The recent issue of EMBO Reports has put the spotlight on the challenges facing scientific research in a context of increasing political pressure, especially in the United States. Bernd Pulverer's editorial note, entitled Under Pressure, analyses how measures such as budget cuts, immigration restrictions and censorship of scientific terminology (‘bias’, ‘gender’, ‘trauma’ or even ‘women’) are eroding the country's academic and medical infrastructure and affecting the whole of highly interconnected global science.

This interference is not limited to biology: climate change is also in the spotlight. For example, staff cuts at agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the removal of references to ‘climate crisis’ in federal reports have weakened the capacity to monitor extreme events, essential for adaptation policies.

A sign of growing tension in the scientific system is that events that may be accidental, such as the recent temporary collapse of PubMed and PubMed Central (PMC), set off alarm bells, as these systems, managed by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), are vital for accessing 35 million scientific articles.

Alongside the editorial note written by Pulverer, two complementary articles delve into critical issues: the impact of the 15% cap on indirect costs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - explored by Shina Caroline Lynn Kamerlin and Mikael H. Elias - and the fragility of databases essential to biology and biomedicine, a topic addressed by me.

The enormous scientific progress achieved after World War II, based on international cooperation, could be compromised by new protectionist barriers

The enormous scientific progress achieved after the Second World War, based on international cooperation - such as the European model of transnational collaboration - could be compromised by new protectionist barriers. These policies ignore the fact that the knowledge economy is not a zero-sum game, as Kiko Llaneras points out in El País, but a network where openness multiplies the benefits. An example of this is initiatives such as the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), with branches in five countries, which is essential for the structuring of biology and biomedicine in Europe.

The fragility of data management systems 

In this international context marked by instability, the recent withdrawal of public health information by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has highlighted the fragility of data management systems. Pulverer warns in his article that cutbacks and politicisation of the CDC are putting critical public health resources at risk. Data at risk include: outbreak surveillance data such as covid-19, avian flu and Ebola registries; data on health inequalities, such as maternal mortality data or access to vaccines; pollution data, such as lead levels in children or in vulnerable areas; and information on gender-based violence, such as statistics on assaults on women.

The loss or manipulation of these data will not only slow down research, but leave millions of people in the dark in the face of health crises. In addition, the CDC has faced staff cuts and the closure of key programmes, such as those dedicated to neglected tropical diseases, limits its ability to anticipate and manage future pandemics.

The loss or manipulation of data will not only slow down research, but will leave millions of people in the dark about health crises

In contrast to the fragility of these centralised systems, my article highlights projects such as the Protein Data Bank (PDB), which demonstrate the power of international cooperation. This database, essential for structural biology, is maintained by three main nodes: RCSB PDB (Rutgers University and UC San Diego, USA), PDBe (European Bioinformatics Institute, UK) and PDBj (Osaka University, Japan). With more than 200,000 globally accessible protein structures, PDB was key to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024, based on artificial intelligence systems. The laureates publicly acknowledged that without the PDB's open and standardised data, their developments would have been impossible. This case is a clear example of how collaboration across borders accelerates discoveries that benefit humanity.

A particularly relevant version of decentralised systems is the European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA) and its federated version (fEGA), which offer an innovative model for managing sensitive medical data. Coordinated by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, EGA stores its data at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) and at the EBI itself, with key funding from the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation in Spain. However, its real strength lies in the federated version (fEGA), designed to comply with strict European data protection legislation, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and future EHDS. In this system, Spain, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Poland and Portugal store confidential genomic data in their territories. Through federated discovery, access and analysis protocols, they allow researchers to analyse information without physically moving it, respecting ethical and legal standards.

This approach not only avoids regulatory conflicts, but also facilitates transnational studies in critical areas such as childhood cancer or rare diseases. The addition of Canada to fEGA last week - a milestone highlighted in Nature Genetics- demonstrates how international collaboration can overcome geopolitical barriers while maintaining data sovereignty.

The decline of science in the US is not a local problem, but a global threat. If left unchecked, it could weaken the collective capacity to respond to pandemics, climate crises or health inequalities. Europe has an ethical and strategic obligation to act. Initiatives such as ELIXIR, which integrates bioinformatics resources from 23 countries, or EUCAIM, for federated analysis of medical images, demonstrate that transnational collaboration is feasible. However, it requires firm commitments: maintaining stable funding, rejecting deregulation and expanding collaborative networks in the form of decentralised databases.

Europe must lead global alliances to prevent the vacuum left by the United States from becoming irreversible damage

In addition, the brain drain from the US - with a 100 % increase in applications to the Max Planck Society (Elias et al., 2024) - offers an opportunity to strengthen the European scientific ecosystem. But this is not enough. Europe must lead global partnerships, such as the PDB or fEGA, managed by international consortia, to prevent the vacuum left by the US from becoming irreversibly damaged.

In the authors' view, Europe must:

• Strengthen the organisation and funding of decentralised resources.
• Expand alliances, incorporating more countries - as in the case of FEGA and Canada - and sectors (e.g. the pharmaceutical industry) to avoid gaps in the wake of a possible US withdrawal.
• Promote global standards to ensure syntactic and semantic interoperability of data.

Europe's opportunity and duty   

The EMBO Reports articles not only expose risks, but also outline solutions. In the face of cuts such as those at the NIH - which could cost US universities up to $4 billion a year - and the fragility of centralised systems, decentralised and collaborative models emerge as a necessity. Science, inherently global, requires structures that can withstand local pressures. Projects such as the federated EGA are beacons of hope: when knowledge is shared with security and collective vision, innovation endures.

Precisely because US science capacity and infrastructure are essential for public research and health, Europe must be prepared to host and fund key infrastructure and talent that will not find a home in the US. 

Europe has the opportunity - and the duty - to lead a new paradigm where data is free, secure and accessible

In this situation Europe has the opportunity - and the duty - to lead a new paradigm where data is free, secure and accessible, with responsibility for its maintenance shared between institutions and funding agencies. In a world where public figures promote remedies without scientific basis - such as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr - decentralisation becomes an act of resistance, to avoid a collapse whose consequences will be paid for by future generations.