What do university researchers think of changes to US science policy since January 2025?

Only 4% of university-based scientists in a representative sample felt that the second Trump administration's changes to science policy have been positive.

Survey question: "In your opinion, have the changes to U.S. science policy since January 2025 generally been positive, negative, or neither, for the U.S. science enterprise?"

The survey was conducted November 2025 through January 2026. A sample of 1,352 panel members were invited to participate, of whom 280 completed online questionnaires. These scientists were sampled at random from 131 R1 universities. All findings weighted by gender, academic rank and academic field and have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.9 percentage points.
Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-NDSource: SciOPSGet the dataDownload imageCreated with Datawrapper