News and Insights

To Save Vital Research, Scientists Must Become Better Storytellers

February 7, 2025

The Trump administration’s focus on cutting costs and eliminating government, both through executive order and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, is already having significant impacts on public-funded science and research. Central to the President’s efforts—and the tool he uses most often—is storytelling.

Advocates of science overlook this skill at their peril. Researchers, academics, politicians, policymakers—and indeed, anyone who advocates for science—must recognize that in order to blunt the administration’s efforts to cut or freeze public funding for research, they need to become master storytellers themselves.

Although the President’s recent freeze on funding for critical research was rescinded, these programs are still at risk. Trump’s 2017 budget provides a preview of what to expect. An 18 percent cut to the National Institutes of Health was proposed. A $1 billion cut was planned for the National Cancer Institute. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute would have seen a $575 million cut, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ budget would have been slashed by $838 million. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was slated to lose 17 percent of its budget for $1.2 billion in total cuts and $776 million was cut from the National Science Foundation.

Had the budget been moved forward, it would have significantly impacted human health, but Congress reversed some of the worst cuts. The outlook for publicly funded science remains challenging; the Congress of 2025 is a different body, with many lawmakers enthusiastically discussing plans for the removal of SNAP benefits, commonly known as food stamps, the rollback of the Affordable Care Act and additional cuts to programs, such as those in infectious disease and cancer research, which ensure the health and safety of all Americans.

Between Congress, the Chief Executive and the potential impacts of DOGE, the situation is fluid and uncertain. Scientists and their allies need to express that uncertainty—and its real-life impact—in terms we can all understand. Rather than imparting numbers and statistics, scientists need to start talking about people. Programs and costs may be controversial, but people who are sick and need help are not.

When confronted with neighbors, friends and family who face medical challenges, we want to help. We do help. When leaders let us know that a member of our community or congregation is sick, we respond.

Scientists must recognize this most basic human impulse. Rather than talk about the research programs at stake, scientists need to tell the stories of the people whom these programs have helped—in some cases saved.

Growing up in Connecticut, Kara was an athlete and captain of her basketball team. But after turning 14, she noticed her muscles weakening. Unable to squat, get up and eventually run, she had to quit athletics. Kara had no idea what was going on; she found no advice online. Frightened, she kept it to herself for nearly two years, but when a physical revealed abnormal liver enzymes, she began an 11-year odyssey during which doctors found no answers. When she was 24, Kara thought she might have an autoimmune disorder, but was told she was “grasping at straws.” That doctor recommended she undergo full genetic testing through the Undiagnosed Disease Network, a NIH project that’s publicly funded.

At 25, Kara was finally diagnosed with necrotizing myositis, a rare autoimmune disease. She’s being treated, but her disease is refractory. Now 32, Kara is trying to enter a clinical trial for a (CAR) T-cell therapy that has shown promising results in other autoimmune disorders, such as lupus. She’s upbeat and hopeful; her case is important because it alerts doctors to look for her disease when they see patients with symptoms similar to hers. She believes in government-funded research and is living proof that it works.

Scientists are comfortable talking about their work at the micro and macro scale, where it begins and how it impacts populations. They must begin to talk about the benefits of their research at the scale of real life, making connections between their innovation and the lives of individuals like Kara who’ve been saved thanks to our dollars at work. It’s often difficult for them to do this. I’ve known zoologists who’ve said they worked with “charismatic megafauna.” But, in plain English, they worked with elephants and rhinos, which is far more thrilling and exciting than the bloodless phrase they preferred to use. Those zoologists weren’t alone.

Scientists, once revered by the average American, have been greatly undermined, but they and their allies are often unable to help their own cause. Science created the vaccine that saved my parents John and Rosanne from polio, discovered antibiotics that saved my wife Kathy from pneumonia and developed the inoculations that saved my daughters Julia and Dinah from measles, mumps and rubella. Science advocates must recognize the need to clearly convey the immense, life-saving value of their work.

Whether in academia, small start-ups or big pharmaceutical companies, researchers need to do more than impart dry statistics. Those in public health and government must become advocates for the wide range of individuals and communities who’ve been helped by the fruits of research. In short, these stakeholders must reach voters and the lawmakers who represent them, not simply with facts, but with stories that help them connect on an emotional level.

In this mission, working with professionals is essential. Skilled science marketers and communicators have the ability to identify stories that resonate, stories that not only make the public care about science but may also solve the deepening shortage of young people interested in STEM careers.

The President constantly reminds us that we’re in an uncertain time, but these stories also dismiss the value of programs that keep us alive and healthy. It’s telling that in one of his first executive orders, the President stopped federal health agencies from communicating with the public. The White House recognizes the importance of communication and its potential to establish or transform beliefs.

Each of us must become better storytellers. We can’t all be Neil deGrasse Tyson or Carl Sagan, but we can recast science, not as a relentless pursuit of molecules and microbes, but rather as a relentless pursuit of human hope. By connecting simply and emotionally with the public about people who have been saved by research—the stories of our parents, children, friends and neighbors, we have a chance to protect science funded by the people, for the people. If we fail, the exploration and research that has until now protected Americans’ health will be at risk of being eliminated to satisfy the short-sighted pursuit of efficiency for efficiency’s sake.

This article originally appeared in O’Dwyer’s on February 7, 2025.