Marco Prado has rarely missed a meeting of the International Society for Neurochemistry in 30 years. “I have deep ties to the society,” the Canada research chair and University of Western Ontario professor says. But after U.S. President Donald Trump began announcing tariffs on Canadian goods and repeatedly referring to the sovereign nation as the “51st state,” Prado says he scrapped his lab’s plans to attend the society’s next conference this August in New York City. (The team opted instead for an Alzheimer’s disease meeting in Toronto.) “It’s like our neighbor is trying to attack us. … I cannot [bring] myself morally to spend Canadian taxpayers’ money in attending U.S. conferences,” he says.
Thousands of researchers from outside the United States attend scientific meetings there each year to present work, network, and build collaborations. But some are reassessing their travel plans because of objections to U.S. policy and fears of being interrogated or detained by customs officials. None of the scientific societies Science reached out to reported an uptick in cancellations from foreign scientists for recent or upcoming meetings. But some noted they are keeping an eye on the situation. “We have heard from some members with concerns, and we’re continuing to listen and learn how we can best support them,” says a spokesperson for the American Physical Society (APS), which held a Global Physics Summit in Los Angeles last month that drew 15,000 attendees, including 4000 from outside the country.
Last month, a space researcher from CNRS, France’s national research agency, made headlines after being detained while en route to attend a conference in Texas. The scientist, who has not been publicly identified, was held for a day, his devices were confiscated and searched, and he was put on a plane home. Philippe Baptiste, France’s higher education and research minister, claimed the researcher was denied entry because his phone contained exchanges in which he shared personal views of the Trump administration’s research policy. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security denied politics was a factor, instead saying the researcher’s device contained confidential information from the U.S.’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.