https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00008-0?utm_source=TWT_NatureNews%26sf205431948=1
Karen Osborn was supposed to be exploring hidden worlds in the Turks and
Caicos, cataloguing the mysterious creatures that thrive in pools
connected to the ocean by deep underwater caves. But instead of
barcoding blind crustaceans on a trip she’s planned for six months, the
marine biologist is stuck at home in Fairfax, Virginia. Osborn is one of
roughly 800,000 US government employees who are legally barred from
working, and are going without pay, during the federal shutdown that
began on 22 December <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07836-6>.
Because her position at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of
Natural History in Washington DC is classified as “non-essential,”
Osborn cannot do field research, access her lab or even check her work
e-mail until politicians reach a deal to fund the government. While her
collaborators from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts and Texas A&M University in College Station collect data
in the Turks and Caicos, Osborn is spending time with her family — and
waiting for bittersweet updates from the Caribbean.
As the shutdown hits the two-week mark with no end in sight, its effects
on science have begun to compound, leaving many government researchers
weary, worried and demoralized. The National Science Foundation (NSF)
has suspended reviews of grant proposals indefinitely, and is likely to
delay panels scheduled to judge applications for postdoctoral
fellowships in early January. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) has taken widely used weather and climate
databases offline. And at NASA, the shutdown threatens to disrupt
preparations for upcoming spacecraft launches.
There is little sign of progress in budget negotiations between
President Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress. The current shutdown —
the third of 2018 — began after stopgap funding for 75% of the
government expired. Politicians on Capitol Hill are split down party
lines over Trump’s demand that any spending deal include US$5-billion to
construct a wall along the US border with Mexico.
“This is undermining our ability to go out and make a pitch to promising
young scientists and tell them this is the place to be,” says one
researcher at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), who asked to
remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak with the press.
He is trying to hire people to fill several open positions in his lab —
including one set to start on 21 January — but cannot make final offers
to top candidates until the government reopens. “It’s a competitive
market,” the researcher says. “How do I convince someone who is
finishing their PhD that they should come to the USDA — that it’s a
great place, with great people and science?”
Others worry that students and early-career researchers in academia may
be especially vulnerable to the effects of an extended shutdown. “I need
to review an NSF proposal, but can’t access it,” tweeted Jen Heemstra, a
chemist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, on 29 December. “These
shutdowns can disrupt funding, and thus livelihood of labs. It kills me
to think how this impacts assistant profs. Tenure clocks don’t bend for
government shutdowns.”
Locked out
The number of employees who have been furloughed — or ordered to stay
home — during the shutdown varies by agency
<https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07825-9>, depending on which
activities the government has deemed necessary to protect life and
property. Just 60 of the NSF’s roughly 2,000 employees are considered
“essential” and have been kept on the job, while about 5,500 of NOAA’s
11,400 employees are still working; many are weather forecasters. And a
few lucky science agencies have escaped the shutdown turmoil. The
National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy are
unaffected, because Congress has approved funding for them through 30
September, the end of the 2019 budget year.
About 59% of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 17,000 employees
can work during the shutdown — in part because about one quarter of the
agency's budget comes from fees paid by companies submitting drugs or
medical devices for approval. The FDA can rely on user fees already
collected to keep some programmes going, but it is barred by law from
accepting additional fees until the government reopens. If the shutdown
continues long enough, the agency could be forced to send more workers
home, says Ladd Wiley, executive director of the Alliance for a Stronger
FDA in Washington DC. “We’re moving into fairly unprecedented territory
if this goes beyond a couple of weeks,” he says.
Other agencies have tried accounting tricks to minimize disruptions. The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had enough money on hand to stay
open through 28 December, but it has now furloughed about 14,000 of its
employees, leaving just 753 “essential” workers on the job. That could
hamper the EPA’s ability to meet legal deadlines later this year for
safety assessments of about 40 chemicals. The agency has already
postponed at least one upcoming advisory-committee meeting related to
the work.
Tracey Woodruff, a former EPA official who studies children’s
environmental health at the University of California, San Francisco,
says that some of her colleagues are waiting for EPA’s verdict on their
applications for grant funding — decisions that have now been postponed
indefinitely. Each day of the shutdown “is just another day of delays
and another day of people being exposed to toxic chemicals”, she says.
At NASA, ongoing space missions are continuing to explore the Solar
System. The Mars InSight lander that touched down on the red planet in
November <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07540-5> is beaming
data back to Earth, and its raw images are being posted on the space
agency’s website. But if the Hubble Space Telescope experiences
technical problems, as it did in October when one of its gyroscopes
malfunctioned <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06984-z>,
attempts to address it would likely be delayed because crucial NASA
personnel have been furloughed.
Empty chairs
Organizers of several major upcoming conferences are scrambling to
replace whole fleets of government researchers who were set to present
their work or lead discussion panels.
The American Astronomical Society expects 10-15% of the 3,200 people who
registered for its meeting in Seattle, Washington, from 6-10 January
will be unable to attend because of the shutdown, says Kevin Marvel, the
society’s chief executive. They include the AAS’s immediate
past-president Christine Jones, an astronomer at the Center for
Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is run jointly by
Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution. Another Smithsonian
astronomer, David Devorkin of the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC,
is supposed to give a plenary talk at the meeting; plans are being made
to find a replacement.
The AAS is looking for ways to lessen the disruption to its meeting,
Marvel says, such as webcasting plenary sessions and allowing
non-government researchers to give talks on behalf of their federal
collaborators. And the American Meteorological Society is soliciting
volunteers to replace government researchers who are scheduled to lead
sessions or unveil findings at its meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, from
6-10 January. The society estimates that roughly 800 federal scientists,
largely from NOAA, have registered for the 4,300-person meeting.
Then there is the Plant and Animal Genome meeting set to take place in
San Diego, California, from 12-16 January. Many of its organizers and
presenters are USDA employees. The meeting gives experienced researchers
opportunities to vet potential PhD students and find collaborators, and
students a chance to network.
“I don’t really do resolutions for the new year, but it would be nice if
the furlough would end so that we can get back to feeding the world,”
said John Cole, a geneticist at the USDA in Beltsville, Maryland, who
studies dairy cattle, in a tweet on 31 December. “The program committee
at PAG [Plant and Animal Genome meeting] would also be grateful.”
*Lean times*
But many federal scientists are grappling with more existential worries.
No government employees at affected agencies are being paid during the
shutdown — even those who have been deemed essential, and ordered to
keep working. Congress has historically passed legislation authorizing
retroactive pay after a shutdown ends, but that is cold comfort to many
federal employees trying to survive without a regular salary.
“Today I had to apply for unemployment,” Leslie Rissler, an evolutionary
biologist and programme director at the NSF, tweeted on 3 January. “This
is a ridiculous shutdown unnecessarily affecting thousands of federal
employees and families. Wishing all of them, and this country, better
days ahead.”
Some financial institutions that serve government employees are
advertising special programmes to aid government workers. “Need
assistance during the federal shutdown? We’re here to help,” reads a
banner on the website of the NASA Federal Credit Union.
Osborn, the Smithsonian marine biologist, has given up hope that she
will make it to the Turks and Caicos for part of her planned fieldwork
this month. Now, she is starting to worry about whether the shutdown
will linger long enough to interfere with an even more expensive,
logistically difficult trip to northwest Africa she has planned for
early February. Osborn and her colleagues intend to pilot a crewed
submersible around underwater cliffs off Cape Verde, at a time of year
when the ocean is calm enough to allow them to search for deep-sea animals.
“I'm feeling nervous that could be thrown off,” she says, adding that
she is trying to keep a positive attitude. “I have thought about looking
for a university position where things are more stable. But I am hoping
this divisive political climate doesn't last for a long time. I hope
that working for the government will go back to being a great opportunity.”
