Toxicologic Pathology Forum Opinion*: In Defense of Scientific Freedom

Abstract

Science is a lodestar in the search for knowledge to successfully steer societies through the stormy seas of a changeable world. Scientists are the navigators, using experiments and reason to find answers that expand basic knowledge and influence applications (e.g., public policymaking and risk assessment). An understanding of the scientific method generally and in-depth comprehension of a scientific field specifically are limited in many adults today, both among the public and in cultural and political leaders. Accordingly, scientists must vigorously defend science by upholding two core principles: (1) scientists must be free to ask and answer questions without concern for subjective cultural, ideological, and political constraints, and (2) the diverse perspectives of scientists based on their unique experiences are essential drivers of scientific innovation and attainment. Toxicologic pathologists have a responsibility to uphold these principles, whether their actions are directed to their institutions, the entire toxicologic pathology profession, or the scientific community and society. Concrete actions available to individual pathologists include communicating support for intellectual freedom of thought and association (orally or in writing) among colleagues or to the public as well as providing services (professional society governance, public political office, scientific advocacy, teaching, etc.) that maintain these principles.

*Disclaimer

This article is an opinion piece submitted to the Toxicologic Pathology Forum (TPF). This perspective is the view of the authors. The opinion does not represent an official position of the Society of Toxicologic Pathology (STP), British Society of Toxicological Pathology (BSTP), or European Society of Toxicologic Pathology (ESTP), nor should it be considered to reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of the authors’ institutions or regulatory agencies. The TPF is designed to stimulate discussion of topics relevant to toxicologic pathology, especially regarding regulatory issues. Readers of Toxicologic Pathology are encouraged to send their thoughts on opinion articles or ideas for new discussion topics to the editor.

Scientific curiosity engenders a myriad of questions: practical questions, bold questions, great questions. Intellectual freedom allows them to be asked—and to be answered. The strength of science is not merely in the questions and their answers but in the spirit in which they are broached and received. The escalating rate and complexity of biomedical and technological discoveries have outpaced the scientific understanding of even the most educated individuals. Public trust in scientists has held relatively steady over the last several decades, but recent data from the Pew Research Center show that mistrust increased from 13% to 27% between 2019 and 2023 (with some improvement in 2024 at 23%).^11,16 The erosion of public trust in both science and scientists is believed to arise, at least in part, as the result of rampant misinformation (often reaching a wide audience through social media); sham science (e.g., fabricated data from paper mills); and historical scientific misdeeds (e.g., the Tuskegee syphilis study ³ and Operation Paperclip to recruit Nazi “scientists” after World War II ¹² ). These factors combined with a shift toward less scientifically based health policy have culminated in the decimation of budgets and staff at US federal science agencies during 2025.

Science and politics maintain a complex relationship in which objectives are sometimes allied and at other times adversarial. Ideally, political decision-making and public policy-setting are informed by high-quality, objective scientific data generated in accord with the systematic, empirical testing of hypotheses to obtain objective evidence to answer research questions (i.e., the time-tried “scientific method”). The foundational belief of Vannevar Bush, the “father” of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), was that “[a]s long as scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems.” ⁵ However, this principled assertion is fracturing under the weight of intransigent political philosophy. In the context of medicine, scientific data used in isolation and/or to selectively promote specific partisan agendas are being wielded as weapons in an ideological battle that has the potential to slow progress in identifying, treating, and preventing numerous human and animal diseases.

Therefore, science in the 21st century, and by association the work of the biopharmaceutical industry, is under attack by substantial cultural forces that undermine the scientific method and thus scientific discovery. This article considers the scope of these influences and their detrimental effects while providing practical means by which scientists, including members of the toxicologic pathology community, may act to counter them.

The Assault on Scientific Integrity

In a practical sense, scientific research in the 21st century serves two mutually exclusive purposes: hypothesis “testing” to impact discovery and new product development or hypothesis “proving” (through selective data mining) to support pre-existing beliefs. In hypothesis testing, data generated from the empirical exploration of hypotheses are ideally expected to be interpreted without bias; indeed, objective interpretation is a central tenet of the scientific endeavor that is acknowledged globally by the scientific community. Hypotheses to be tested may be crafted using previously acquired data, but the answers are not defined in advance nor constrained in scope. Importantly, hypotheses assessed appropriately using the scientific method are often refined or even reversed or discarded as additional data are obtained and integrated. Alternative viewpoints are essential in adding to or correcting the cumulative scientific record. As such, maintaining and building the unique assortment of scientific experience and knowledge within our communities will serve to further promote scientific innovation.

In contrast, hypothesis proving uses an assortment of approaches to support a desired conclusion while excluding information deemed contradictory to the premise. This subjective exploration of hypotheses and the biased assessment of data are intended to generate results that promote a particular agenda. A good example of hypothesis proving is the erroneous statement that COVID-19 vaccines have killed more people than they protected (as noted on the conspiracy theory website “Stop World Control”). This conclusion utilized real data from public databases, such as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS [https://vaers.hhs.gov/]) which is intended to identify potential vaccine-associated adverse events. The utility of this system was demonstrated during the COVID era by its accurate identification of a potential risk of myocarditis and pericarditis in young males who received mRNA-lipid nanoparticle (LNP) COVID-19 vaccines (although, notably, the risk of myocarditis in men and women of all ages is higher in association with COVID-19 infection).^4,10 However, the VAERS system is conservative by design such that any event (including death) after vaccination could be attributed to the vaccine regardless of when it occurred (whether days or months after administration). Importantly, no causal information is included in the VAERS database, which permits the imputation that everyone who died within the first few months after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine died because of vaccine administration; in contrast, detailed causality assessments of COVID-19 vaccine-related events show that vaccine complications are responsible for few adverse events compared to the lives saved by vaccine prophylaxis.^1,17 Thus, those who opt not to look deeper into actual causality create a false narrative that purports to be based on “real data.”

The state of science funding in the United States in 2025 has shifted substantially, as indicated by a drop in research grants awarded (≥20% depending on the grant category) by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) relative to the prior year. ¹⁴ Although Congress rejected the administration’s proposal to cut the NIH’s budget, since January of 2025 there have been delays in funding and fewer “Notices of Funding Opportunities” postings have been extensive since January 2025 (down to 84 from 787 in 2024). ¹³ A recent poll of NIH-funded researchers in Massachusetts (367 respondents) found that a majority reported that the cuts and policy changes reduced the scope of their work; 40% indicated that their institution had rescinded offers to staff, students, and post-doctoral candidates; and 60% reported layoffs impacting not only staff but also post-doctoral candidates. ¹⁵ While budgetary constraints and methodological weaknesses explain a number of grant rejections (in keeping with historical norms), misalignment of the research question with current administrative and political priorities has undoubtedly altered the trajectory in some fields toward sustaining the ideological leanings of limited interest groups.^9,19

The 2025 barrage of haphazard, “key word-targeted” grant cancelations and policy reversals by the NIH is clearly founded, at least in part, in a particular dogmatic worldview propounded by political appointees in positions of authority (who often lack substantial training and/or experience in science or medicine). ²² Principal flaws in this inflexible ideology include attacks on widely recognized scientific principles (e.g., denial of vaccines as essential weapons for disease prevention) and espousal of previously discredited and/or fraudulent information (e.g., acetaminophen and vaccines may cause neurodevelopmental problems; vitamin A prevents measles).^{2,6,7,8,18,23,24} These errors coupled with the decimation of scientific staff and science advisory groups at such critical public health institutions as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the NIH, and the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine have severely degraded fundamental and clinical research^20,25 in the United States in a matter of mere months. A similar withdrawal on the international stage threatens global health initiatives through massive funding cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the cancelation of US support for the World Health Organization (WHO). This ill-conceived and broad scientific retreat will hamper advances in health and well-being in the present and well into the foreseeable future. Obviously, we all lose when research funding and public health policy decisions are not based on merit and objective data review but rather are founded on thwarting any work that is judged to be “not aligned with agency priorities” (e.g., grants selected for discontinuation or not funded based on key words such as diverse or diversity, equity or equitable, ethnic, minority or minorities, racial or racism, underserved or vulnerable, vaccine, climate, COVID-19, environment, and gender or non-binary, to name only a few). ²² In the current US political climate, agency “priorities” are clearly not limited to the traditional goals of limiting poorly designed projects and stopping fraud but rather have been extended to delaying or eliminating research in topics that are arbitrarily considered to advance a progressive (“woke”) scientific agenda. ²⁶ These restrictions negatively impact progress in addressing unmet medical needs and are diametrically opposed to the spirit of free intellectual inquiry that is the sine qua non of good science.

Practical Responses to Counter Ideological Extremism in Science

While anti-intellectualism has been on the rise for decades, ²¹ at no time has its promotion been validated by those in charge of protecting human health—until now. Accordingly, scientists and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) educators must engage in a vigorous defense of the scientific method, scientific integrity, and scientific perspectives. As part of this effort, scientists must uphold their customary freedoms of unrestricted inquiry and association. Scientists are not exceptional in having this responsibility to defend the scientific endeavor and its traditional methodology, but their education and experience during their professional activities uniquely suit them to this task. The defense of science may be conducted by professional organizations and by individuals.

In terms of an organizational presence, the Society of Toxicologic Pathology (STP) is actively working to combat intellectual attrition that looms large in science, specifically through promoting the value of and opportunities in the field of toxicologic pathology. Furthermore, the STP is steadfast in their endeavors to maintain and ideally increase the depth and range of scientific expertise within the STP. In particular, STP standing committees are devoted to expanding the Society’s outreach to ensure that such expertise is available to best-serve public health needs in the coming years.

As individuals, each of us must be willing to enter the fray as our opportunities allow and our consciences dictate. The challenges facing us will differ, and as such our responses will also vary. Simple actions we might take include participating in conversations (verbal or written) with non-scientists, politicians, and scientists from other fields. We can join or donate to allied organizations who are advocating for science and combatting the effects of grant cuts (e.g., the American Association of Immunologists have a RESTORE Grant Program). If we see inaccurate scientific information being shared on social media, we cause the tools provided in those platforms to easily refute and/or report posts with scientific misinformation. ²⁷ We can advocate for responsible research by writing to or speaking with our government representatives (e.g., congress.gov). Finally, more far-reaching activities might include giving presentations or writing blogs or publications to place our opinions into the public record, positioning ourselves in departmental leadership roles or on grant and award review committees to advocate for scientific merit, teaching the next generation of scientists, or even running for public office. In the end, the type of action we choose matters less than that we choose some means of action in defense of science and our fellow scientists.

Conclusions

Individual members of STP as well as our colleagues from other global societies of toxicologic pathology (and toxicology) are, by training and aptitude, advocates for deliberate and skilled scientific thinking. Our common mission is grounded in the search for truth and in generating and objectively interpreting data. In short, we are driven by facts, and our behavior is governed by the non-partisan acquisition of empirical evidence to clarify our understanding of how the world works. When experience reveals new information, we as scientists can adapt and refine old ideas and practices while also evolving new ideas and practices that address these facts and honor this truth.

Unfortunately, throughout history, science has been attacked by malign influences (ideologically based anti-scientific and pseudo-scientific thought), and the world of today is no exception. We must marshal the courage, individually and collectively, to defend good scientific ideas and practices, including the need for untrammeled intellectual freedom of inquiry and association. As individuals, we recognize that our diversity of perspectives is an asset when research teams are formulating study aims and selecting appropriate scientific methods. When everyone at the table thinks alike, science risks bias, blind spots, and missed opportunities. Inclusivity allows for scientific rigor, where teams challenge assumptions and promote research that reflects the complexity of human health and disease. Similarly, when science is performed without objectivity but merely to serve a pre-defined agenda, we are faced with a significant peril that research results will not illuminate our world but instead will only build fairy tales (of the original dark Grimm variety) that expand the societal gap between those who are well served by science and those who are not.