New risk for science: Researchers' Google won't be updated until the U.S. has budgets

Barcelona"A lot of good things can come out of a government shutdown; we can get rid of a lot of things we don't want. That would be Democratic stuff," warned US President Donald Trump shortly before his government went into suspension of payments for failing to pass a new budget. A week has passed since then, most federal workers have been temporarily suspended, and the consequences have already reached across the Atlantic. The Trump administration has prioritized border management, immigration raids, and the military deployment in the capital as essential services, and the suspension has particularly affected agencies linked to health, research, and the environment, which had already suffered cuts previously. As a result of this decision, services such as PubMed, the free database of the United States National Library of Medicine and consulted daily by scientists from around the world, will not be updated until the government reopens.

In fact, the site considered the 'Google' of researchers due to the large amount of documentation it hosts, has published the following message on its homepage: "Due to an interruption in government funding, the information on this website may not be up-to-date, transactions submitted through the website may not be processed, and budget allocations may not be approved."

Catalan researchers have been warning for months about the impact of Trump's decisions on global health and science. Since his return to the presidency, he has stopped funding research projects from laboratories and hospitals outside the country that received grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), suspended research programs and froze funds that until recently contributed to the global advancement of science and improved the health of millions of people, especially in countries with fewer resources. These decisions generate distrust and uncertainty in the international scientific community, since they depend on information from large databases in the United States to carry out their work.

Many researchers claim that losing access to information generated by the United States would change the paradigm of research as we understand it today. Thus, the fact that PubMed does not update its content is bad news for researchers around the world, although those consulted by the ARA remain on hold, waiting for the government to reopen. "Science is a collective project for all of humanity: either we do it together or we won't get ahead," claims the director of the European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA), Arcadi Navarro, who points out that these US databases have been free for decades and that this has allowed them to experience a "golden age."

The expert recalls that PubMed went down last March and caused a "huge scare" among researchers around the world, but the service was later restored and those responsible attributed it to a technical problem. However, at the time, the great dependence on these large databases became clear and the importance of strengthening European in case you end up losing access to it.

Consequences of the closure

Government shutdowns are poorly regulated, and the administration in power has some discretion to decide what constitutes essential services and what does not, giving Trump greater leeway to continue dismantling government structures. Most workers are sent home with pay suspended, while those deemed essential continue working without pay. It's not until the budget is unblocked that everyone returns to work and salaries are paid retroactively, although Trump suggested this week that not all employees are guaranteed pay once they return to work.

While the budget remains unblocked, Trump continues to advance his agenda and undermine other areas of government that he believes are not aligned with his priorities. For example, the Department of Homeland Security—which oversees immigration and border patrol agents—has barely been affected by the suspension, but the Environmental Protection Agency has been severely affected by the shutdown, with a large number of workers suspended.

Furthermore, the shutdown will have a significant economic impact, as macroeconomic data collection and publication have been suspended for a week, and the Department of Labor has not released its September employment report. It's worth remembering that both private investors and the Federal Reserve rely on these employment reports to make decisions.