The story begins in a university lab, just after midnight. The hum of a centrifuge fills the room. A young scientist, sleeves rolled up and elbow-deep in yeast cultures, refreshes her inbox. Nothing. The grant that kept her project alive is in limbo. She wonders if this will be her last experiment.
This spring, the National Science Foundation terminated more than a thousand grants. There was no press conference. No national debate. Just a wave of terminations, many with little explanation. Most people never saw it happen. But we did. So we built the NSF Grant Terminations Dashboard to bring it into view.
The data came from TidyTuesday. The drive came from watching the story unfold in real time. As we mapped the cuts, it became clear that this wasn’t just about budgets. It was about vision. The states most affected, California, Massachusetts, Texas: are pillars of American science. But no region was spared. Projects focused on misinformation, diversity, and education appeared to take disproportionate hits.
This felt less like trimming fat and more like shrinking the horizon.
American science was never about playing it safe. It thrived on strange ideas and second chances. We grew by funding work before we knew where it might lead. Basic research has always been a risk. That risk was part of the deal.
Now, we see that deal being quietly rewritten. Our dashboard does not just show numbers. It shows names. Each canceled grant is a story interrupted. A team in Kansas studying crop resilience. A data program for underrepresented youth in Atlanta. A misinformation model in Montana. Each one was a modest bet on the future. Each one, now, unfunded.
There is no villain here. Just the usual mix of politics, optics, and pressure to appear efficient. But something is lost when a country stops asking hard questions. Scientific progress does not happen on a clock. It does not follow polling trends. It needs room to wander. It needs time to surprise us.
We are not sounding an alarm. We are asking people to pay attention. When curiosity is treated as expendable, the consequences do not make headlines. They unfold slowly, as fewer students ask questions and fewer labs stay lit.
Our dashboard is a tool. We hope it becomes a conversation. Who decides what is worth knowing? Who speaks up when the lights start going out?
Some stories continue because someone chooses to protect them. Others vanish because no one noticed they were ending.
This is one of those choices.