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With Science Under Attack, We’re Making Our Voices Heard

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Through the McClintock Letters, my fellow grad students and I are urging Americans to speak out against cuts in research funding

By Hannah Frank

Nearly a decade into my career in agricultural research, I’ve only just started to see myself as a scientist. I have never fit into the image I had of what a scientist is: an introvert in a white coat who lives at a lab bench with a pipette in their hand.

I wanted to work with people—building relationships around food and agriculture to collectively address the threat of climate change.

My undergraduate studies at NC State were interdisciplinary in food systems, global health, and political science.

But I left wanting to learn more about soil biology—and that meant graduate school. I have tried hard to go an inch wide and a mile deep, but the systems-level foundation to my education has continuously challenged me to think more broadly the deeper I go.

Now, in a moment when the American scientific enterprise is existentially threatened, my broadened definition of a scientist and my affinity for building connections seem to be my greatest resources to reach outside academia and fight for research funding that benefits us all.

In a moment when the American scientific enterprise is existentially threatened, my broadened definition of a scientist and my affinity for building connections seem to be my greatest resources.

Fortunately, I am among peers who value this humanity as highly as our scientific integrity.

I am now three years into my PhD program in horticulture at Cornell. I study beneficial soil fungi in the vineyards here in the Finger Lakes, and could not have ended up in a more perfect position. I am entering my final year (or so) of my program and thinking about what’s next.

I’ve been in this position before, but this time is different.

Hannah Frank wearing a ball cap and a tie-dye shirt in a grape vineyard — The author doing fieldwork in a vineyard as part of her doctoral studies.

The Hatch Act funding for agricultural experiment stations, a critical supporter for many researchers and the primary funder of my current work, has been eliminated from the budget for the 2026 fiscal year. Two of my friends and fellow plant science graduate students have already lost their advisors to USDA layoffs.

Universities are implementing hiring freezes, there is less money for postdocs, and even friends in the private sector are pessimistic.

The federal funding cuts to research are gutting our land-grant institutions, stripping resources from farmers, creating even more precarity for the future, and threatening the livelihoods of the many people who depend on these institutions for employment.

The federal funding cuts to research are gutting our land-grant institutions, stripping resources from farmers, and creating even more precarity for the future.

In response to these attacks, many of us have been hoping for our leaders to stand up in defense of the pivotal role the scientific enterprise plays in each of our daily lives—from what we eat to how we plan around the weather—but have also known it would largely be on us to stand up for our work. So, we have been organizing and brainstorming, finding ways to act.

Out of this came the McClintock Letters.

Barbara McClintock 1923, PhD 1927, is one of Cornell’s most impactful alumni—the first woman to win an unshared Nobel Prize in the category of physiology or medicine.

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Through her work on corn genetics, she is most famous for discovering that some genes, known as transposons, “jump” to different places in DNA.

The discovery seemed so preposterous at the time that she eventually stopped pushing it—but never gave up on its validity.

Many of us have been hoping for our leaders to stand up in defense of the pivotal role the scientific enterprise plays in each of our daily lives—but have also known it would largely be on us to stand up for our work.

Today, the advancements she made by looking at corn kernel colors have applications for groundbreaking plant biology innovations and life-saving gene therapy treatments.

In honor of Dr. McClintock, the student-run Cornell Advancing Science and Policy Club—as well as a collective of more than 20 science policy graduate groups around the country—launched an initiative to explain our federally funded work and why it matters.

The project's logo honors its namesake, and her ground-breaking work on the genetics of corn.

Inspired by McClintock’s “basic” research that has had profound applications, we signed up over 600 people to write op-eds in their hometown newspapers about what they study and why it’s important. We had hundreds of people attend writing workshops, and so far more than 100 pieces have been published.

I’m excited to report that working on this initiative has also brought about a new organization, the Scientist Network for Advancing Policy (SNAP) coalition, comprising graduate students across the country who have been active in planning the McClintock Letters project.

We are watching our future prospects grow grimmer and fearing for the well-being of the communities that raised us. We are also all very aware of the truth that those in power will not be the ones to help us.

So we are trying to find time to step away from the lab bench, as we come into our identities as scientists, to reconnect with the places that shaped our earliest selves.

The letters ask our hometown community members to listen and support the work we do, because we know that the changes we’re seeing will hurt all of us.

Hannah Frank and three fellow graduate students pose at a project event — Frank (second from left) with fellow grad students at an op-ed writing workshop.

We expect there will be pushback.

But having had the opportunity to get to know my peers in this next generation of America’s scientists, I am confident that, like Barbara McClintock, we will all hold fast to these truths—until others come around and join us.

Hannah Frank grew up in Kennett Square, PA—the mushroom capital of the world. She has worked for the USDA in North Carolina and New York, and now loves working with the Finger Lakes wine grape growing community. She is a proud member of the Cornell Advancing Science Policy Club and the Scientist Network for Advancing Policy, and a volunteer at the Paleontological Research Institution.

(All images provided, unless otherwise indicated.)

Published June 26, 2025