American science brain drain

0:01NPR

0:11This is the Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrian Ma. And I'm Darian Woods. And it is Jobs Friday! The latest jobs numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show us that 177 ,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in April. The big drivers were hiring in healthcare, transport, and warehousing. The unemployment rate stayed the same at 4.2%. But given all the federal spending cuts we've covered on the show recently, we wanted to zoom in on one profession in particular, scientists. Yes, the slashed NIH funding and government layoffs are pushing some scientists abroad. The jobs website Nature Careers saw a 32 % increase in US-based scientists applying for jobs elsewhere in the first three months of this year.

1:02Today on the show, stories from the brain drain, how a Hollywood entomologist is reconsidering America, and the Canadian who's seeing an opportunity to attract world-leading health scientists over the border. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Capella University. Sometimes it takes a different approach to pursue your goals. Capella is an online university accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. That means you can earn your degree from wherever you are and be confident your education is relevant, recognized, and respected. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University.

1:38Learn more about earning a relevant degree at capella.edu. This message comes from BetterHelp. To mark World Mental Health Day, BetterHelp is thanking the therapists who change people's lives all around the world by providing accessible mental health support. With over 12 years of experience matching clients with therapists and one of the world's largest online therapist networks, BetterHelp can help you find the right therapist. Visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR for 10 % off your first month. Armando Rosario LeBron has been into bugs ever since he was a kid in Puerto Rico. Spending a lot of time in the rainforest will do that to you, I think.

2:19It's one of those things where it's the closest thing to studying like a little alien sometimes. It's just a joy. Oh, little Armando. Well, little Armando grew up to be big Armando, who actually works with bugs for a living. On the side, he consults for film and TV. Like, he's consulted on spiders for Netflix's House of Cards, and on hissing cockroaches for Chef Gordon Ramsay's new show, Secret Service. We were putting the hissing roaches across a table so that Gordon's head was going to pop over the table. A few of them kept ending up in his hair, so I was digging hissing roaches out of Gordon Ramsay's hair.

2:56That was interesting. I would love to hear the outtakes from that filming session. Yeah, it may not be safe for a radio podcast. Armando's full-time job, though, is working at the Smithsonian Institution. There, he's a biological science technician. He specializes in looking after the collections that include the aphids and the whiteflies. He's also a union vice president, representing many federal workers involved with border biosecurity. He explains the importance of entomology at the border like this. I like to start this with the story of a banana, okay? Imagine a banana begins in Costa Rica and it arrives at a port of entry.

3:37Yeah, and actually picture a whole freight load of bananas. These bananas are inspected by a Customs and Border Protection officer who might have been trained by an entomologist. And if they see a strange bug in these bananas, that bug might be sent to an entomologist for identification. Meanwhile, the freight unloading is paused because the wrong insects getting into the U.S. can be economically crushing. That could be hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to the U.S. farmers, is that right? Potentially billions. Potentially billions. Yeah, I mean, I give people the worst-case scenario of what happened, and it was the citrus industry from Florida.

4:14What if I told you that 92 % of Florida oranges has declined because of a psyllid? Asian citrus psyllid came in, brought in a bacterial infection that infects the trees, devastated the industry, and then hurricanes came in, and there were other factors. But that psyllid was a big, big factor in this. But recently, with job cuts, resignation offers, and funding freezes, Armando was wondering whether he wants to be working in the U.S. He says he lost three technicians thanks to the recent job cuts in February. And as a union representative, Armando has spent countless hours on the phone talking with distressed colleagues.

4:57We have employees who every day are really worried that they're going to make a misstep. Will I say the wrong thing one day and I will be fired? And this environment of fear is everywhere. A few months ago, Armando applied for a PhD program in the UK. And in March, he was accepted. But he was also torn about whether to take the offer, given how much he loved his current job at the Smithsonian. I mean, what other job like this exists in the world that you can work with your love of bugs, work in these collections that are just world-class, and to have this really important mission where it's keeping the country having a great, safe food supply, keeping invasive pests out.

5:47I mean, it doesn't get any better than this. Each to their own. Clearly Armando has found bug bliss, right? He's so passionate about what he does. Really, like any institution looking for an entomologist would be lucky to have him. Yeah, that is true. Overseas universities, hospitals and labs are rubbing their hands at all these enthusiastic, smart people like Armando suddenly considering leaving the U.S. Kevin Smith is the president and CEO of University Health Network in Canada. It's about 44 ,000 people who make up the community at UHN. That's like the size of a city. Well, a small city for sure, but by far Canada's largest academic health science center.

6:29Kevin says a few months ago, he was hearing from his researchers that something unusual was happening. All of a sudden, the phone started ringing and saying, hey, I'm kind of interested in what opportunities you have. It was a sizable shift. I would say it was, you know, 5 to 10x increase. Huh. Five to ten times. It was a big deal. And what was most notable is where they were from. Among the finest academic organizations in the United States, Harvard, Stanford, NIH, National Cancer Institute, Hopkins, the list goes on. We were hearing from a lot of early career scientists who'd recently discovered that perhaps their funding was not as assured for even the next year.

7:13The NIH has been blocking thousands of grant applications and has threatened billions of dollars of further health sciences funding if scientists weren't asking the right questions. For example, some in vaccine science who felt like maybe they'd have less access to grants than they had in the past. Already we've seen 33 grants related to studying vaccine hesitancy and uptake terminated by the National Institutes of Health. The FDA has also made a new COVID vaccine go through extra testing hoops. And the Trump administration has been threatening to withdraw funding from colleges like Harvard unless they change the way they recruit and also how they admit international students.

7:54So Kevin thought there may be an opportunity here. He spoke with his senior leadership team and board. We stepped back and said, this is a profound opportunity that we have not seen, at least in my career, to this level. And why don't we move on it? They came up with a plan to work with philanthropists and other funders to recruit 100 early career scientists to their hospital system. Kevin says around 400 people have already formally inquired. They span cancer researchers, neuroscientists, experts in organ transplants, and also people using AI to answer health questions. Scientists are sending a message.

8:33They want to be in an environment where they can ask curiosity-driven questions that are of importance to them. and they want to be able to disseminate the results of those findings. Brain drain is something that happens to smaller countries all the time. Their high performers go overseas looking for opportunities, often in the U.S. It can be bad for these smaller countries' economies, and now it seems that the tables could be turning. We asked both the NIH and the White House if they were concerned. The NIH responded that it is committed to fostering a vibrant biomedical research workforce, And White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the Trump administration had been reviewing the previous administration's projects, identifying waste and realigning research spending to maintain America's innovative dominance.

9:22As for Armando, the entomologist, he reflected on all the chaos that he's been seeing and he decided, yeah, he's going to take that PhD offer in the UK. And he actually moves in September. So what is the U.S. losing by having Hollywood consultant, entomologist, union leader Armando Rosario Lebron leave the U.S.? Well, as you can tell, I do a lot of different things. We're losing a lot of expertise in this kind of agricultural entomology I do. my knowledge of the collections we have here, my knowledge of how we operate. We're losing that expertise. And that's not even taking into account the creepy crawlies that we lose from TV shows.

10:10I think Gordon Ramsay will be happy about that. This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by Maggie Luthar and Sina Lafredo. It was fact-acted by Sierra Juarez. Cake & Cannon edits the show and The Indicator is a production of NPR.