A tale of many twos

For the American scientific enterprise, the past year has seemed awash in contradiction. On the one hand, it has produced great upheavals and losses for US science. Many universities experienced some degree of federal funding cuts for research; public, government, and private programs for building the scientific workforce were slashed or eliminated; the reimbursement of overhead costs in government grants for research (indirect costs) was threatened; and immigration for international students was curtailed. Yet for all of that, things now are better than might have been expected a year ago. Just last month, congressional budget bills for science had their funding restored from the Trump administration’s original draconian cuts; legal challenges attempting to change indirect cost regulations were unsuccessful; and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation disbursed all the funds they had appropriated in 2025 to universities and research institutions before the money expired. Both sides of this paradox are true, and it’s difficult to understand the current moment of negative actions coexisting with positive headway without considering them both together.