Promises Unkept and the Promise of Rubin
Published:
It’s been jarring to watch public trust in science deteriorate so rapidly since I began my career in academia. Maybe it started with vaccine misinformation in the early 2000s. Or maybe it was the growing politicization of climate change throughout the 2010s. Or maybe what really did it was COVID, when doctors—often in vain—pleaded with people to mask up and keep their distance to slow the pandemic. And now we’ve arrived at a moment where the Trump administration has made a firm financial statement that, in theory, reflects the electorate’s perception of science. A part of me still hopes that isn’t true.