The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain

Today, we're airing an episode of NPR's daily economics podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-planet-money. It's about a group of people we know well: scientists. President Trump's federal cuts and scrutiny of academic institutions are forcing some U. S. scientists to head for the border. On today's show, an entomologist keeping America's farms safe from pests reconsiders America. And a CEO of a Canadian hospital explains how they are benefiting from the exodus. Want to learn more about the intersection of science and the economy? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Speaker 01

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:24Regina Barber?

  Hey, Short Wave-ers. Regina Barber here with one of the co-hosts of NPR's daily economics podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money, Darian Woods. Hey, Darian.

• 0:32Speaker 03

  Hey, Gina.

• 0:32Regina Barber?

  OK, so we brought you on because of some labor reporting you've been doing.

• 0:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is a regular installment at The Indicator. We look at how many jobs the US economy has added.

• 0:43Regina Barber?

  OK.

• 0:43Speaker 03

  The latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show us that it was 177,000 jobs in April, which is a pretty healthy number. But the important thing for you and Short Wave listeners is that recently, co-host Adrian Ma and I zoomed in specifically on scientists in the US.

• 1:03Regina Barber?

  Right, like, all of the federal spending cuts that have been, like, changing the landscape for people who, like, do the science that we discuss on Short Wave day in and day out.

• 1:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, the frozen NIH funding and government layoffs are pushing some scientists abroad.

• 1:17Regina Barber?

  Yeah, I remember reading, like, 75% of respondents to this Nature poll back in March have considered leaving the United States.

• 1:25Speaker 03

  And some of those people are putting their money where their mouths are.

• 1:28Regina Barber?

  I actually know some researchers who are applying abroad.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  OK, well, they might make up some of the next statistic, which is that the jobs website, Nature Careers, saw a 32% increase in US-based scientists applying for jobs elsewhere in the first three months of this year.

• 1:44Regina Barber?

  That is so much.

• 1:45Speaker 03

  It's real.

• 1:47Regina Barber?

  So today on the show, the scientific brain drain. Darian and Adrian get personal with a Hollywood entomologist reconsidering the United States and a Canadian CEO who's seen an opportunity to attract world-leading health scientists over the border. You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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• 3:24Speaker 03

  Armando Rosario LeBron has been into bugs ever since he was a kid in Puerto Rico.

• 3:29Speaker 04

  Spending a lot of time in the rainforest will do that to you, I think. It's one of those things where it's the closest thing to studying like a little alien sometimes. It's just a joy.

• 3:42Speaker 05

  Aw, little Armando. Well, little Armando grew up to be big Armando, who actually works with bugs for a living. On the side, he consults for film and TV. Like, he's consulted on spiders for Netflix's House of Cards and on hissing cockroaches for Chef Gordon Ramsay's new show, Secret Service.

• 4:02Speaker 04

  We were putting hissing roaches across a table so that Gordon's head was going to pop over the table. A few of them kept ending up in his hair, so I was digging hissing roaches out of Gordon Ramsay's hair. That was interesting.

• 4:15Speaker 05

  I would love to hear the outtakes from that filming session.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, it may not be safe for radio broadcasts. Armando's full-time job, though, is working at the Smithsonian Institution. There, he's a biological science technician. He specializes in looking after the collections that include the aphids and the whiteflies. He's also a union vice president, representing many federal workers involved with border biosecurity. He explains the importance of entomology at the border like this.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  I like to start this with the story of a banana. Okay, imagine a banana begins in Costa Rica and it arrives at a port of entry.

• 4:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, and actually picture a whole freight load of bananas. These bananas are inspected by a customs and border protection officer who might have been trained by an entomologist. And if they see a strange bug in these bananas, that bug might be sent to an entomologist for identification. Meanwhile, the freight unloading is paused because the wrong insects getting into the US can be economically crushing.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  That could be hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to the US farmers, is that right?

• 5:20Speaker 04

  Potentially billions.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Potentially billions.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I give people the worst-case scenario of what happened, and it was the citrus industry from Florida. What if I told you that 92% of Florida oranges has declined because of a psyllid? Asian citrus psyllid came in, brought in a bacterial infection that infects the trees, devastated the industry, and then hurricanes came in, and there were other factors. But that psyllid was a big, big factor in this.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  But recently, with job cuts, resignation offers, and funding freezes, Armando was wondering whether he wants to be working in the US. He says he lost three technicians thanks to the recent job cuts in February. And as a union representative, Armando has spent countless hours on the phone talking with distressed colleagues.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  We have employees who, every day, are really worried that they're going to make a misstep. Will I say the wrong thing one day and I will be fired? And this, this environment of fear...

• 6:28Speaker 04

  Is everywhere.

• 6:30Speaker 05

  A few months ago, Armando applied for a PhD program in the UK. And in March, he was accepted. But he was also torn about whether to take the offer, given how much he loved his current job at the Smithsonian.

• 6:42Speaker 04

  I mean, what other job like this exists in the world? That you can work with your love of bugs, work in these collections that are just world class. And to have this really important mission where it's keeping the country having a great, safe food supply, keeping in face of pass out. I mean, it doesn't get any better than this.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Each to their own.

• 7:06Speaker 05

  Clearly, Armando has found bug bliss, right? He's so passionate about what he does. Really, like any institution looking for an entomologist would be lucky to have him.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is true. Overseas universities, hospitals and labs are rubbing their hands at all these enthusiastic, smart people like Armando suddenly considering leaving the US. Kevin Smith is the president and CEO of University Health Network in Canada.

• 7:32Speaker 06

  It's about 44,000 people who make up the community at UHN.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  That's like the size of a city.

• 7:38Speaker 06

  Well, a small city for sure, but by far Canada's largest academic health science center.

• 7:44Speaker 05

  Kevin says a few months ago, he was hearing from his researchers that something unusual was happening.

• 7:50Speaker 06

  All of a sudden, the phone started ringing and saying, hey, I'm kind of interested in what opportunities you have. It was a sizable shift. I would say it was, you know, five to 10x increase.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  Huh, five to 10 times.

• 8:03Speaker 06

  It's a big, it was a big deal. And what was most notable is where they were from. Among the finest academic organizations in the United States, Harvard, Stanford, NIH, National Cancer Institute, Hopkins, the list goes on. We were hearing from a lot of early career scientists who'd recently discovered that perhaps their funding was not as assured for even the next year.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  The NIH has been blocking thousands of grant applications and has threatened billions of dollars of further health sciences funding if scientists weren't asking the right questions.

• 8:39Speaker 06

  For example, some in vaccine science who felt like maybe they'd have less access to grants than they had in the past.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  Already, we've seen 33 grants related to studying vaccine hesitancy and uptake terminated by the National Institutes of Health. The FDA has also made a new COVID vaccine go through extra testing hoops.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  And the Trump administration has been threatening to withdraw funding from colleges like Harvard unless they change the way they recruit and also how they admit international students. So Kevin thought there may be an opportunity here. He spoke with his senior leadership team and board.

• 9:16Speaker 06

  We stepped back and said, this is a profound opportunity that we have not seen, at least in my career, to this level. And why don't we move on it?

• 9:26Speaker 03

  They came up with a plan to work with philanthropists and other funders to recruit 100 early-career scientists to their hospital system.

• 9:34Speaker 05

  Kevin says around 400 people have already formally inquired. They span cancer researchers, neuroscientists, experts in organ transplants, and also people using AI to answer health questions.

• 9:47Speaker 06

  Scientists are sending a message. They want to be in an environment where they can ask curiosity-driven questions that are of importance to them, and they want to be able to disseminate the results of those findings.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  Brain drain is something that happens to smaller countries all the time. Their high performers go overseas looking for opportunities, often in the US. It can be bad for these smaller countries' economies, and now it seems that the tables could be turning.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  We asked both the NIH and the White House if they were concerned. The NIH responded that it is committed to fostering a vibrant biomedical research workforce, and White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the Trump administration had been reviewing the previous administration's projects, identifying waste and realigning research spending to maintain America's innovative dominance.

• 10:38Speaker 05

  As for Armando, the entomologist, he reflected on all the chaos that he's been seeing, and he decided, yeah, he's going to take that PhD offer in the UK, and he actually moves in September.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  So what is the US losing by having Hollywood consultant, entomologist, union leader, Armando Rosario LeBron leave the US?

• 11:00Speaker 04

  Well, as you can tell, I do a lot of different things.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  We're losing a lot of expertise in this kind of agricultural entomology I do. My knowledge of the collections we have here, the my knowledge of how we operate. We're losing that expertise.

• 11:21Speaker 05

  And that's not even taking into account the creepy crawlies that we lose from TV shows. I think Gordon Ramsay will be happy about that.

• 11:32Regina Barber?

  That was Darian Woods with the Indicator podcast, along with co-host Adrian Ma. Darian, thank you so much for bringing your reporting to Short Wave listeners.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  You're welcome.

• 11:41Regina Barber?

  This episode was originally produced for The Indicator by Julia Ritchie, with engineering by Maggie Luthar and Sina LaFredo. It was fact-checked by Ciarán Juárez. Kate Concanon edits The Indicator. It was produced for Short Wave by Burleigh McCoy and edited by showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to this special collab episode of Short Wave from NPR.

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