Science in the Time of Uncertainty

The scientific method and its logic has been challenged—if not persecuted—numerous times throughout history. And scientists often paid a high price for the courage to publish and spread their ideas.

The Middle Ages were a dark time for the empirical methods of experimentation in science. Roger Bacon was a friar who lived in England in the mid-1200, and whose work emphasized the study of nature—alchemy, astrology, physics, and philosophy—was ignored when not persecuted by his contemporaries, and only later, during the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, recognized as one of the first modern experimental scientists.

Galileo Galilei is perhaps the most famous persecuted scientist in history. His defense of the heliocentric model directly challenged the teachings of the Church. With his improved telescope, he made groundbreaking observations: mountains on the Moon, countless stars in the Milky Way, and the phases of Venus—all compelling evidence that Earth was not the center of the universe. In 1632, he was condemned for his views and spent the last decade of his life under house arrest. During this time, he wrote his most important work, Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences—now considered a foundational text of modern science. In it, his study of motion laid the groundwork for what would later become Newtonian mechanics.

Progress has also been slowed by diseases and natural disasters. The burning of the Library of Alexandria set back advances in mathematics, medicine, and engineering. Earthquakes and plagues redirected societies’ focus to survival.

Yet, adversity often sparked new inquiry—improving earthquake engineering, medicine, and epidemiology.

Europe has been plagued by epidemiological diseases since the Middle Ages.

Small Pox was introduced in Europe in the 7th century and had been the scourge of Europe for centuries.

In 1796, the English physician and surgeon Edward Jenner observed that dairymaids who contracted cowpox did not get smallpox. To test his hypothesis that cowpox provided protection against smallpox, he took material from a cowpox lesion on a milkmaid and inoculated an eight-year-old boy. The boy developed a mild illness but recovered quickly. Later, Jenner deliberately exposed him to smallpox, and he remained healthy—demonstrating that cowpox could indeed confer immunity.

Jenner tried to publish his findings in 1798 but the paper was rejected. It was only in the year 1800, after a survey confirmed its efficacy, that the use of the vaccine spread in England, the rest of Europe and the United States.

In 1848 a series of Cholera epidemics devastated London for years. In 1854, John Snow traced a London cholera outbreak to a contaminated water pump, refuting the dominant miasma—disease-causing poisonous vapors—theory. Once the pump was removed, the outbreak subsided. His work reshaped public health and laid the foundations for modern epidemiology.

Snow’s pioneering observation led to an overhaul of the London sewage system and proved the mode of transmission of Cholera, which ravaged many parts of the world in the 19th century, was through water.

In 1994, in a lab at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Dr. Katalin Kariko described a method for isolating and cloning differentially expressed mRNAs, laying the groundwork for later efforts to stabilize synthetic mRNA.

This research was “curiosity-driven” and was not perceived as valuable. She had a hard time obtaining funding and for decades her career was stuck in an indefinite “low-level” academic track.

But she persisted and her later work refined mRNA stability and immunogenicity, laying the foundation for the rapid development of mRNA vaccines.

This seminal paper was rejected by major journals and published in Immunity.

The work of Dr. Kariko became undeniably clear in 2020, when the world faced the unprecedented challenges posed by COVID-19. Thanks to the foundational insights presented in her paper, an mRNA vaccine was made readily available for clinical trial. It saved millions of lives worldwide and allowed a slow return to normality after the trauma and losses of one of the most devastating pandemics in recent history (Figure 1).

Figure 1: In 2023 Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for their work on impact of nucleoside modification and the evolutionary origin of RNA. This work led to the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine.

We have witnessed the power of perseverance, science, and curiosity in the fight for the greater good. The pandemic reminded us of the importance of adapting to a new normal and making things work.

These stories have a common denominator: the scientists involved made groundbreaking, society-altering discoveries when the social, political, or peer-to-peer acceptance was most hostile to independent scientific thinking or when a major disaster forced them to abandon their comfort zone and embrace change.

​In 2025, we face yet another challenge.

While not initiated directly by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recent policy changes involving the NIH and reflecting broader shifts in federal research priorities, have created significant disruptions for the research community.

An increasing scrutiny and oversight pressures are not only constraining the scope of scientific inquiry, but also leading to funding withdrawals and terminated grants. This state is actively impeding critical scientific exploration and sidelining key research topics.

These actions have led to the loss of financial support for many researchers, creating uncertainty and instability within the scientific community.

While these times are worrisome and out of our immediate control, we also have a path that brilliant human beings before us have paved with courage, passion, empathy, and fueled by scientific curiosity and rigor.

At Parse, our mission is to democratize scientific discovery by making single cell RNA sequencing accessible to all. We believe scientific discovery should never be limited by budget, bureaucracy, or access to equipment. That’s why our split-pool method uses everyday lab tools—so that researchers everywhere can keep pushing forward, even when resources are tight.

And it’s why our analysis software, Trailmaker, is completely free. Because your ability to make sense of your data shouldn’t depend on your budget.

And our field team? They’re scientists too. They’re in labs every day, helping other scientists get started, troubleshoot, and thrive.

We can’t control funding cycles or policy decisions. But we can control how we show up for this community.

And we will.

Science has always been a path walked with uncertainty, often underfunded, misunderstood, or under threat. And yet—it’s also the path that has shaped civilizations, cured diseases, lit up the night sky, and decoded the very building blocks of life.

And yes, these funding cuts feel like doors slamming shut. But the work, the mind, the questions—they are not so easily extinguished.

Science has never only lived in laboratories flush with grants. It lives in curiosity, in resilience, and in the persistence to keep asking questions.

And history has shown: that is more than enough.

With steadfast belief in science, and in you,

Your friends at Parse.