BOSTON—”The national debt is a big structural problem,” former Representative Brian Baird told his audience at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And that, according to Baird, is one reason scientific research comes under fire. “If you can’t solve something big,” he went on, “distract people by attacking something small.” All too often, that something small has been scientific research.

Two of the researchers who found their work under fire were on hand to describe the experience and talk a bit about the lessons they learned.