Of all the things the Trump administration has done over the past year, one of the most senseless actions, IMHO, is its repeated attacks on NIH/academic research funding and its over-the-top anti-immigration push that’s scaring away top scientific talent from around the world. The U.S. is practically giving away its once absolutely dominant edge in scientific research – and for what? To settle political scores with annoying higher-ed lefties in non-STEM departments? To prove they can exert power over snobby higher-ed elites? 

The big question moving forward: Is the damage inflicted by the administration irreparable? To its great credit, the Globe is trying to measure the short-term and long-term damage to the local economy – and its findings are depressing. Scientists are slowly and quietly leaving their Boston labs, the Globe reports, based on surveys and anecdotal evidence. They’re scattering by the hundreds to other parts of the country and globe. To put it bluntly: it’s a brain drain. And Boston is probably going to suffer the most from this senseless self-inflicted policy wound. The country as a whole is obviously going to suffer as well, probably for a long time.

The science-research news isn’t all bleak. In a NYT op-ed (or “essay,” as the Times now pompously refers to opinion pieces), Ariel Procaccia, a professor of computer science at Harvard, expresses concern about recent U.S. science policies. But he says to ignore most of those silly global rankings that put China’s universities on top. From Procaccia:

“To borrow a phrase from Mao Zedong, many Chinese universities are paper tigers: They churn out papers at a ferocious pace, but the quality of these publications is too often in question. American universities will remain the front-runners in the race that truly matters — attracting the most brilliant minds — unless our government continues to withdraw the support needed to produce world-leading research.”

That all sounds encouraging, but there’s always that cautionary “unless” caveat to worry about.  … Now this is just flat-out discouraing, via Steven Rattner, also at the Times: “I Just Returned From China. We Are Not Winning.” … One of the sectors he’s worried about: pharmaceuticals.