In 2012 I packed up my possessions and left Jamestown to pursue a career and life in scientific research. My destination was Arlington, Texas, halfway across the country, where I had enrolled in the graduate program in biology at the University of Texas, Arlington. Aside from some short vacations, I had spent almost my entire life in Chautauqua County, as a student at Falconer Central School and Jamestown Community College, or in New York State more broadly, finishing my bachelor’s degree from SUNY in Syracuse.

At the time I was so excited to live somewhere new, meet new people, and discover and live a life in scientific research and higher education, something that is relatively rare among residents of Chautauqua County and was completely foreign to my family and friends. Now, over 10 years later, I reflect fondly on this time and am glad I made the career decision that today allows me to have a successful and productive career as a scientist, which is a testament to the strong community support and education I received from Chautauqua County and New York State more broadly, for which I am eternally grateful.

However, I increasingly reflect also on the loss of community I suffered by uprooting myself from my home and strong support system, but fortunately, the scientific community that I entered – in my case composed largely of researchers at the interface of evolutionary biology and genetics, but more recently including molecular biologists, biochemists, and cancer researchers – welcomed me as an equal member, a testament to the kindness of scientists.

Today, I write to call attention to the potential deterioration of the scientific community I have joined, the diverse and productive population of researchers tackling a wide array of research questions at institutes across the nation. In escalating actions over recent months, the current federal administration has (1) cancelled numerous research awards that had been deemed worthy of funding after thorough peer review by leading scientists, (2) announced unilateral reductions to research rates so drastic that it would cripple academic research and education and lead to job losses nationwide, (3) made massive, unjustified reductions to the federal science and civil service workforce that erode scientific research capacity, and (4) implemented an unprecedented funding freeze and proposed 55% funding cut to the U.S. National Science Foundation, which funds important basic research that benefits the public, and a 40% funding cut to the National Institutes of Health, which funds $50 billion of research annually, enabling impactful biomedical research, diagnostics, and therapeutics, and generating thousands of jobs spread through communities in every state.

These actions will handicap, and in some cases extinguish, the scientific research enterprise of the United States, which is the world leader in innovation and scientific output. These actions are also short sighted and difficult to reconcile with the empirical evidence that demonstrates the positive economic and social impacts of scientific research. Every dollar in research funding awarded by our federal government yields over $2.50 in economic output, an excellent return on investment that also directly and indirectly supports commercial research and businesses. Federal research funding also champions workforce investment and career training that results in jobs spread through diverse communities. I directly benefited from these programs as a scientific trainee – I would not be where I am without them – and my work today continues to be supported by these initiatives, alongside funding from other sources.

This productivity is gained at a bargain price, as annual funding for science is less than 2% of the federal budget (and has already been declining for years), so any savings the administration gets from dismantling science will do little to solve any of the alleged problems related to government spending and will certainly not meaningfully reduce the $30 trillion federal deficit. The situation has become increasingly dire – the impacts of these actions will be reduced capacity to produce life-improving medical treatments and other research outputs that rely on basic and biomedical science, job losses in diverse communities, including Chautauqua County, and career disruptions to dedicated and highly trained scientists. Indeed, the true tragedy will be the loss of opportunity suffered by younger members of our community who may not be able to follow the path I and others followed just a few years ago into a productive career, which constitutes a major loss of personal freedom and an attack on our community’s capacity and obligation to affirm these freedoms. We should reject these proposals and actions, as they make little sense, are poorly justified, and would hurt us all!

Roughly 10 months after my move to Texas, I attended my first international scientific meeting, which drew thousands of researchers from throughout the world all focused on addressing important research questions in biology. Ironically, of all the researchers I could have met first at a meeting like this – an ecologist from Mexico, a geneticist from Kenya, or a teacher from Iowa, for instance – the first person I met was from Chautauqua County. It was at that moment that any apprehension I still had about my career decision immediately faded away and I realized I could be successful as a career scientist, because not only were there apparently kind and supportive researchers from across the world but also scientists with more similar life experience to my own who come from the same communities that I do in Chautauqua county and many other places like it across the world.

In the years since I have been fortunate to continue my career in scientific research, which currently is focused on illuminating the causes of cancer and other diseases and approaches we could use to treat them, and I occasionally have crossed paths with other scientists with strong ties to Chautauqua County. However, I fear that if steps are not taken to improve the adversarial posture towards science exhibited by our current federal government and restore the funding and social stability research needs to flourish, our national and global scientific system will deteriorate, to the detriment of us all. I urge my home community in Chautauqua County to join me in standing up for my adoptive community of scientific researchers!

Please discuss this troubling situation with your friends and family and call and write to your local, state, and national representatives and leaders with the firm message that all scientific research is valuable and is a wise and fruitful investment for our society that deserves to continue. Most important of all, please support the scientific research occurring in the Chautauqua region and champion the young scientists making their way in the world, including those from the area who I hope I can one day welcome into the vibrant scientific community you all helped me to enter just a few years ago.

Dr. Daren Card is a computational biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is a 2006 graduate Falconer Central School, a 2008 graduate of Jamestown Community College and a 2011 graduate of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.