From ScienceMag:

My dream of becoming a psychologist was becoming a nightmare. After being diagnosed with two chronic conditions during the second year of my Ph.D., I was caught endlessly cycling from doctor’s appointments to research meetings, late-night studying to late-morning crashing, physical therapy to office hours, hospital visits to practicum training. I could no longer meet my expectations of what it meant to be an academic: productive, efficient, capable. Was this career even possible for me? The question weighed heavily. Even heavier was my reaction: Maybe it wasn’t. I had been trained to recognize what I was going through: grief. And yet, I felt lost.

My academic training had gone smoothly until early in my second year of graduate school, when I started to experience fatigue, chronic pain, and occasional fainting. As my peers pulled all-nighters to complete their first papers, I struggled just to make it to class on a full night’s sleep. Imposter syndrome flared. Because of pain, I had difficulty spending extended amounts of time at my desk. When I got up to stretch, my heart raced and my head spun. What started as a 15-minute break would sometimes turn into an entire day off. I missed deadlines. Absences accumulated. To save energy for school, I opted out of social and leisure activities that were critical for managing my stress, sending me into a major depressive episode. The more I forced myself to achieve the way I was used to, the worse my symptoms became.

After copious testing, I was eventually diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. I had to finally face the fact that I would never be able to push my mind and body too hard without pushing myself over the edge. I registered with my university’s disability resource center, but hesitated to use its support systems or explore ways to make my work more manageable. Instead, I muddled through another year on my own, alternating between feeling uncomfortably different from most of my colleagues and trying to practice self-compassion.

Then, in the fourth year of my program, I began a practicum experience—as a therapist at the same disability resource center. I noticed that nearly all of my clients faced the same internal struggle I did, wondering whether they were worthy of the accommodations they sought. I found myself echoing a phrase: “Just because your cup is different doesn’t mean you can’t pour from it. But no one can pour from an empty cup.” I realized what a hypocrite I was. I finally acknowledged I deserved the support to refill my own cup, too.

I learned about what assistance was available to me: practical and financial tools I hadn’t even considered, such as funding to support basic needs and medical supply costs, and connection to people with experiences very similar to mine. I began to see a therapist to manage the stress of my studies and my conditions, and I stopped letting self-care become secondary to school. I consulted with the faculty in my program to make my workspace more functional and accessible, for example by using tall stools when I teach and creating open spaces in my work areas for my mobility aids. I workshopped my hours with my advisers to make sure I was working when I felt better and resting when I felt worse.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing. When the elevator to my training clinic broke down for multiple months, the first suggestion from my faculty was not to find an alternative way for me to do my work, but to find alternative students to do the work for me. But, through persistent conversation and collaboration with the faculty, I advocated for the accommodation to work remotely and demonstrated to myself and my mentors that I could still do quality work, even if it looked a little different from everyone else’s.

Through this journey, I discovered I’m not alone, and that asking for help is a sign of insight and confidence in myself that is invaluable to the work I do. In all I lost to my illnesses, I gained in my voice and agency to decide not only that, yes, I will be a psychologist, but also the kind of academic I want to be: compassionate, determined, and balanced in my science, my service, and myself.

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From ScienceMag:

U.S. students hoping to earn a Ph.D. in political science, public policy, cultural anthropology, or science education will no longer be eligible for a prestigious fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the agency revealed yesterday. Advocates for the social sciences believe NSF’s decision to drop those fields from its Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is part of a broader effort to end funding for the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, underscored by the agency’s decision earlier this year to eliminate its SBE directorate.

“SBE is disappearing before our eyes,” says Wendy Naus, executive director of the Consortium of Social Science Associations, citing the changes in GRFP eligibility as the latest example. The withdrawal of NSF support for the social sciences could trigger departmental closings at major U.S. universities, she predicts, as NSF is the chief source of research support for many disciplines.

“NSF routinely reviews fields of study and makes updates based on changes in the scientific landscape and agency priorities,” an agency spokesperson said in response to a query about the revised list of eligible fields.

The new GRFP rules are included in an NSF solicitation posted yesterday. The announcement also indicates the number of fellows supported will drop sharply in 2027, to 1500. The size of each class has fluctuated widely in recent years: The number stood at 2031 in 2024 before dipping to 1500 in 2025 and then rising to 2597 this year.

The solicitation says NSF expects to spend $159 million on the 2027 class of fellows, who will receive 3 years of graduate support with an annual stipend of $37,000 and $16,000 in tuition reimbursement to their university. Over the years, the program has supported 50 Nobel Prize winners.

Those who follow GRFP say its reduced scope for 2027 is unprecedented. The seven areas being dropped accounted for 17% of all the social science fellows funded in the past 5 years, according to data compiled by Gisèle Muller-Parker, former director of the program. NSF is still offering fellowships in other subfields, including economics, archaeology, geography, and linguistics.

Students in the social sciences have been eligible since 1956, Muller-Parker notes, 4 years after NSF launched the program. Last year there were 124 social science fellows, down from a 5-year high of 152 in 2023.

One field—the history and philosophy of science—was eliminated last year, Muller-Parker adds. This year’s solicitation also removes science, technology, engineering, and math education and learning research as one of the 10 major fields supported by GRFP, further skewing the program toward engineering and hard sciences.

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From ScienceMag:

The efforts of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to diversify U.S. science beyond its historical reliance on white men were dealt a blow last week after the Department of Justice (DOJ) ruled that three of its long-running programs were unconstitutional because they discriminate by race or sex and must be ended. At the same time, DOJ said four other NSF programs to strengthen the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce pass legal muster and two more could be tweaked to avoid clashing with the ruling (see table, below).

Advocates for the barred NSF programs say the ruling will hurt the ability of the United States to remain competitive in science with other nations. “Anytime we eliminate a program that has been providing opportunities for all students to excel in science, we are limiting the ability of this country to excel,” says mathematician Freeman Hrabowski, president emeritus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, whose Meyerhoff Scholars Program has with the help of NSF funding become a national model for increasing the number of Black and Hispanic people in science and medicine. Representative Grace Meng (D–NY), the top Democrat on a congressional spending panel that sets NSF’s budget, vowed to fight what she calls “this very troubling legal opinion.” NSF declined comment.

At the same time, some legal scholars suggest the 12 August opinion by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Josh Craddock may signal that President Donald Trump’s administration is softening its blanket opposition to any diversity, equity, and inclusion program aimed at groups historically underrepresented in science and could be open to race and gender-neutral efforts.

“This is a more sophisticated, nuanced, and, with important exceptions, accurate depiction of federal law than we’ve seen from the Justice Department,” says one lawyer at a firm that advises research institutions battling the slew of Trump executive orders on race and sex/gender who requested anonymity to protect its relationship with the department. “This document articulates an avenue for neutral strategies that is a distinct contrast with a spate of recent findings that assume any neutral strategy is inherently unlawful or simply a mask for racial discrimination.”

As part of its mission to fund academic research, NSF has long been the main federal champion of STEM diversity. Within a few months of Trump retaking office, however, the agency terminated hundreds of grants for projects meant to attract and retain what former NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan calls “the missing millions.” Simultaneously, NSF said it would no longer support research projects “that preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups.” It also dismantled its Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM, the unit that had been funding many of those efforts.

The DOJ ruling goes one step further. It orders NSF to terminate the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (one of the funders of the Meyerhoff scholars), the Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, and a program serving colleges and universities enrolling a significant number of Hispanic students. It also bars NSF from spending the $104 million appropriated for the programs this year by Congress.

That clawback of funds bolsters Trump’s insistence that his administration can override the wishes of Congress, which specifically authorized the NSF programs and has the constitutional authority to allocate federal dollars. “Congress’s power of the purse is formidable, but it cannot license—much less compel—the Executive Branch to engage in unconstitutional racial discrimination,” Craddock wrote in his 38-page opinion.

NSF has traditionally justified the need for its diversity programs with data showing that Black people, Hispanic people, and women have historically been heavily underrepresented in STEM fields. But Craddock said that approach doesn’t meet the new standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2023 decision outlawing the use of race in college admissions, which allows for race-based programs only to “remediate specific, identified instances of past discrimination.” He also quotes from a high court ruling this year striking down Louisiana’s use of race in drawing its congressional districts, which declared that “statistical disparities don’t cut it” as a justification for a race-based program.

But some legal analysts argue Craddock has gone too far. “Congress has the constitutional authority to identify systemic racism and other societal inequities and to pass legislation that is intended to address the problem,” says one lawyer, former general counsel at a major research university who also requested anonymity. “There are lawful ways in which to move forward with neutral and inclusive approaches to remove barriers to participation. And I think it is fundamentally wrong [for DOJ] to ignore that fact.”

Craddock’s ruling gives a green light to six other programs that Angela Williams, NSF’s general counsel, in May asked DOJ to evaluate. One was NSF’s prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), which includes a 2022 congressional directive “to recruit fellowship applicants from historically underrepresented populations in STEM.”

NSF would be crossing the line if its outreach for the GRFP targeted Black people or women, Craddock told Williams. But there’s an alternative, he explained. “NSF can satisfy this requirement by targeting race-neutral populations historically underrepresented in STEM—such as persons with disabilities, from rural communities, or from low-income background,” Craddock wrote. “The statute does not require NSF to target all historically underrepresented populations.”

An NSF program created in 2001 to increase the number of women in academic science and engineering careers, called ADVANCE, posed a trickier problem. Any approaches aimed exclusively at women would be unconstitutional, Craddock noted in his opinion, but sex-neutral strategies that wind up helping women are OK. “NSF could not fund activities that use sex as an eligibility criterion—such as a female-only Girls Who Code event,” he explained. “But NSF may continue to fund projects that do not give preferential treatment to one sex, even if such projects ultimately tend to benefit women more than men.”

However, institutions receiving NSF funding from the nonbanned programs aren’t off the hook, the lawyers who spoke with Science warn. Craddock’s ruling also prohibits NSF grantees from evaluating the effectiveness of any effort to close racial or gender gaps in science that is deemed unconstitutional.

Although that edict contradicts current case law allowing such research “as long as it does not yield a demonstrable benefit to one student and not another,” says one lawyer, they worry DOJ could eventually use that provision to shut down all NSF programs aimed at improving the diversity of the U.S. scientific workforce.

“So yes, preserving some programs now is a win,” one lawyer says. “But that does not necessarily mean that you can continue doing what you’ve been doing. You need to do it a way that pursues authentic neutral strategies for removing barriers that are not based on a person’s race or sex.”

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From ScienceMag:

Nearly 400 Argentine researchers have been left jobless and uncertain about their future in science after a delay in the process for securing permanent research positions in the country.

The postdoctoral fellows had applied for a permanent career track with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina’s main science agency, expecting to hear back by the end of this year. But in April, CONICET announced the results would not be released until August 2027 because of a backlog of applications and cuts in the number of positions available. When the postdocs’ fellowships ended on 31 July, they were left without salaries and scrambling to find work.

The postdocs staged protests around the country on Wednesday, including in downtown Buenos Aires, where they wore Argentina’s national soccer jerseys. “We’re trying to make as much noise as possible,” says limnologist María Luz Padulles of the National University of Moreno. But some are considering moving out of research or seeking opportunities abroad instead. “I’d like leaving the country to be a choice, not an obligation,” says Pablo López, an astronomer at the National University of Córdoba (UNC).

The case is one of the most visible consequences of the budget cuts implemented by President Javier Milei’s government, which have caused the loss of thousands of jobs in the science sector. Public investment in science and technology is at its lowest level in 54 years.

In Argentina, a CONICET postdoc position is a 3-year fellowship that cannot be extended or repeated. For those reaching its end, the agency holds annual calls for permanent positions. But the number of positions on offer has dropped from 850 to 400, and in 2024 the call was suspended entirely, causing a backlog of applications that led CONICET to postpone this year’s decisions.

The affected postdocs have called on CONICET to extend their fellowships until the appointment process is complete. Five of the agency’s eight board members supported doing so, says Jorge Aliaga, a board member representing Argentina’s universities. But CONICET’s government-appointed head, Daniel Salamone, disagreed, Aliaga says: “If he is not convinced, the money is not there.”

In the meantime, many of the scientists are trying to stay within the scientific system as they wait to find out whether their application is successful. Elvira Casagranda, a biologist at the National University of Tucumán, managed to secure a 3-month “half fellowship” to collaborate on a project sustained through international funding. Although family reasons make her reluctant to leave Argentina, she is considering applying for a position in Brazil. “Every day I cry for a while,” Casagranda says.

Padulles was somewhat luckier: Her university took over her salary so her research on water quality in the Reconquista River Basin would not be interrupted. But one of her colleagues, also a postdoctoral fellow, accepted an offer to continue her career in Brazil. “She got tired of the way the scientific system treated her,” Padulles says. “I decided to stay and keep trying.” Others have taken up teaching positions or are considering doing so.

Argentina already has far fewer researchers per capita than the average for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, says Diego Hurtado, a senior CONICET researcher at the National University of San Martín. Milei’s policies are making the situation worse, he says. Since he came to power in 2023, more than 6400 jobs have been lost in the sector—including more than 2000 at CONICET—through layoffs, voluntary buyouts, and resignations. “The idea seems to be that the fiscal deficit can be solved by expelling scientists. It’s a bit absurd,” Hurtado says. This year’s government spending on science and technology is projected to fall to about 0.14% of gross domestic product, equivalent to roughly $1.2 billion—the lowest level in decades. “The destruction of Argentine science is being planned,” says Rocío Sánchez, a biologist at UNC and one of the researchers in limbo.

There is still some hope for Sánchez and his fellow postdocs: Congress is expected to vote on extra-budgetary allocations in October and could decide to extend the CONICET fellowships, Aliaga says, though such an outcome is far from certain. An extension would cost about $2 million. Compared with the agency’s $400 million annual budget, that’s a small price to pay, he adds: “From the country’s point of view, these are very valuable people.”

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From ScienceMag:

When I picked up my 8-year-old daughter from school on a sunny afternoon in April, I found her excitedly planning out her future. She and her best friends had chosen which high school they wanted to attend and had already decided to join the art club and gymnastics classes. Sometimes they would walk back home together, she said. I smiled and eagerly listened to her excitement. But another thought sat in the back of my mind—one I could not burden her with: I didn’t know whether we would still be in the country by then.

I came to the United Kingdom 5 years ago as a postgraduate, keen to begin my Ph.D. research, yet unsure whether the move was permanent. My wife and I—originally from Pakistan—had been living in Saudi Arabia for years and had felt settled there. I worried about leaving behind a permanent job and close friends to pursue my academic dreams. But within a few months we started to feel that we could make a life here. We made new friends, volunteered with the community, explored beautiful Scotland, and experienced a surprising level of warmth.

My career in the U.K. also proved rewarding. After my Ph.D., I stayed to do a postdoc. I have published papers, mentored students, and worked on exciting projects. And like many other researchers, I initially believed if I excelled in my field and produced good science, stability in life would be certain.

But all along, there has been a constant uncertainty invisible to most of those around me—even my own children. Our future here depends not only on me excelling as a researcher, but also on whether we can afford to remain in the U.K. legally.

Every couple years, my family faces another cycle of visa renewals and the huge associated costs. Over the past 6 years we have spent an eye-watering amount just to continue to live and work in the country, and we are now trying to save nearly £13,000 for the next stage of renewal in 6 months.

U.K. visas are exceptionally expensive compared with many other countries. That’s partly because applicants must pay a health care surcharge up front for the full length of the visa; this alone can rack up thousands of pounds. And although some U.K. universities cover visa costs for the main applicant, this is becoming increasingly rare, and support typically doesn’t extend to children or partners.

For early-career researchers who must also contend with the uncertainty of short-term contracts, this burden can be overwhelming. Financial considerations seep into my everyday life: Before making many ordinary purchases, like buying a bike for my kids, I instinctively think about whether I should instead save that money for future visa costs.

These considerations also dampen my excitement about my research. When friends and co-workers discuss future projects and fellowship applications, they naturally focus on the science and the research questions. So do I. But at the same time, I worry I might not be able to remain to see those plans through. When my supervisor tells me a grant has been successful, my first thought is not about the science, but about whether the project funding covers visas.

The situation is difficult to discuss with family back in Pakistan. Many of them imagine we are living an easy, financially secure life. I feel guilty even thinking about asking for financial help when they believe I should instead be supporting them.

Meanwhile, my children are building lives here without fully understanding the uncertainty their parents quietly carry. Their friends are here. Their schools and sports clubs are here. Their understanding of home is increasingly tied to this country.

When I talk to other international early-career researchers, I’m struck by how many silently face similar worries. Yet these concerns rarely come up in everyday conversations. I wish they were discussed more openly so colleagues and institutional leadership better understood the pressures we are under.

Most days, I continue as normal. I go to the lab, attend group meetings, write papers, and come home to be with my kids. From the outside, I probably look like any other young researcher trying to build a career in academia. But inside, my calculations are constantly running in the background, as I try to ascertain whether we will be able to stay long enough for the future my daughter has already started to imagine.

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