The light afternoon breeze barely ruffled the sails of the Vasa as it glided out of Stockholm harbour for its maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. With its high stern emblazoned by a gilded coat of arms, carvings of mythical figures and an extraordinary second gun deck, the new flagship for King Gustav’s war against Poland dazzled the cheering crowd. Some 1300 metres into the harbour, a brisk wind caught the sails. The Vasa heeled over and sank.
It was the second gun deck that contributed to its downfall. King Gustav had demanded it against the advice of the shipbuilders. The Vasa’s raised centre of gravity could not hold.
Preserved by the Baltic’s cold, salty waters, the Vasa is now housed in a purpose-built museum in Stockholm harbour. Some 45 million visitors have ogled the magnificent galleon and pondered a lesson dredged from history: the perils of ignoring science.
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Of all times, given science has just extracted us from a pandemic that could have been much worse, you’d have thought that the lesson would be foremost in the minds of world leaders.
The fact that Covid-19 is no longer fuelling a pandemic but has joined the ranks of endemic viruses, such as the flu, is entirely because of science. In early 2020, the global population was as helpless as the Tahitians battling smallpox in the 19th century. Spurred by the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed”, vaccines appeared in record time, sparing an estimated 14 million lives. PCR and rapid antigen tests allowed us to safely exit lockdown. Antiviral treatments saved the lives of the most vulnerable.
And yet, now, in the US, science is under attack.
Attacks on truth and science are straight out of the authoritarian playbook. And history shows they do not end well. In the 1930s, Stalin elevated Trofim Lysenko’s fringe theory of agriculture over the the science-based work of Nikolai Vavilov, a leading geneticist famous for his seed bank to capture global biodiversity and work on improving cereal crops. Vavilov died in prison. The country starved. Hitler’s attack on universities in Germany purged Jews and liberal scientists, sending many of them to America to develop the atomic bomb and supercharge American war efforts and scientific research.
Australia is not immune to the current Trump administration’s assault on science.
There’s the loss of funding from collaborative grants with US institutions, which could leave Australian researchers with a shortfall of AUD$386m. And then, there are the knock-on effects as global research networks unravel.
Two of the most pressing concerns of the day, pandemic preparedness and mitigating climate disasters, rely on networks. An early warning system for pandemics was dismantled last June. Ten global collaborators with on-the-ground systems for monitoring the next outbreak of Sars, Ebola, bird flu or Zika saw their National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding worth US$82m disappear. Nasa satellites that supply Australian climate models, such as ACCESS, are also on the chopping block.
What can Australia do to fortify itself against this scientific apocalypse? A report released last Thursday by the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) recommends Australia build new international collaborations, train more scientists in critical research areas and increase spending on research and development, which is low by OECD standards and falling.
But strong institutions and historically generous government funding have not protected the US’s science institutions. The cathedrals of American science, the NIH and National Science Foundation, are being wrecked, with thousands of grants cancelled and proposed funding cuts of 40% and 56%, respectively. Leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been decapitated, while the health system is in the grip of the “Make American Healthy Again” (Maha) movement, in which vaccine scepticism is a core belief.
The lesson from the US is that when you mix science with politics, you get politics.
Australia has a couple of things in its favour in terms of defending the belief in and institutions of science. For one, its strong political centre offers a buffer against polarisation. For another, trust in science is high. According to a 2025 survey of 68 countries, Australia ranked fifth on a comparison where Egypt and India ranked 1st and second; the US and the UK 12th and 15th.
But none of this is reason for complacency. A minority of committed influencers can flip public opinion. Australian childhood vaccination rates suggests the anti-science movement is having an impact.
Australia is seeing a decline in MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccination rates for the scheduled 12- and 18-month doses and for catch-up vaccinations measured at five years. In 2020, 95% of five-year-olds were vaccinated, the target for herd immunity. As of August 2025, that figure was 93%. In two-year-olds, the figure was 90%, well below the target.
According to the authors of the 2025 study on global trust in science, the best thing scientists can do is engage with the public. “We recommend avoiding top-down communication but encouraging public participation in genuine dialogue.”
That’s a view chorused by the AAS chief executive, Anna Maria Arabia. “Democracy will only be strengthened when we share the benefits generated by science and technology. We must maintain social licence and bring people with us as we make discoveries.”
Bringing people along is music to the ears of physician Julian Elliott, co-founder of the not-for profit Future Evidence Foundation. He has a track record for rapidly delivering high quality scientific evidence to those who need it. During the pandemic, he established the world-leading National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce, which used data science, AI and “cat-herding” skills to issue timely medical guidelines, such as how to deliver oxygen to critically ill patients, and updated them on a weekly basis.
Now the Gates Foundation is funding the Future Evidence Foundation to build similar programs across Africa to increase the uptake of HPV vaccination, which inspired the Wellcome Trust in the UK to last year announce a £45m (A$92m) investment for accelerating “living evidence synthesis” – that is, building scientific foundations for collective action.
Elliott hopes to roll out more Australian programs as Maha misinformation, such as the perils of fluoride, takes hold here. “We need to build new systems for trustworthy information in society. In the end, most people want to know what is known.”
One of the key lessons to disseminate to the public is that, actually, science does not ask for trust. “Nullius in verba” is the motto of the British Royal Society, dating back to 1662. Translated as take “no one’s word for it”, it captures the power of the 17th century scientific revolution. In an age where every influencer feels entitled to their own facts, it’s important to remind people that scientific consensus emerges as the end result of subterranean battles between experts. Achieving consensus is like herding cats. And when the cats do form a herd, it’s because diverse pieces of evidence point in the same direction. Scientific consensus is also provisional; it comes within limits of certainty, defined caveats, and can always be “falsified” by new data.
Regardless of our different political leanings, none of us want to set sail on a ship that will heel over in the first wind.
Prove It: A Scientific Guide for the Post-Truth Era by Elizabeth Finkel is out now through Black Inc
