It’s fascinating that people still see these things as new or unique to our current administration. This has been an issue for decades that were often ignored or minimized because it only affected smaller more marginalized groups of people. For example conferences involving HIV/AIDS had to contend with these issues for decades due to the blanket ban on HIV+ individuals from entering the country, even for a scientific conference. Often the conferences would continue leading to schisms in the communities and competing conferences that would ultimately disagree on fundamental principles in science and policy.

This will heal the status wound.

Can't read the whole thing because paywall.

I thought nature was about publishing research. This reads like a political opinion piece but is published as "news"?

The author has other similar articles like these about the "US brain drain":

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01540-y

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01489-y

What would help me get an accurate picture is how many conferences are typically held per month in the US and how has that number changed but instead we get fluff like:

"Some meetings have been put on hold" - which meetings?

"Several academic and scientific conferences in the United States have been postponed, cancelled or moved elsewhere" - Which conferences, what % of the total? more specifics?

"Organizers of these meetings say that tougher rules around visas and border control — alongside other policies introduced by US President Donald Trump’s administration — are discouraging international scholars from attending events on US soil. In response, they are moving the conferences to countries such as Canada, in a bid to boost attendance." - Which organizers?

EDIT: I found this resource which would be interesting to examine for trends: https://conferenceindex.org/conferences/science

EDIT2: there are some specific anecdotal examples towards the bottom of the paywalled article. This is still not meeting what I would consider accurate non-opinionated reporting.

This is bound to happen for a lot of other events besides scientific conferences. I know of a guy that wouldn't go to a retrogaming convention for fears of being detained at the border.

It's really amazing how badly the media can mess with people's minds to create an imagined fear with no evidence. Especially among a group of people who should favor logical reasoning more than the average person. There is no risk for people visiting the US and not doing criminal behavior. The laws haven't changed.

"You don't hate the media enough."

Isn't there a history of security researchers and open source programmers being detained or threatened when visiting the US? So the same thing is being done to the US's domestic researchers as well now?

True, not much data yet, but a cery real day to day factor for conference organizers. We have had two Canadians skip a US conference last month due to the dramatical worse general climate. Zoom instead. This is NOT just about immigration and passport control. It is the new ugly American zeitgeist that changes enthusiasm.

We will probably be skipping the US for two international conferences I have helped organize. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, Halifax are all great alternatives for larger meetings from 2027 ti 20??.