- Rep. Eddie B. Johnson (D-TX) to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX)
Ranking members of the Committee of Science, Space & Technology
In my May 5 post,
I discussed legislation that is currently being considered by the House
of Representative's Committee on Science, Space, and Technology that
would fundamentally change the way National
Science Foundation (NSF) grants would be approved. The legislation,
sponsored by the chairman of the committee, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX),
would place unprecedented requirements and restrictions on the kinds of
research that could be funded by NSF and would add an additional layer
of government imposed review in the granting process. In the same post, I noted how the rule changes would directly clash with the historical vision of the NSF as laid out be Vannevar Bush in the 1940s. Last month, a discussion draft of the bill, referred to as the "High Quality Research Act" was posted on the web. Several of the main points highlighted in the draft have resulted in an intense backlash from the scientific community and Democratic legislators (try typing "NSF Lamar Smith" into Google or just follow the link from the quotation at the top of this post).
The High Quality Research Act would require the NSF director to certify the following 3 things with regard to any research grant (under Sec.2(a)):
On the surface, the language may appear more ore less benevolent. The economic times are hard. Across government, there is a push to find savings and eliminate "waste, fraud, and abuse". However, on April 17, the day before the discussion draft of the act was released to the internet, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing with the acting NSF Director Cora Marrett, the chair of the National Science Board Dan Arvizu, and presidential science advisor John Holdren regarding President Obama's FY 2014 NSF budget request. Here, the tone from Republicans on the committee reflected how the seemingly straight forward content of this legislation forebodes an unwelcome injection of politics into the process of funding basic scientific research. With the backdrop of new limits placed on NSF in a spending bill in March, the result of efforts by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) regarding the funding of political science research, which is now limited - by law - to research that promotes the, "national security or the economic interests of the United States", the committee members proceeded to extend similarly narrow logic to any and all NSF grants. In doing so, they employed the time honored tradition of picking out individual grants with names they thought sounded funny and asking the panel members to please justify why the grants were funded. A particularly good exchange between John Holdren and committee member Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) can be viewed via the link embedded in the Holdren quote below:
This distills the essence of what makes the current situation so contentious within the scientific community. Where do lines get drawn? What research is "worth" funding? Who gets to decide if a particular project (or discipline) is "in the interest of the US"? Legislation like the Coburn amendment and the High Quality Research Act set dangerous precedents, allowing political motivations and short-term goals to limit, guide, or restrict the direction of basic research.
In more recent developments, acting NSF director Cora Marrett denied a written request from Rep. Smith to make available the, "scientific/technical reviews and the Program Officers Review Analysis" for five grants that were "of interest" and about which he had "concerns". Rep. Smith was thus seeking the independent reviewer comments and analysis from five NSF grant proposals that he and other committee members, for one reason or another, found questionable. Director Marrett denied the request based on privacy/confidentiality issues, maintaining that the reviews themselves, in addition to the names of the reviewers, must remain private to fully protect the reviewers and the review process, which she explained in her response to Rep. Smith. The ScienceInsider blog has posted an inteview with a committee aid regarding the requested information for the five grants. The aid made clear that the committee didn't want the names of the reviewers, just the content of the reviews themselves. Additionally, the interview lays bare the fact that the committee had been considering the implementation of an "additional layer of accountability" that would occur as a "next step after" peer review. The aid was vague on who and what would constitute this "additional layer".
If I understand the political zeitgeist, it is that (1) everyone dislikes "big governement" in their own special way, (2) everyone is for government accountability in their own special way, and (3) people like that the US is a bastion of high quality, cutting edge research. Peer review - the process of "self-policing" of science by scientists - for grants, publications, etc... is a foundational aspect of the scientific enterprise in the US. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. If you're not a scientist, hang out with some and ask them about "that time they were burned by a reviewer". I promise, they'll have a story to tell you. Quite possibly they were "burned" justifiably. But, as in any established system - yes, even those run by scientists - nothing is 100% perfect all the time. However, the question that seems to be at the heart of the matter here is, "Who is qualified to judge scientific research?" Congress? (The answer is "no", by the way). The peer review system is an imperfect system that is expected to shoulder a massive responsibility - allocating billions of taxpayer dollars. And yes, there will always be funny sounding research proposals that lawmakers will quote when they need to take a stab at the pointy headed know-it-all lab geeks. But the reality that lawmakers must grapple with is that foundational, basic research sometimes sounds funny at its outset. However, some day, that research can turn into things like the internet, or disease vaccines, or unmanned flying military bomber robots. Injecting politics and politicians ("big government") into research funding decisions ("government accountability") can have the unintentional consequence of making the basic research we conduct in the US narrow and short sighted. We pride ourselves on being a country that has big visions and accomplishes big things. If science is guided by the political winds of the moment, then the visions and the accomplishments will cease to be big. If you prefer a more practical perspective, consider what additional bureaucratic layers and government mandates could do to the current scientific funding quagmire. One could write volumes (some people actually do...) on how the current scientific research enterprise could be improved. Scientist will openly acknowledge that there are big parts of the research system that need fixing. Unfortunately - perhaps not surprisingly - Congress is choosing to focus on the wrong thing during tough times. Hopefully we won't pay for it as a nation in the short term - FY 2014 funding - and in the long term by ceding the big ideas, big accomplishments, and big talent to our competitors.
- @EJDimise
The High Quality Research Act would require the NSF director to certify the following 3 things with regard to any research grant (under Sec.2(a)):
- it is in the interest of the US regarding, "national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense"
- it is of high quality and, "answers questions or solves problems that are of the utmost importance to society at large"
- it does not duplicate research that is already being funded by any Federal agency
On the surface, the language may appear more ore less benevolent. The economic times are hard. Across government, there is a push to find savings and eliminate "waste, fraud, and abuse". However, on April 17, the day before the discussion draft of the act was released to the internet, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing with the acting NSF Director Cora Marrett, the chair of the National Science Board Dan Arvizu, and presidential science advisor John Holdren regarding President Obama's FY 2014 NSF budget request. Here, the tone from Republicans on the committee reflected how the seemingly straight forward content of this legislation forebodes an unwelcome injection of politics into the process of funding basic scientific research. With the backdrop of new limits placed on NSF in a spending bill in March, the result of efforts by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) regarding the funding of political science research, which is now limited - by law - to research that promotes the, "national security or the economic interests of the United States", the committee members proceeded to extend similarly narrow logic to any and all NSF grants. In doing so, they employed the time honored tradition of picking out individual grants with names they thought sounded funny and asking the panel members to please justify why the grants were funded. A particularly good exchange between John Holdren and committee member Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) can be viewed via the link embedded in the Holdren quote below:
should support." - John Holdren, co-chair of
the President's Council of Advisors on Science
and Technology (PCAST)
This distills the essence of what makes the current situation so contentious within the scientific community. Where do lines get drawn? What research is "worth" funding? Who gets to decide if a particular project (or discipline) is "in the interest of the US"? Legislation like the Coburn amendment and the High Quality Research Act set dangerous precedents, allowing political motivations and short-term goals to limit, guide, or restrict the direction of basic research.
In more recent developments, acting NSF director Cora Marrett denied a written request from Rep. Smith to make available the, "scientific/technical reviews and the Program Officers Review Analysis" for five grants that were "of interest" and about which he had "concerns". Rep. Smith was thus seeking the independent reviewer comments and analysis from five NSF grant proposals that he and other committee members, for one reason or another, found questionable. Director Marrett denied the request based on privacy/confidentiality issues, maintaining that the reviews themselves, in addition to the names of the reviewers, must remain private to fully protect the reviewers and the review process, which she explained in her response to Rep. Smith. The ScienceInsider blog has posted an inteview with a committee aid regarding the requested information for the five grants. The aid made clear that the committee didn't want the names of the reviewers, just the content of the reviews themselves. Additionally, the interview lays bare the fact that the committee had been considering the implementation of an "additional layer of accountability" that would occur as a "next step after" peer review. The aid was vague on who and what would constitute this "additional layer".
If I understand the political zeitgeist, it is that (1) everyone dislikes "big governement" in their own special way, (2) everyone is for government accountability in their own special way, and (3) people like that the US is a bastion of high quality, cutting edge research. Peer review - the process of "self-policing" of science by scientists - for grants, publications, etc... is a foundational aspect of the scientific enterprise in the US. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. If you're not a scientist, hang out with some and ask them about "that time they were burned by a reviewer". I promise, they'll have a story to tell you. Quite possibly they were "burned" justifiably. But, as in any established system - yes, even those run by scientists - nothing is 100% perfect all the time. However, the question that seems to be at the heart of the matter here is, "Who is qualified to judge scientific research?" Congress? (The answer is "no", by the way). The peer review system is an imperfect system that is expected to shoulder a massive responsibility - allocating billions of taxpayer dollars. And yes, there will always be funny sounding research proposals that lawmakers will quote when they need to take a stab at the pointy headed know-it-all lab geeks. But the reality that lawmakers must grapple with is that foundational, basic research sometimes sounds funny at its outset. However, some day, that research can turn into things like the internet, or disease vaccines, or unmanned flying military bomber robots. Injecting politics and politicians ("big government") into research funding decisions ("government accountability") can have the unintentional consequence of making the basic research we conduct in the US narrow and short sighted. We pride ourselves on being a country that has big visions and accomplishes big things. If science is guided by the political winds of the moment, then the visions and the accomplishments will cease to be big. If you prefer a more practical perspective, consider what additional bureaucratic layers and government mandates could do to the current scientific funding quagmire. One could write volumes (some people actually do...) on how the current scientific research enterprise could be improved. Scientist will openly acknowledge that there are big parts of the research system that need fixing. Unfortunately - perhaps not surprisingly - Congress is choosing to focus on the wrong thing during tough times. Hopefully we won't pay for it as a nation in the short term - FY 2014 funding - and in the long term by ceding the big ideas, big accomplishments, and big talent to our competitors.
- @EJDimise
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