Critics deride US administration’s ‘golden age of science’ report

The Trump administration's new 'Golden Age of Science' report proposes shifting US government R&D funding from universities toward industry and non-profit partnerships. Physics World reports the scientific community has criticized the proposal as misguided, arguing it undervalues basic research and peer review—the foundation of scientific credibility. The concern intensifies with the administration's proposed twenty twenty-seven budget, which would cut overall government R&D spending by twenty-two percent, slash NSF funding by more than fifty percent, and reduce NASA and the Department of Energy's research office by twenty-three and fifteen percent respectively. And there's already a troubling sign: the American Institute of Physics reports that physics and astronomy PhD graduates are leaving the US in record numbers, with the proportion of foreign-born scientists departing nearly doubling in a single year.

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