Access to trustworthy information is among the most important preconditions for safeguarding democracy.2017 Science March in Boston. Photo by Philip Loring

As of today, the US National Institutes of Health are on lockdown. No travel, no meetings, no further disbursements or spending of their nearly $50 billion annual budget. This is a nightmare scenario — for the science actively being done, for the treatments being developed and tested, and for the institutes and universities whose budgets will ...