Welcome to Science with Shrike! Today we’re going to discuss a statement made by a scientific society a few weeks back. The American Association of Immunologists (AAI) issued a statement justifying their decision to move their 2024 annual meeting from Phoenix to Chicago. The reason? Abortion.
The tl;dr of the statement is those running AAI dislike (“deeply concerned about”) the Dobbs Supreme Court decision, and states restricting abortion access, so it’s boycotting Arizona over the state abortion laws. Since this is for the 2024 meeting (not the 2023 meeting), it’s unclear how much, if anything, it will cost AAI to make this move. Is it congruent with the decision-makers’ fiduciary duty to AAI to make this change? That’s a question concerned AAI members should ask their leadership.
Some readers might be wondering why an Immunology society is wading into something as political as abortion. Most scientists in academia lean left politically to one degree or another. So the decision to become political comes from a mix of personal activism, and the view that all organizations need to be political to stand up for core values, deeply held beliefs, and/or human rights. While AAI does not yet openly lobby for political issues, they can make choices about where to host meetings, and who to include/exclude, and health benefits the Society will offer to its employees (NOT the members, who don’t get health benefits from the Society).
Even then, the lobbying rules are somewhat flexible. AAI has Public Policy fellows, who advocate for increased government resources to science and immunology. AAI will help members talk to Congress, and weighs in on policies that affect research. For example, AAI has a statement on animals in research, provides testimony about NIH budget levels, and feedback on NIH bureaucracy and review criteria.
During the pandemic, AAI has thanked and awarded Dr Anthony Fauci, who is a long-time AAI member, for his handling of the pandemic. The latest statement thanks him for his service at the end of his career.
This background illustrates how the recent statement is less surprising than it might seem to some. However understandable (or not) the rationale for this statement, there are many negative second-order effects from this move:
To break them down, negative impacts include:
Reduced trust in science experts
Alienate 1/3 of policy makers
Conflict with international societies
Exclude underrepresented minorities in science
Perpetrate the belief that women must choose between career and children
Potential positive impacts come from engaging and energizing another 1/3 of the country. Note that if the majority of scientists lean left, most will applaud this brave stance, and many others will not care. This will pave the way for additional social statements on topics unrelated to immunology, which is good if you believe scientific societies should be making these statements, bad if not. Also, it is not clear if applauding this statement will convert to increased membership, cashflow or submissions to AAI’s journals, Journal of Immunology and ImmunoHorizons. Shrike thinks the net effect will be negative.
Note that this does not consider the issue of abortion at all. That was not an accident. This is an analysis of potential impacts of a scientific society taking a stance on a topic unrelated to the society’s mission, which happens to be abortion. The point is not if you should be pro- or anti-abortion. Troll people on Twitter for that argument.
Second order effects
Trust in science experts/public health
Trust in “experts”, especially when it comes to science or health, has been weakened by the government responses to the SARS-CoV2 pandemic, and their subsequent attempt to pass responsibility for those decisions to “trust the science”. Vaccine mandates despite viral escape from vaccine control accelerated this trend.
Public health is done at scale, which requires people to trust their public health authorities. Without that trust, public health authorities have fewer options, and will be less effective. That means restoring trust in public health authorities is itself a public health issue.
Making a statement on a controversial topic like abortion undermines trust in AAI, and “science experts” for everybody on the other side of that statement. To someone opposed to abortion, they believe that AAI is wrong on the abortion issue. If AAI is wrong on an issue of high emotional importance to the person, why assume AAI will be right on any other issue?
Maybe this is offset by all the pro-abortion people who agree. Won’t they trust AAI and “science experts” more? Shrike thinks this is a reasonable hypothesis, and can be estimated. Estimate how many pro- vs anti- abortion people there are, and gauge how much each of these groups trust experts and/or scientists. Ignore the ones who don’t care about abortion either way. Shrike suspects that when the math is done, it will be the anti-abortion people who trust public health and science experts less. Worse, if the pro-abortion people already trust public health and science experts, there will be no gain in trust to offset alienating the anti-abortion people.
Alienate policy makers
Another practical downside to this statement is that it alienates anti-abortion lawmakers, and may interfere with efforts to improve NIH funding. In the last 20 years, NIH funding peaked in 2003, and then has seen a steady decline until 2015. Since 2016, funding has started to recover back towards 2003 levels.
Notably, on this timeline Republicans controlled Congress from 2003-2007, Democrats controlled it from 2007-2011. 2011-2015 saw mixed control (Republicans held the House, Democrats the Senate, with a Democratic President). 2015-2019 saw Republican control. This means that both a Democrat-controlled Congress (and Presidency from 2009-2011) and a Republican-controlled Congress (and Presidency from 2003-2007) cut NIH funding, while a Republican-controlled Congress (and Presidency from 2017-2019) increased NIH funding.
This means that Republicans, for whom opposing abortion is often a campaign platform, are willing to increase funding. Why antagonize these lawmakers, who may be otherwise amenable to spending on science? Given the current thin House Republican majority and thin Senate Democrat majority, it seems a bipartisan approach would be in the best interests of funding. While fewer, there are also Democrats who do not support abortion. AAI has now hobbled their public policy/outreach on Capitol Hill. The statement provides an easy excuse for any anti-abortion lawmaker to either refuse to meet with AAI members, or cite the statement as the reason for rejecting anything the member is saying.
Shrike doubts the pro-abortion lawmakers will increase their support of science beyond what it currently is. But maybe outreach to them will be improved, and maybe the anti-abortion lawmakers will care more about supporting science than the pro-abortion stance of the scientists they’re supporting.
Conflict with International Societies
At AAI’s national meeting, they often host small symposia from other immunologic societies. One goal is fostering research in developing countries. Most of these countries have stricter abortion laws, and/or outright prohibit it. Will scientists from these countries feel welcome at a meeting that was moved over too strict abortion laws? Or is this more cultural imperialism?
While it looks like Europe is similar or more liberal than the US, when it comes to abortion, Illinois has more permissive laws than most of Europe. In Illinois, limits occur after viability (~24 weeks). Compare the European laws, which are often restricted to the first trimester. Arizona (since Oct 7) has a 15 week limit on abortion. However, litigation is ongoing over whether an 1864 ban on all abortion is or is not enforceable.
For all the scientists who do not care, or are unaware, this will not be relevant. However, Shrike suspects those who are discouraged by this change are more likely to not attend the meeting, than those who are encouraged by the change to suddenly attend.
Exclude underrepresented minorities in science
While underrepresented minorities in science (URMs) are often considered ‘non-White, non-Asian’, those coming from poverty (defined by zipcode) and disability are also included in NIH definitions. Poverty zipcodes tend to be either inner city or rural. Not included in NIH definitions is political leaning, despite 6-9% of scientists identifying as Republican or conservative.
Good luck encouraging undergraduates from rural and/or conservative backgrounds to pursue immunology. Hopefully they will not be aware of AAI’s position, and so it will not impact them. But if they, or their parents, do learn about this statement, that’s one more awkward conversation. Maybe the goal is to force educators to have these conversations with students, and force students to have these conversations with their parents. Regardless of intent, forcing unwanted conversations is one way to burn people out.
Also, to return to the world map, many graduate students come from countries where abortion is more restricted. Maybe they dislike that restriction, and abortion access is one benefit they gain from moving to the US. But maybe not.
Alternatively, Pew surveys find a higher proportion Asian and Black people support legal abortion. So perhaps this will be the change that increases Black participation in science and immunology.
Perpetrate the belief that women must choose between career and children
The words Shrike found most chilling in the statement was the end “The Dobbs decision will undoubtedly negatively affect the biomedical research community and slow scientific discoveries as scientists and medical professionals reconsider their pursuit of careers in states with restrictions on reproductive rights.”
If AAI is concerned that the biomedical research community in anti-abortion states will be hurt, moving a national meeting out will exacerbate that damage. It’s disingenuous to blame the Dobbs decision for AAI’s choice to hurt the Arizona immunology community. Coupled with the decision to abandon Phoenix, this line reads like a threat.
The other problem with this line is that it implies children and a career are not compatible with each other. The implication is that abortion is necessary for a woman to have a career in science. If abortion is unnecessary for a woman to have a career in science, there would be minimal impact of anti-abortion laws on women’s careers.
Family planning in science is challenging because there is no good time to take time out to raise a baby and then small children. At the highest levels of competition, having children may be your hobby, since all the other free time goes to staying competitive in the science. However, Shrike will note that grad student health insurance is often a better plan than one can get as a postdoc or as a faculty member without paying substantially more. While no PI wants their workers to take a few months off, graduate school has the flexibility to deal with an altered work schedule to accommodate childcare. The grad students Shrike knew who had kids in grad school still completed their PhDs and continued their careers. While they might have considered abortion during pregnancy, they would be horrified at the thought of losing their kids now.
As a result, Shrike disagrees that abortion is necessary for a woman’s career in science. That belief will drive women who want children away from science and pressure others to make permanent choices they may later regret.
Your compatibility with abortion laws should be considered along with all of the other laws present in any state or country to which you move. If you can’t live with certain laws, better to rule that state out, just as if you did not like the geographic location, weather, or the culture. Depending on how picky you are, you may need to make trade-offs. One strength of the US set-up is that different states have the freedom to test different hypotheses about governance, rules and approaches. Trying to sanction states with which you disagree reveals the lack of depth of your conviction—experiments will fail on their own if they’re bad, and then no one can claim it only failed because of outside pressure.
Similarly, AAI has the freedom to get involved in politics, no matter how ill-advised it seems to Shrike. We’ll all see the results of this experiment. Best case for AAI, their membership explodes and they get huge engagement. Worst case for AAI, they lose market share and reputation to existing immunology scientific societies, and/or new scientific societies that do not discriminate will form in states boycotted by AAI. We’ll see if Society for Leukocyte Biology makes the same mistake or not—their next meeting is Georgia, which bans abortion at 6 weeks.
More likely, most won’t care one way or another. And if it does not hurt the bottom line, expect to see more culture war spilling into scientific societies.