher, educator, and science writer who focuses on science communication, evidence quality, and combating health misinformation. Her bylines include STAT (on the largely unregulated boom in health coaches), MedPage Today (on moral injury and the brain drain in public health), and Skeptical Inquirer (which everyone should be reading). She holds a Doctor of Health Science from George Washington University, an MPH from DePaul University, and an MS in Health Informatics from Boston University. She previously served as Regional Director of Research in Graduate Medical Education at HCA Healthcare and now works with Colorado Medicaid.

In this interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Suleta argues that today’s assaults on science are coordinated, not accidental. She details how political interference can freeze or cancel federal grants, destabilize labs, trainees, and multi-year projects, with early-career scientists being disproportionately affected. Courts issue mixed remedies, compounding uncertainty. Suleta links cost and ideology narratives to attacks on academia and DEI, fueling a chilling effect and a profit-driven wellness industry. The outcome is brain drain: scientists move abroad or exit science altogether, undermining innovation and public health. She highlights moral injury when professionals are prevented from serving communities by defunding, censorship, and misinformation.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Dr. Katie Suleta. Thank you for joining me today. You wrote an article for Skeptical Inquirer in the Strobe and Tech of Science section, “Brain Drain and the Consequences of Attacking Science,” Volume 49, Number 5, September/October 2025. You frame the current assault on science, academia, and research not as isolated incidents but as part of a larger pattern. There is a vector here, a direction of attack. Why is this not an accident, but rather a calculated act? What is the vector space, the direction, and why?

Dr. Katie Suleta: The first central front was a targeted campaign against higher education, including federal research funding. In early September 2025, a federal judge in Boston ruled that the administration acted unlawfully when it froze and attempted to cancel more than $2 billion in federal research grants to Harvard, finding the moves retaliatory and unconstitutional. That ruling underscored how quickly entire research portfolios can be imperilled when politics intrudes on grantmaking.

We have also seen broader waves of grant terminations and freezes affecting multiple institutions. Courts have split on remedies—one Supreme Court decision in August 2025 limited lower courts’ power to order reinstatement of cancelled NIH grants—while, separately, new lawsuits challenge sweeping freezes at public systems like the University of California. The net effect is uncertainty for labs, trainees, and multiyear projects.

This disruption disproportionately affects early-career scientists and graduate students, who depend on stable funding streams and continuity in mentorship and lab placements. When grants are paused or cancelled mid-cycle, those most vulnerable feel it first. That is part of what I emphasize in the Skeptical Inquirer piece.

Jacobsen: For people who see themselves as “arbiters of reality,” how do these funding actions operate in tandem with public attacks in the media and commentary space? What rhetoric is used to justify them?

Suleta: The justifications fall into two recurring buckets.

First, “cost” narratives—claims that academia is bloated and that cutting grants reins in overhead. In practice, competitive federal grants are the lifeblood of actual research activity; proposals to slash NIH outlays or terminate awards mid-stream translate into fewer funded projects, fewer trainees, and delays in drug and public-health pipelines.

Second, “ideology” narratives—assertions that universities are indoctrinating students or that DEI-related efforts taint research, used to rationalize freezes or terminations. Recent litigation and rulings revolve around whether such actions are lawful and what courts can do to remedy them; meanwhile, campuses face investigations and pressure campaigns that shift the public burden of proof onto institutions, regardless of evidentiary standards.

In a healthy debate, the burden of proof sits with the claimant. When that norm is abandoned, accusations become performative weapons, and universities end up defending against vibes rather than evidence. The long-tail consequence is a chilling effect on research independence and scientific communication.

Jacobsen: What is the likely timescale from funding cuts to the loss of innovation, whether in terms of patents, or slowing or halting clinical trials?

Suleta: Immediately. Clinical trials were shut down almost overnight. Innovation often emerges from labs funded by these grants. Ideas originate from a principal investigator, a co-investigator, or even a graduate student. However, once a lab is forced to close due to a lack of funding, all work comes to a halt.

People may still have ideas, but without resources, those ideas cannot be tested or developed. Funding is what allows concepts to move from imagination to execution.

Jacobsen: We could solve this by hiring only string theorists. Paper, pencil—no need for experiments! Looking at CERN, I remember a story told by Dr. Michio Kaku from the 1990s when Congress debated the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas. They had already dug an enormous tunnel at a cost of billions. A congressman asked a physicist whether the collider would “find God.” The physicist replied, “No, we’re looking for the Higgs boson.” Congress promptly cancelled the project, and the tunnel was literally abandoned and later partially filled in—American politics at work.

On that note, what about brain drain? America is known for cultivating some of the greatest minds of its generation. This morning, I attended an online physics conference where Leonard Susskind and Edward Witten spoke. It was a dream come true to ask Witten a question. America has places like the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, which attract extraordinary talent.

But if those minds feel threatened, cut off, or scapegoated—say in an echo of the “Yellow Peril” fears directed at Chinese scientists, or in a resurgence of antisemitism against Jewish scientists—what happens to American innovation?

Suleta: The risk of brain drain is very real. Mid-career and late-career professionals are already being struck by funding cuts and institutional attacks, resulting in the loss of labs and jobs. But we must also consider early-career scientists and trainees.

If early-career researchers cannot find positions, or if they are forced to compete directly against displaced mid- and late-career scientists, their chances of securing stable employment shrink drastically. That undermines the pipeline of the next generation of scientists.

Two outcomes then occur: some leave for more supportive countries that actively recruit them, while others leave the field altogether. Both are damaging, but the second is worse. If a scientist relocates abroad, they may still contribute to global knowledge. But if they abandon science entirely, that is a permanent loss to humanity.

When scientists leave the field, they often take jobs in other sectors. That is not only a brain drain for the sciences—it also disrupts the labour market in unusual ways. Suddenly, people who would not usually compete for jobs in other industries begin flooding those sectors because opportunities in science have collapsed. The squeeze in scientific careers creates ripple effects elsewhere, and it is a terrible setup for our future.

The options end up being stark. Either we export our brilliance abroad, or we force people out of science altogether. Historically, the United States has been accused of draining other countries of their talent because so many people wanted to come here to study and work at our institutions. However, the reverse is now happening, and it is happening quickly. We are exporting our highly trained scientists—and even our future potential scientists—to other countries, while pushing others out of the field entirely. That creates a pipeline problem: there are no replacements for those who retire, move abroad, or leave the field of science. The result is a vacuum that other countries will inevitably fill.

Jacobsen: You will notice this more through firsthand experience than I can convey through just reading. But as far as I know, women professionals in the sciences—including health sciences and social sciences—have historically had a harder time obtaining grants. While this is less of a problem than it was 50 years ago, does today’s wave of brain drain and funding cuts disproportionately affect early-career or late-career women researchers? Or does the impact even out once you control for variables?

Suleta: That is a difficult question to answer at the 50,000-foot level. But I can say that some regions of science that are more female-dominated—public health, for example—have been gutted. The workforce in public health includes a large proportion of women researchers, and those cuts hit them particularly hard.

I cannot give a universal answer across all fields because the data becomes fuzzy when you aggregate everything together. But from my background in public health, the answer is yes—it is hitting women in the sciences. That said, it is not only women. Anyone working in health sciences, public health, or any research that can be framed as “controversial” is vulnerable. And the definition of what counts as controversial has shifted dramatically over the past nine months.

I recently spoke with an agricultural researcher, and even in that field, funding is being disrupted—often under the banner of targeting DEI initiatives. The problem is far-reaching, and it is not confined to a single demographic or discipline.

I was told that researchers were not allowed to use the word “biodiversity” because it contains the word “diversity.” Instead, they had to substitute terms like “plant variation.” 

Jacobsen: That is the Enola Gay problem: the language itself becomes taboo. 

Suleta: There are many such anecdotal stories, and the result is that this pressure is not limited to the health sciences—it affects all fields of science. It is just that the healthcare sector has been hit particularly hard because it was a deliberate target.

Jacobsen: One very worthwhile project would be to analyze how language in scientific publishing shifts under political pressure. Imagine a meta-analysis across disciplines—tracking keywords in grant proposals, federal guidelines, and leading journals—and mapping how terminology evolves to align with administrative constraints. That would reveal how censorship-by-language trickles into scientific discourse.

You could argue that it is not perfectly bidirectional—that supporting pseudoscience is not the same as opposing science—but it is close. Cutting funding for science, or deploying rhetoric that undermines inquiry, is effectively fertilizer for pseudoscience. It erodes the culture of critical inquiry and weakens the scientific temper in society.

Both of us are grateful for the work of Skeptical Inquirer and, as skeptics and humanists, it is clear these cuts amount to advocacy for pseudoscience by default. By withdrawing support from science—the primary remedy to misinformation—leaders embolden nonsense. How do you see purveyors of pseudoscience being emboldened downstream by this?

Suleta: This was telegraphed during the first Trump administration with Kellyanne Conway’s infamous “alternative facts” comment. At the time, it was easy to mock—it became a meme. However, the approach is now being structured. By defunding science and replacing independent expertise with loyalists or appointees pursuing financial or ideological agendas, they create an infrastructure of “alternative facts.”

You can see this dynamic in the prominence of figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He has no scientific background or training, yet he promotes beliefs that are unmoored from evidence. Some of those beliefs are outright delusions, as you put it more politely than I would. And many of them intersect with industry interests, particularly in the wellness sector. That is a powerful combination: ideology combined with a profit motive.

I do not want to become a defender of the pharmaceutical industry, but the wellness industry has grown into a behemoth—essentially an unregulated alternative to our healthcare system. Instead of medical doctors, you have health coaches. Instead of prescriptions, you have supplements for sale. What has emerged is a parallel structure from which many stand to profit.

This became especially clear with the recent nomination of Casey Means for Surgeon General. STAT News reported on her conflicts of interest—her involvement in supplement sales, her marketing of supplements, and her board positions at multiple wellness companies. If these ties were to a pharmaceutical board, there would be outrage. But because they are tied to the “wellness” sector, which trades in vibes and imagery of caring for the public, the scrutiny has been softer. Yet what they are selling is not supported by science. There is no evidence base—it is smoke and mirrors. Their message is that they have your best interests at heart, unlike those “pesky” scientists, doctors, or pharmaceutical executives.

Jacobsen: I want to touch on moral injury. I first encountered the term during one of several fellowships at the University of California, Irvine. It struck me as a profound concept. We cannot cover it in full here, but could you explain what moral injury is and why public health professionals, in particular, are facing it—especially alongside budget cuts, brain drain, and the influence of conspiratorial pseudoscience at the highest levels of leadership?

Suleta: Moral injury is indeed a fascinating and painful concept, and it hits public health professionals especially hard. People enter public health because they are deeply committed to a mission: improving the health and well-being of as many people as possible.

Within that mission, people specialize. My background is in HIV, for example. I began my career working on U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funds. I worked for city and local public health departments, as well as internationally. For many, the work is not just a job but a calling.

When systemic barriers, funding cuts, or political interference prevent professionals from fulfilling that mission, it creates moral injury. It is not simply burnout; it is the feeling of being complicit in harm because you are unable to do the work you know is necessary to protect and improve lives.

When you work in the HIV space, everyone you meet is dedicated to combating HIV on a global level. It is very much a team effort. But when you defund public health infrastructure and the people working within it, you undermine that collective mission.

Public health is already a difficult sell because its benefits are largely invisible unless something goes wrong. Prevention is notoriously hard to quantify and even harder to make tangible. If you prevent a certain number of infections or deaths, the public never sees those events that did not happen. To them, it feels hypothetical.

The moral injury stems from understanding the vital importance of that prevention work on the ground. USAID is a good example. Much of what it funded was food for refugees and HIV medication. The people doing that work were committed to improving life for those experiencing extreme circumstances. When that funding is stripped, those professionals are left thinking about the people they served daily—people who may now starve or die without medication.

Even if the workers themselves can return to stable homes and families, they carry the weight of knowing that their patients and communities may not be able to survive. That is the essence of moral injury: the fundamental understanding of what those funding cuts mean in real, human terms—consequences that most people are detached from because they do not see them in their day-to-day lives.

Jacobsen: Doctor, thank you very much for your expertise and your time today. It was a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for keeping up the skeptic and humanist fight on behalf of us all.

Suleta: Thank you so much for the opportunity to discuss these issues and for elevating such vital topics.

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