A plant geneticist, a neuroscientist, and a lawyer walk into a 6th-floor office in Sutardja Dai Hall—it’s the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public at UC Berkeley. Each week, we gather here for a couple of hours with around ten other UC Berkeley researchers to tackle the social and ethical dilemmas facing various scientific disciplines. We discuss questions such as “How should artificial intelligence be regulated?” or “What are the neuroethical challenges of computers that directly read from our brains?” Our goal is to work together to both understand and devise solutions to address these issues. Seated in a circle, we quickly bounce between different fields punctuated by frequent interjections. Despite wildly different academic backgrounds, we are drawn together by a shared conviction that science does not happen in isolation, it unfolds in conversation with society.

When we joined the Kavli Center last fall as graduate fellows, one from plant biology and the other from neuroscience, we expected to research ethical topics close to home, such as the social impacts of genetic engineering in agriculture or brain-computer interfaces. Yet, the pressing reality of sweeping federal funding cuts to the nation’s primary science agencies and a growing public mistrust in science has forced all of us Kavli fellows outside of our disciplinary comfort zones. We have engaged with philosophy students on the role of personal values in shaping scientific beliefs. Law students have helped us analyze court battles over funding cuts to elite institutions. Our peers in artificial intelligence (AI) and genetic counseling have conveyed concerns about how concepts in their fields are communicated to, and often misunderstood by, the general public. Compared to our labs and classrooms, the Kavli Center discussions feel different. They are not about methods or data, but about how science is inextricably intertwined with ethics, policy, and the human consequences of discovery, a lesson especially relevant to the current historical moment.

As a consequence of our discussions at the Kavli Center, the two of us decided to work together and use our newly acquired knowledge to systematically explore two particularly relevant questions: how does science get funded and how do funding priorities impact science and society? In the second semester of our fellowship program, right as we exited the exploratory phase and began project development, academic researchers in the US began facing drastic funding changes. Not only were the Kavli Center and broader science and society ecosystem impacted, but so were our doctoral research fields. While some areas at the heart of Kavli, like AI, have seen increases in investment, other areas of science have faced sharp cuts. Even for the fields that have seen increases, these rarely focus on ethics and training. Federal agencies are the single largest contributor to UC Berkeley’s research enterprise, providing over $400 million each year in grants. Among these, the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation are two of the largest sources, yet both agencies have seen their budgets slashed by over 40 percent. As the two of us encountered the inevitable impacts of these cuts across our departments and beyond, we began to wonder how such financial decisions ripple outward. Discussions with Kavli fellows in the social sciences pushed us to consider how scientific funding decisions are tied to the public perception of science, and how effective science communication contributes to public trust surrounding science.

Our early training at the center largely focused on how science is communicated, and what contributes to public mistrust. Recently we’ve discussed the intricacies of efforts to communicate science to local communities such as projects to revive the American chestnut or implementing gene drives. Apart from these curated efforts to integrate science into communities, we’ve also reviewed science communications missteps, such as the fraught narratives surrounding plant gene editing. During these debates a unifying, yet somewhat counterintuitive, theme emerged: simply providing members of the public with more information on a topic will not change their minds. Rather, science communicators should consider the cultural factors shaping people's values and actively engage with them through deep conversation. The Knowledge Deficit Model view reflects the belief that science communication is a one-way transfer of knowledge from scientists to the public. We seek to challenge this model, as we believe that if the public is to care about funding science, their active, vocal participation must be welcomed and encouraged.

Learning about the Knowledge Deficit Model helped us see more clearly the disconnect between scientists and the public in how they perceive the impact of funding changes. Research from the Association of Science and Technology Centers shows that even though most individuals value science and use it in their everyday lives, from nutrition labels to weather forecasts, most have only a vague understanding of how current funding changes will impact scientific infrastructure. Many individuals aren’t concerned that these funding changes will impact their daily lives, often believing corporations, private foundations, and wealthy individuals will help “fill the gaps” in federal funding. Through our research into this area we’ve become intensely interested in what it really means for science if private entities do in fact “fill the gap.” Are such entities capable of covering such massive and widespread funding cuts? And even if they are, how will this impact the direction and quality of academic science? In times of uncertain funding, private funding may offer a critical lifeline to researchers. Take for example philanthropic donations directed towards supporting a defunded UN climate body, and in fact, both of our research endeavors are partially supported by private funding. But it’s also a challenging line to toe, with fear of retribution from both universities and private funders, not to mention the increased volatility of funding tied to private endeavors and individualistic research ideals. Our conversations in the Kavli Center have led us to consider what moving from a public to private funding landscape might mean for the equity and transparency of scientific research, with a particular focus on early career researchers like ourselves.

We are beginning to conduct internal research using grant tracking and federal funding databases and our long-term goal is to incorporate a public facing component of our project that engages members of the public with scientists in their community. Graduate students at other institutions have already created grassroots op-ed writing campaigns such as Science Homecoming and the McClintock Letters, which encourage researchers to express the value of their work in local news outlets. Others are taking to social media and podcasts to underscore the crucial nature of science in our everyday lives. We hope to provide avenues for researchers within our community to engage in similar efforts by first connecting with other researchers and then with local communities.