Most successful scientists are optimists. They have to be, since the vast majority of experiments fail. In graduate school, I remember sitting in the lab at Rockefeller University in New York at 3 a.m., surrounded by stacks of culture dishes for growing cancer cells, none quite showing me what I hoped to find. But glimmers of interesting changes in the cells promised future success and made me feel the experiments wanted to work. That optimism drove me to keep trying. One day, they did work and I uncovered a new insight about a process in those cancer cells that no one had described before.
In 2026, there seem to be plenty of good reasons to be optimistic about science: Breakthroughs are everywhere.
At a recent dinner, the woman next to me glowed with so much energy that I was surprised to learn that she had been diagnosed five years ago with metastatic breast cancer. How had she done so well? She said she moved from one clinical trial to the next, following each new advance in the science — from therapies targeted against her general cancer type, to ones tailored to the genetic mutation that triggered her tumor, to therapies that unleashed her own immune system to fight the cancer. A death sentence turned into a manageable condition — thanks to the continuous investment in scientific discovery.
Or take the case of baby KJ Muldoon. A genetic mutation produced a defect in KJ’s metabolism, leading to a toxic buildup of ammonia. The technology called CRISPR made it possible to snip out the bad genetic information, replace it with a segment of the normal gene and save KJ’s life: the first person to be treated with this remarkable new therapy.
And now, patients with pancreatic cancer, among the swiftest and most lethal of all cancers, at last have real hope for extending their lives, thanks to novel drugs that target the cancer cells in ways long thought to be impossible.
These miraculous treatments came from decades of discovery science: what I call “curiosity on a mission.”
Immunotherapies are possible today only because thousands of scientists, for more than 40 years, followed their curiosity to probe the immune system’s deep processes. CRISPR therapies came from scientists determined to understand how bacteria defend themselves from viruses — not from a directed effort to save babies with grave mutations. The promising new treatment for cancer of the pancreas exploits insights into underlying cancer mechanisms initially uncovered 45 years ago at MIT.
And far beyond the life sciences — in chemistry, physics, astronomy, AI, quantum computing and more — equally remarkable new discoveries, innovations, and tools are paving the way for decisive leaps.
Then why are so many optimistic scientists now losing heart? Because the nation’s research enterprise is shrinking. Scientific funding is drying up. And the funds Congress recently allocated for science are not actually flowing — an unexplained trend lost in the noise of other news.
At public and private universities across the country, high-impact science is being damaged and derailed. Speaking for my own institution, compared to this time last year, MIT has experienced a decline in campus research activity funded by federal awards of more than 20%.
There’s also damage to the pipeline of talent. Uncertain federal funding means that next year, MIT may have about 500 fewer graduate students helping us to push the scientific frontier and preparing to contribute to society as scientists, inventors, designers, and entrepreneurs.
MIT is one of the most influential and productive research communities in the world — truly a national asset. This erosion of our strength is a loss for the nation.
The return-on-investment for research and development is remarkable. Shrinking the pipeline of basic discovery research means choking off the flow of future solutions, innovations, and cures — and shrinking the supply of future scientists. Should we as a nation shrug and just let that happen, when China has now passed the United States as the largest global funding source of research and development for the very first time?
Some argue that industry can pick up the slack. Since our founding, MIT has worked enthusiastically with industry on applied technical research. But today’s breakthrough advances grew from years of curiosity-driven forays, pushing through a maze of possibilities until the right door swung open. Whose shareholders would back decades of that kind of open-ended exploration without the certainty of commercial returns for the company in question? Philanthropy is equally unable to replace steady federal funding at scale.
So let me say it as clearly as I can: Without basic scientific research, supported by the kind of farsighted public investment that allows large-scale, undirected, curiosity-driven inquiry, the scientific pipeline will run dry.
In daily life, people may not feel the effects right away, or even in 10 years. But we will feel it. And when someone we love needs therapies that could have emerged but didn’t or when other countries now investing in science can launch new science-based industries or run their societies on vast resources of fusion energy or reap the benefits of quantum computing power or advanced medical breakthroughs, America will wish it sustained its leadership in scientific research here and now.
Sally Kornbluth is the president of MIT.