Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won his bid for re-election on 25 October, to the relief of many scientists who feared for the future of Brazilian research if right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro prevailed. In recent weeks, some of Brazil's leading scientific organizations, including the Brazilian Academy of Sciences in Rio de Janeiro, circulated an open letter endorsing Lula, a leftist former labour leader. It received more than 20,000 signatures. 'It's hard to express just how happy the scientific community and the Brazilian society is with Lula's victory,' says Paulo Artaxo, a physicist at the University of Sao Paulo. Many worried that, if Bolsonaro were elected, he might slash support for Brazilian science and undermine it in the way that his father, Jair Bolsonaro, did. Jair was Brazil's president from 2019 to 2023, and during that time, he cut science funding and expressed anti-science rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic, casting doubt on vaccines and promoting...
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