For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Pierloos, in for Rachel Feltman.

As the year comes to an end, instead of catching up in the latest science stories you might have missed this past week, we are going to take a quick look at 2025 with the help with some Scientific American editors. Here they are. Hi, I'm Dan Vergano. I'm a senior editor of Scientific American.

My beat is covering science in Washington, D.C.

The biggest news story in science in Washington this year was RFK Jr.

He took the helm of HHS and has reshaped CDC, FDA, the other agencies under his purview,

fired a whole bunch of people, has basically upended the way business is done at a lot of those agencies,

and injected his views on science, vaccines, medicine as a whole, into the national discussion in a pretty deep way.

So 2025 has shaped science in Washington in a big way because it shattered the

social compact between scientists and the federal government that's existed since World War II.

Basically, they've shown here in D.C. that they can't be trusted when it comes to the funding

that they've promised scientists. The deal was, you do the science, you decide on the merits of

the science, we'll provide the funding, and the whole country will reap the benefits of it.

And the Trump administration outlook on that is quite different. They want to restore a sort

of error of patriotage in government. They see universities as a power center to be curbed,

and research funding is a big way to do that. They see scientists as a power center to be curbed, and research funding is a big way to do that.

They see scientists as a Democratic Party constituency to be punished, and as somebody to blame

for the Trump administration's disastrous handling of the pandemic.

You know, they're looking to scientists as the fall guys.

So all that has come together to change the way the scientists see Washington. It's no longer

reliable patron for a career in science. Career in Science looks a lot less attractive if you're

a young scientist. And so basically it's reset the leadership role the US has had in science

worldwide since we basically lifted it from Europe

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