Rylan Neem is a freshman at Colby College and a prospective environmental science major.

Do you check the weather before heading to work? Analyze climate reports to understand how to manage your fishery? Trust that medical treatments have been vetted through clinical trials? If so, you depend — without realizing it — on the basic scientific research that federal funding makes possible.

These tools are so inextricably woven into daily life that many people and systems depend on them without even realizing it. In fact, an NPR poll found that more than 90% of people in America depend on basic science in their day-to-day life.

For decades this has not been a problem. Ever since World War II, the federal government has been the primary funder of basic scientific research. However, since taking office, President Donald Trump has gone about dismantling the foundation of federal support for research. In the first spring of his second term, more than $9 billion of awarded research grants were terminated as part of Trump’s campaign against government excess.

Yet these drastic reductions in research funding have not come without consequence — because they were not a sign of government waste. Terminating thousands of grants has disrupted ongoing studies, jeopardized future discoveries and created ripple effects across universities, laboratories and industries that depend on federal support.

We have felt this in Maine firsthand. Underfunded health departments are left unable to detect foodborne illnesses, rural hospitals have been forced to close and local climate research programs have been unable to provide farmers with the necessary data for crop and water management.

Additionally, research opportunities at the University of Maine, Bates, Bowdoin and Colby have been directly affected as funding is cut and faculty are forced to rethink how they file research proposals in a constantly changing environment.

These cuts are a symptom of a broader problem. Americans, and particularly conservatives, no longer trust the basic institution of science. We have seen this in the debates around climate change, the debates around vaccines that came to a front during the pandemic, and now we are seeing it culminate in a systemic teardown of the very infrastructure that powers scientific research.

In order to address this, I believe that the scientific community must invest time and effort into changing the way that they communicate the importance of their research. For the vast majority of Americans, it is simply not effective to base arguments regarding the importance of science in dense scientific phrasing, or in abstract scientific findings, even where those are of great importance.

Instead, I believe that a greater emphasis must be placed on the individual stories and impacts that can be attributed to basic science and the role that it plays in the life of every individual. This is something we have seen be effective on smaller scales.

For instance, Daniel Richter, legislative director of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, conducts conversations with conservative politicians without centering them on science. This is something that he believes has effectively made the highly polarized debate around climate change less political, leading to almost exclusively productive meetings.

For this to be scaled up, and for this change in narrative to be achieved, I propose a new requirement for prospective scientists at colleges across the country: a communications course that is focused not on traditional academic writing, but on adapting scientific findings into concrete human impact — strategies particularly helpful for talking with skeptics.

By learning how to speak across ideological, educational and cultural lines, young scientists would be better equipped to foster trust and build common ground. In doing so, they would not just become more effective communicators but also more conscious participants in public dialogue that shapes scientific funding and policy.

In my opinion, the only path toward sustainable funding for basic science lies in a collective restoration of trust science as an institution, and that begins with how we communicate its value.

By demonstrating how clearly research affects lives, we can bridge divides and ensure a future where science continues to serve American society.