The Stand Up for Science demonstration at Washington Square Park in New York City on Friday 7 March 2025 had the most qualified speakers, angriest participants and wickedest signs of any protest I can remember.
Raucous, diverse and loud, it was held in the shadow of looming massive cuts to key US scientific agencies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Other anti-science actions have included the appointment of a vaccine opponent as head of the US Health and Human Services and the cancellation of $400m in grants and contracts to Columbia University.
I arrived at the venue half an hour beforehand. Despite the chillingly cold and breezy weather, the park’s usual characters were there, including chess players, tap dancers, people advertising “Revolution Books” and evangelists who handed me a “spiritual credit card”.
But I had come for a more real-world cause that is affecting many of my research colleagues right here, right now. Among the Stand Up For Science demonstrators was Srishti Bose, a fourth-year graduate student in neuroscience at Queens College, who met me underneath the arch at the north of the park, the traditional site of demonstrations.
She had organized the rally together with two other women – a graduate student at Stony Brook University and a postdoc at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. They had heard that there would be a Stand Up for Science rally on the same day in Washington, DC, and thought that New York City should have one too. In fact, there were 32 across the US in total.
The trio didn’t have much time, and none of them had ever planned a political protest before. “We spent 10 days frantically e-mailing everyone we could think of,” Srishti said, of having to arrange the permits, equipment, insurance, medical and security personnel – and speakers.
I was astounded at what they accomplished. The first speaker was Harald Varmus, who won the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine and spent seven years as director of the NIH under President Barack Obama. “People think medicine falls from the sky,” he told protestors, “rather than from academics supported by science funding.”
Another Nobel-prize-winner who spoke was Martin Chalfie from Columbia University, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Speaker after speaker – faculty, foundation directors, lab heads, faculty, postdocs, graduate students, New York State politicians – ticked off what was being lost by the budget cuts targeting science.
It included money for motor neurone disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer, polio, measles, heart disease research, climate science, and funding that supports stipends and salaries for postdocs, grad students, university labs and departments.
Lisa Randall, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University, began with a joke: “How many government officials does it take to screw in a light bulb? None: Trump says the job’s done and they stay in the dark.”
Randall continued by enumerating programme and funding cuts that will turn the lights out on important research. “Let’s keep the values that Make America Great – Again,” she concluded.
The crowd of 2000 or so demonstrators were diverse and multi-generational, as is typical for such events in my New York City. I heard at least five different languages being spoken. Everyone was fired up and roared “Boo!” whenever the names of certain politicians were mentioned.
I told Bose about the criticism I had heard that Stand Up for Science was making science look like a special-interest group rather than being carried out in the public interest.
She would have none of it. “They made us an interest group,” Bose insisted. “We grew up thinking that everyone accepted and supported science. This is the first time we’ve had a direct attack on what we do. I can’t think of a single lab that doesn’t have an NSF or NIH grant.”
Lots of signs were on display, many fabulously aggressive and angry, ranging from hand-drawn lettering on cardboard to carefully produced placards – some of which I won’t reproduce in a family magazine.
“I shouldn’t have to make a sign saying that ‘Defunding science is wrong’…but here we are” said one. “Go fact yourself!” and “Science keeps you assholes alive”, said others.
Two female breast-cancer researchers had made a sign that, they told me, put their message in a way that they thought the current US leaders would get: “Science saves boobs.”
I saw others that bitterly mocked the current US president’s apparent ignorance of the distinction between “transgenic” and “transgender”.
“Girls just wanna have funding” said another witty sign. “Executive orders are not peer reviewed”; “Science: because I’d rather not make shit up”; “Science is significant *p<0.05” said others.
The rally ended with 20 minutes of call-and-response chants. Everyone knew the words, thanks to a QR code.
“We will fight?”
“Every day!”
“When science is under attack?”
“Stand up, fight back!”
“What do we want?”
“Answers”
“When do we want it?”
“After peer review!”
After the spirited chanting, the rally was officially over, but many people stayed, sharing stories, collecting information and seeking ideas for the next moves.
“Obviously,” Bose said, “it’s not going to end here.”
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