In response to a March 2025 survey by the preeminent journal Nature, 75 percent of U.S. scientists said that they are considering leaving the United States because of the “massive changes in U.S. research.” It’s important to note that the participants who responded to the Nature survey chose to do so, and therefore likely are not representative of all U.S. scientists. Of course, it’s a compelling statistic nonetheless, and it matches anecdotal observations that one of us has had in conversations with colleagues, including at several recent academic conferences in psychology. In the Nature survey and our informal conversations, scientists cited funding freezes, banned language, banned research topics, the targeted elimination of misinformation research, and policy restrictions for their desire to leave.

A list of words banned by the National Science Foundation (NSF) started circulating in February 2025. It includes: women, disability, bias, status, trauma, Black, Hispanic communities, as well as socioeconomic, ethnicity, and systemic racism. One public health scientist, referring to the ban as Orwellian, said: “If I can't say the word 'women,' I can't tell you that an abortion ban is going to hurt women. If I can't say race and ethnicity, I can't tell you that Hispanic communities are experiencing this and that or that there's less vaccination happening in [Black] communities.”

Because demographically related questions are so prevalent in psychological science, our field has been among the hardest hit by this ban. The American Psychological Association outlined some of the challenges, including noting that research on

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