Dear US researchers: break the outrage addiction. I survived the besieging of science. So can you

From 2019 to 2023, I studied for a PhD in the evolutionary developmental genetics of the beetle Tribolium castaneum at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. My laboratory, based in the coastal region of Macaé, became collateral damage in a war on science declared by Jair Bolsonaro, our president from 2019 to 2022 — a war that might feel familiar to many US researchers now that their own president seems determined to cut funding for scientific research.

After Bolsonaro came to power in 2019, more than 5,600 grants vanished under sweeping austerity measures that targeted research and higher education. The cuts left thousands of researchers in limbo as national funding agencies such as the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education and Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development slashed their budgets. Faculty members scrambled for emergency support while researchers rationed reagents and faced the prospect of stalled projects.

That year, a brilliant colleague of mine nearly lost her career when the government axed her scholarship days before she was set to begin. Without warning, she found herself locked out of the lab. Desperate not to lose everything she had worked for, she spoke out, and the story of her cancelled funding struck a nerve with the public. Support came together quickly enough to keep her from walking away, but only just.

Others faced similar threats: a friend of mine, unable to afford rent without her stipend, left her PhD for a non-academic job. Another, after months of uncertainty, moved abroad to continue his research. I, too, thought about quitting. But I had already changed fields once — from nuclear physics to developmental biology — and I knew I couldn’t do it again. Not even under Bolsonaro.

Nationwide resistance

The cuts sparked nationwide protests led by students, professors and scientific societies, with banners in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília declaring: “Knowledge is not an expense.” Marching with thousands — even in my small city — I felt a powerful unity.

The pressure paid off. On 18 October, 2019, the Brazilian Ministry of Education unlocked one billion Brazilian reais (about US$172 million) in funds for federal universities — a rare concession that groups such as the Brazil National Union of Students credited to our mobilization. That day, I wasn’t just a scientist. I was part of a movement that had pushed back against the cuts and reaffirmed the role of education and research in Brazil. I felt connected. I wasn’t alone.

Then, in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. By June, as Bolsonaro’s administration continued to dismiss science as an elitist pursuit, our lab shifted from evolutionary research to processing COVID-19 tests with Macaé’s city hall. Our qPCR machines, once mapping beetle gene expression, were repurposed for diagnoses in a testing effort that helped to keep Macaé’s fatality rate below the state average. This crucial initiative meant that I lost access to the institute — not only because it became a diagnostic lab but also owing to a strict sanitary barrier. My assays were indefinitely halted.

In July that year, I secured funding for an eight-month internship at evolutionary biologist Siegfried Roth’s lab at the University of Cologne, Germany — an important opportunity that finally provided me with the resources to complete my PhD. The trip was originally scheduled for August 2020, but was postponed to February 2021 as the pandemic peaked.

By then, I had booked flights, rented an apartment and spent nights reading catastrophic headlines detailing Bolsonaro’s relentless attacks on science — dismissing the virus as “just a little flu”, promoting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment despite overwhelming evidence of its ineffectiveness and systematically slashing science budgets and environmental protections across the Amazon rainforest.

The day before my departure, Germany closed its borders to Brazilian travellers, citing high case numbers and the emergence of new COVID-19 variants. I was unable to recoup the costs. Because the funding agency covered only part of the trip, the financial loss came out of my own pocket — another harsh reminder of how unstable my research situation had become.

Innovating under pressure

Stuck in limbo, I again adapted by shifting my research focus from wet lab work to bioinformatics, analysing data sets from home and collaborating through Zoom with Siegfried’s group while waiting for borders to reopen. I finally arrived in late September 2021, and my official internship ran from October that year to April 2022. The analyses done during quarantine became the foundation for the experiments that I did during my eight-month stay in Germany.

Back in Brazil, fresh post-pandemic challenges emerged: basic reagents were trapped in customs for six months, stalling follow-up experiments.

Meanwhile, online trolls, and even some family members, mocked my research as frivolous, championed funding cuts and embraced debunked so-called COVID-19 cures such as hydroxychloroquine. Amid the chaos, I learnt to thrive in uncertainty — skills that no grant could fund.

Completing my PhD required more than scientific rigour — it demanded that I confront my own limits. Those years blurred together in setbacks and personal challenges, each day testing my resolve amid constant political turmoil. My spouse guided me to mental health care. My advisers, Rodrigo Nunes da Fonseca and Helena Araújo, despite facing their own institutional chaos, found time to strategize about grants and training opportunities.

A turning point

In October 2022, Bolsonaro was voted out of office. He claimed that the election was rigged, and on 8 January, a mob of his supporters stormed government buildings in Brasília. The attacks mirrored a similar assault one year earlier on the US Capitol in Washington DC, following Donald Trump’s defeat at the end of his first term as president. In Brazil, courts and Congress stopped the attempted coup. In June 2023, a judge banned Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years. This March, the Brazil Supreme Federal Court unanimously accepted the complaints against Bolsonaro; he could face a criminal trial by the end of the year.

I defended my thesis in October 2023. Today, I’m a postdoctoral researcher in Siegfried’s lab.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00943-1

This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged.

This story originally appeared on: Nature - Author:João Vieira