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Yarrow Axford attended Narraguagus High School in Harrington and is currently a professor of Earth sciences at Northwestern University in Illinois.
I grew up in Milbridge, where I learned a love for the outdoors that Mainers know well. I channeled that love into a rewarding career as a geologist and professor, pursuing discoveries about our planet. So I am distraught that American science sits on the chopping block right now.
Mainers are in a strong position to speak up for science. It makes life better for every American, provides good jobs in towns across Maine, and makes our nation the envy of the world. For those reasons, scientific research has long enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington, D.C. But now, suddenly, funding decisions and mass firings are kneecapping every field of science. The drastic cuts will affect Mainers.
In just the last week, Elon Musk’s DOGE apparently fired hundreds of experts working for NOAA’s National Weather Service, whose work underlies the weather forecasts every fisherman (and commuter) relies on; and canceled the $4.5 million Maine Sea Grant that funds highly regarded partnerships between the University of Maine, fishermen, and Maine’s coastal communities. UMaine is hit hard in other ways, too: Another proposed cut, currently paused by the courts, would wrestle back more than $7.5 million in health research funds granted to the University of Maine System.
When I was in middle school, my mom earned her college degree at the University of Maine at Machias, and as I started high school, she started commuting to Orono to earn a masters degree. That degree led to a career as a family therapist, which helped her build a more secure life for our financially struggling family, and helped her help other families across Down East Maine.
We lived on the Orono campus one summer, and I relished spending hot days in the cool of the university’s library, with its endless books and sense of opportunity. I was hooked on university life. I headed to college, where I discovered a passion for science, and eventually found myself working as a professor and research scientist at a prominent midwestern university.
Like most university research labs, mine is funded mainly with federal grants — a privilege I never forget. The underlying goal of scientific research is to make life more livable, whether by discovering cures for diseases, new materials for technology, or wonders in space that leave us awestruck.
The biggest line item in research budgets is usually salary — in other words, jobs — typically not for professors, but for students and research technicians. Grants also help universities sustain jobs for maintenance and administrative staff needed to keep laboratory lights on and payroll flowing. (My hardworking dad worked in the lobster industry for much of his life. When he got older, he landed a job as a university locksmith, and I think it was the only job he ever had that offered full health insurance.)
Students come from across the country to pursue graduate degrees in my lab. One current student is the first in their family to attend college, and dreams of using science to help communities like the farming town they grew up in. Another from rural Wisconsin returned there with a Ph.D., to work as a professor at a small-town public university known for training veterans and future teachers.
Grants train young scientists and create jobs, but they are no gravy train. Research universities are nonprofit employers, and every research-active scientist I know works long hours. My friends work on understanding cancer cells and finding cheaper ways to clean up toxic chemicals. Nearly all of our work is funded by the federal government, in the form of grants with tight budgets and that are frightfully competitive to land.
On its own the National Institutes of Health, which funds medical research, granted $125 million in 2024 to projects across Maine. Federal science funding like that is tough to get, but it supports good jobs for Mainers, supports a wide range of Maine industries, and supports training Maine’s next generation. It means better weather forecasts for fishermen and cures for sick loved ones.
But only as long as scientists keep working. DOGE is demolishing American science, almost overnight. Maine’s bipartisan team of U.S. senators and representatives have power; and Mainers can tell them to stand up for science, stop firing federal scientists, and continue funding research.
