Yolo County scientists and professors are sounding the alarm on political attacks against the American scientific community and are organizing a protest in front of the California capitol, hoping to stand against the slew of actions that President Donald Trump has taken during his first weeks back in office.

“People are mad, people are frustrated, people are scared, people are anxious,” said event organizer and UC Davis Neuroscientist Dr. Theanne Griffith said. “And so what I’m hoping with this rally is that it can turn into hope, into motivation, into inspiration to act.”

The protest slated to start at noon on March 7 in front of the Capitol Building in Sacramento is a part of a larger movement under the same name, calling for folks across the nation to show their appreciation of science and its benefits to society as calls to defund government research continue to rise.

The Trump Administration has made efforts to freeze federal funding, effectively bringing all government-funded scientific research to a halt. In addition, mass dismissals of federal employees and attempts to halt future funding leave those working on American scientific research concerned, angry and fearful for the future of their field.

In fact, Griffith — a Black woman in a white, male dominated field — is one of these scientific researchers worried about where funds for research will be coming from in the future.“I’m very uncertain as to whether or not I will get the last two years of funding one of my grants because it is a quote, unquote, a diversity grant,” she explained in an interview with The Daily Democrat. “The research is looking into chronic pain, specifically pain induced by chemotherapy … very relevant and very important, but because the title and the mechanism is geared towards diversity, it might be pulled.”

The website for the grant program has been taken down, according to Griffith, meaning $400,000 of potential research funds may be lost on her research project.

“Science has always been a bipartisan issue — it’s never been controversial,” Griffith explained. “I think people have largely value our scientific enterprise that we’ve built in this country. We are a global leader when it comes to science and innovation, and so much of that is because of federal funding and collaborations between federal agencies, drug developers, biotech and things like that.”

Griffith isn’t the only person in this position — tens of thousands of researchers, academics and scientists aren’t just worried about the future of federal funding, but also fear the complete dismantling of the American scientific community may be on the horizon.

Griffith said her fear, which is shared by others in the scientific community, is the United States will lose its place as a world leader in scientific innovation, and because of that, the population could suffer consequences.

“They want to privatize science, I think, and so the best way to do that is through laws and dismantling of government science, but unfortunately, that’s not going to make us a global leader in science,” she shared. “Though I do think the private sector is a great asset and a huge, important part of our science ecosystem, alone, that is not going to suffice. Because in the end, private science is about profitable science, and not all science is immediately profitable.”

The public’s perception on the scientific community and its credibility has often been the one thing folks could rely on, but disinformation campaigns and false claims perpetuated on social media channels and bigtime media personalities have led to some people having a deteriorating trust in science and its findings.

Griffith also stated mistrust between the general public and scientific communities also has roots in “bad actors” who would perform experiments on people from marginalized communities.

“Another reason that at least some people in our society are nervous or uncertain about science is medical racism — the abuse of Black people by scientists for almost 200 years,” she explained. “An example of this was Tuskegee experiment where [Black] people were intentionally given syphilis. So there’s a lot of history where bad actors have also caused the public to lose trust in science.”

According to Griffith, the scientific community has a responsibility to not just take accountability for its wrongs in the past, but it also needs to do a better job of being transparent and communicating with the public what exactly is at stake.

“It is our responsibility as scientists to to go into the public and tell them about our work, how we do our work, why it’s important, and make face to face contact with people,” she explained. “It’s a lot easier to bad mouth vaccines if you don’t know anyone who works in vaccine development, but if someone was in vaccine development, and you talk with them, express your concerns, and they try to address it — coming at you human to human and not scientist to non scientist — I think that could make really large strides.”

That’s what Friday’s Stand Up For Science demonstration is about — bringing the concerns of the scientific community to the steps of the state capitol where legislators can advocate for policy to protect scientific research.

“We want to show up and let them know — Let the public know, let anyone who’s watching, driving by, maybe who reads this article — that we care about science, we care about federal funding of science, we care about diversity, equity and inclusion in science, and we’re very worried about the censorship and political interference in science,” Griffith said.