New documentary follows researchers’ increasingly fraught career path

From ScienceMag:

The fruits of scientific discovery are ubiquitous, from the medicines that treat disease to the satellites that enable navigation—but only in rare circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, do scientists get thrust into the public spotlight. Much of the work behind scientific discovery remains stubbornly invisible to many of the people it ultimately serves. That gap inspired biophysicist Aaron Mertz and immunologist Shruti Naik to create The Endless Frontier, a new documentary that follows three U.S. researchers at different stages of their careers as they attempt to navigate an increasingly uncertain funding landscape and mentor the next generation.

The Endless Frontier makes its world premiere today in Washington, D.C., followed by a screening in New York City next week and additional festival appearances. The filmmakers plan to make the documentary available to a wider audience through a streaming platform. Science recently spoke with Mertz to discuss why he and Naik—the film’s executive producers—wanted to pull back the curtain on scientific careers, how they selected the researchers featured in the film, and what the current moment means for the future of U.S. science.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: What drove you and Naik to develop a documentary about scientists?

A: It was the pandemic, when a lot of news stories started talking about how scientists were working to combat this very strange disease that was moving into the United States. Shruti and I realized that people didn’t actually understand what we as scientists do.

We’re all working on behalf of the public good to discover new knowledge and new applications. We have a very long and intensive training process, and we realized that that process is entirely opaque to most members of the public. Even though scientists were getting a lot more airplay in the news then, people didn’t understand how their careers actually looked. We thought a feature length film could be a way to show audiences what a laboratory and the whole long training process is like.

Q: How did the title come to be?

A: The final title is The Endless Frontier, referencing Vannevar Bush’s landmark 1945 report to President [Harry Truman]. He was the principal science adviser for our country, and that report laid the groundwork for the establishment of our National Science Foundation. We believe that quote captures the nature and goals of science very well, because we believe science is endless.

One of the issues that I want to combat through this film is the framing of how science is talked about in our country and world. Science to kids is mostly presented as a textbook with a closed cover or a homework assignment with an answer key—a finished endeavor.

But science is endless. It’s a work in progress. Scientists always learn how to revise our thinking based on new data that comes in, so this idea of “the endless frontier” captures the spirit of the scientific endeavor that we want to portray.

Q: This film focuses on three scientists’ stories. How did you decide which scientists to feature?

A: We wanted to present a range of scientific fields, geographies, and career stages. We selected Andrea Graham, an ecologist and immunologist at Princeton [University], and Paul Barber, a marine scientist at UCLA [the University of California, Los Angeles]. And we didn’t want to show that science only happens on our coasts, so we have a fantastic researcher, Jacob George, a neuroroboticist at the University of Utah.

Q: These are scientists in very different fields. What kinds of experiences unite them?

A: A couple of narratives unite them. One is just what being a scientist is like—working in a laboratory, never knowing what the answer is, and using experiments and data analysis to find it. This process of iteration is a uniform narrative across all three, and across all scientists.

Also, the training process involved in scientific careers unites them because all of them have trainees with whom they work. And that long process is not something that people tend to understand. Even my own family didn’t fully understand why I was in school until I was 30. This is one story that unites all of them and unites all scientists.

Another storyline that emerged is all the upheavals in federal support for science. They were already united by this challenge of securing grants to carry out their research and hire new team members and maintain their research portfolios, and those challenges became even greater in early 2025. We were able to capture that narrative by listening to them talk about their struggles to get funding and the strong possibilities that they’ll have to shut down certain parts of their research portfolios and possibly terminate a lot of training positions within their labs.

Q: What do you hope the viewers of the documentary will walk away thinking?

A: The audience will see that there are real human beings behind research. Science is not done by robots—yet. Science is done by human beings who are passionate about making a difference in our world, and they need investment in their work for our society to continue to be at the cutting edge of health care, of technology, innovation, and economic prosperity. That investment in basic science research is a very strong way to keep our country strong.

Q: After making the film, are you feeling optimistic or pessimistic about the future of U.S. science?

A: In the short-to-medium term, I’m optimistic about science because politics goes in waves and we have elections every 2 and 4 years. I’m hopeful that there will be more national support for science in the medium term.

What I worry about is the long-term implications and repercussions of everything that’s happened in the past year. I think it will take more than half a term or a full term to undo damage that was done to science in our country, with all the uncertainty surrounding grant support for research.

What worries me most is that rising generations right now won’t look at science careers in the same way as they did previously because the prospects for a career in science are not as great as they once were. I think rectifying the situation will potentially take up to a generation: Even a few years of stalled or canceled grants for trainees will mean that people don’t pursue these careers.

So I’m pessimistic in the long term, even though all the changes that have happened have been in just a short period.

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