Complying In Advance – Science Edition

Russell Vought wants to install political commissars to decide on federal science grants. The Auburn University Board of Trustees on Friday gave itself complete control over course offerings, curriculum, degree requirements, and academic credentials while eliminating the faculty senate. Arrays of instruments studying the oceans are being ripped out. The National Science Foundation’s Inspector General is no longer investigating research misconduct. And, among much more, DOGE eliminated large swaths of scientific research, particularly those that somehow mentioned diversity, equality, women, and other forbidden subjects. No ocean-floor diversity for you!

You might think that the scientific community would mobilize to protest this destruction of one of the most successful activities of the US government. You would be…not quite right. Some are mobilizing. Far too many others are not.

As in other areas, the Trump administration is attacking science from multiple sides. It can be hard to keep track, and I know I’m not current in many areas. But some in the scientific community are rising to the moment, and others aren’t.

My primary professional organization, the American Chemical Society, has sent out a letter to members alerting them to the OMB proposed rule and says they are developing a response that they will submit. The CEO of my secondary professional organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has posted a strong statement against the rule.

Americans deserve a government that funds the best ideas and the strongest science. For a century, American science has yielded unexpected breakthroughs and formed the basis of trillion-dollar American industries. Underpinning this success has been investment guided by scientific opportunity and possibility, not by the political or trendy. This latest move is a brazen power grab by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to buck the will of Congress and the American people and will make future discoveries less likely. If this rule becomes final, Americans’ hopes for future cures, national security and economic strength will rely on the scientific sensibilities of the nation’s chief bureaucrat. Alzheimer’s disease will not be cured by a budget analyst from either political party.

A broad-based organization, Stand Up For Science (SUFS), is providing information and education and encouraging action against the OMB rule and other destruction by the Trump administration.

The National Academies of Sciences are the government’s highest organizations for evaluating science. They take on broad studies of the state of various areas of science. One of their continuing concerns, for example, has been the effect of radiation on human health. Their president has been Marcia McNutt, who has given two major speeches this year, an annual “state of science” and her farewell address as her term ends. In neither of them does she mention the bulldozer threat to science in the US. I can’t find the texts of those speeches, but an interview gives some insight into her thinking on why mentioning that threat would have been inappropriate.

But one aspect that both leadership positions share is the need to use science to inform, but not dictate, policy—as the latter is the responsibility of our elected representatives. Frankly, at times this position has put me at odds with some members of the NAS whose work and whose students have been hurt badly by anti-science policies and quite understandably want the NAS to push back against efforts to direct science funding to other administration priorities, put non-scientists into science leadership positions, overlay ideology on what projects are funded, and limit the flow of international talent to our research enterprise. Unfortunately, it is not the role of the NAS to weigh science funding against other national priorities, determine the mechanism by which science funding is allocated, or set immigration policy. All we can do is point out the impacts in terms of the health of the U.S. research enterprise, a task I have taken on annually in my State of the Science address. This experience has taught me that it is impossible as a leader to make everyone happy; my first obligation is to ensure the long-term continuity of the institution I lead, even at the risk of short-term pain.

Another organization not standing up for science is the American Diabetes Association, which called the police at its annual meeting to prevent its members from distributing copies of an editorial published in its own journal, on the effects of Trump administration policies on diabetes research.

Other organizations have followed the Trump line. As in other professions, it’s a mixed bag.

The damage already done to science is enormous. Students from other countries are being excluded, as is collaboration across national lines. Data collection, like that from the oceanic arrays, is inherently long-term. Like other projects that have been defunded, like animal studies, restoration of funds cannot provide continuity.

Science funding has provided more than double its cost back to the Treasury, not to mention its effects on commerce and the economy generally. The mindless destruction by DOGE is being succeeded by a Soviet-like plan to install political commissars over the enterprise. Trofim Lysenko set Soviet biology back by maybe a century.