Since the coming to power of the new Trump administration, the world of American research has faced violent attacks. Drastic budget cuts and censorship of certain research themes – especially gender, public health and the environment – undermine the scientific community. One of the concerns of Swiss researchers concerns the future of research data. Will those that are generated or stored in the United States will become inaccessible or stop being produced? Should we plan emergency backup programs?
As of January, Trump signed decrees aimed in particular to prohibit the promotion of diversity and inclusion within the federal administration. Internet pages and scientific databases have started to disappear. A panic wind blew on the world of research: were we going to a steep and perhaps final loss of information patiently collected over the years? The data collected by federal institutes – therefore thanks to the money of taxpayers – are normally public, and the trend in recent years was rather to a sharing of knowledge, according to the principle of open science.
Faced with the offensive of the new administration, various initiatives have quickly emerged, with a view to duplicating American scientific data games. The Environmental Data Project public, for example, identifies the copies of dozens of databases, resulting, among other CDC (Centers for the Control and Prevention of Diseases), the NOAA (American Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation Agency) and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), harshly affected by budget cuts. The Data Rescue Project has more than 1100, coming from 86 different federal offices.
Banks of biological data already affected
A few months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, it is difficult to assess the severity of the “disappearances” of American data. Swiss researchers and researchers have spoken to say they are not hampered by such losses for the moment. But the concern remains strong. “From a decree, the American president may decide to delete or limit the availability of crucial information, or even privatize them and make them pay. The loss of data provided free of charge by the NASA Landsat satellite [consacré à l’observation de la Terre, n.d.l.r.]for example, would be very problematic, “alerts an active environmental and climatic data specialist in Geneva, who prefers to keep anonymity.
The concerns are also strong in the field of life sciences. “American budget cuts already affect many biological databases essential to research,” says Christophe Dessimoz, director of SIB, the Swiss Boinformatics Institute.
The SIB, which receives American funds for several databases managed in consortiums-including the famous Swiss-Prot protein sequence bank-is on the front line. A situation that its director deplores: “It has been 25 years that our institution has received public funds to develop databases open to everyone. Independent studies have shown the profits of this science open for research and innovation. We remain confident in the fact that alternative solutions can be found, but in the short term, it is a real threat to the sharing of knowledge and the progress of science.” And that, while artificial intelligence, which is “rightly nourished by databases, is gaining momentum and gives them more value every day …