"But it is important to acknowledge that we scientists bear some responsibility for the political whiplash in science funding. We remained mostly quiet as ideological distortions of science picked up speed, undermining the principles of meritocracy and open inquiry, and subverting our key knowledge-producing institutions. We were too apathetic — or too enmeshed in our own work — to participate in policy discussions."
To be honest, this is the part that scares me the most. A lot of academics, even some scientists, didn't see the ideological distortions under the Biden administration as a problem and continue to defend them even as the current administration tried to reverse those distortions and insert their own.
This is very accurate, in my view. It is also somewhat dangerous.
I approve of the efforts to change course under this administration, but I worry about the precedent it sets. However, this sort of thing has been building for decades, as near as I can tell.
For example, I was shocked to discover that politicians supposedly in favor of studying global climate change were cutting the funding repeatedly to our most important data in the field. Once this stuff becomes commonplace and accepted, the situation will get worse.
The authors ask some very relevant questions that must be answered to decide if science is being politicized. I restate their questions and the state of academic science PRIOR to the Trump administration's recent efforts in paranthesis below each.
1. Do political considerations drive and determine the outcomes of the research?
(Yes...political considerations in the partisan scientific community dictated what research is conducted.)
2. Are the funds allocated for only a certain group or class of investigators, but not available to others of comparable or superior qualifications?
(Yes...only tenure track/tenured faculty are given access to research funding which means the extremely partisan faculty staffing universities deny 75% of PhD's the ability to even participate in the research process.)
3. Are investigators prohibited from employing the best scientific or technological tools or theories?
(Yes....see #2 and the consequences to any scientist who dares to question the canon of left wing ideology in science.)
4. Is the language that can be used to describe the proposed research limited or monitored?
(Yes...see #2 and #3)
5. Is the process of identifying the best proposals for funding controlled by political appointees rather than scientists?
(Yes...federal agency program managers who are predominantly on the political left control funding decisions.)
6. Is the process of awarding funds opaque?
(Yes...while scientific panels score proposals, the actual funding decisions remain opaque.)
Given the state of science as created by the academic community prior to President Trump's taking office, it is far too late to complain about the politicization of science. The Trump administration's efforts to DEPOLITICIZE science may not all be fully thought through and some may have unexpected consequences, but the scientific community simply has no credibility in arguing that the government does NOT have the right or need to intervene to de-politicize science. If you doubt this...let us not forget that massive numbers of scientists began protesting the first Trump administration before it had taken ANY actions in 2017 with the "Marches for Science". The scientific community politicized science long before the Trump administration took any action. Time to stop projecting and accept the consequences of those poor decisions.
Do I trust political appointees to make high level policy decisions on the funding of science? Not particularly...but at least they are accountable to the public via election of those who appoint them. The scientific community, as we have seen with Anthony Fauci, Ecohealth Allianc etc. is even LESS trustworthy than political appointees in this regard...and they are not subject to recall or replacement in regular elections.
Sorry...but the scientific community is on the wrong side of history on this one.
I do remember the "Marches For Science". A friend asked me if I would join in.
I investigated them. These were being organized by Islamist terrorist entities dedicated to the obliteration of STEM and Western Civilization. I decided it would not be smart to be involved.
The same thing was true of assorted "Women's Marches", which had the fingerprints of Islamists and terrorists and criminals on them. Many of these women actively advocated for the removal of biological females from the public square, or the imposition of Islamic restrictions on Western women.
When you go out to "protest", figure out who is behind these dopey marches and demonstrations. It might not be who or what you want to support.
Very true. One piece of advice I give to students: " Beware Activists and Advocates. Your best interest is rarely at the core of their agenda." We must remember that those members of the scientific community who protested did so of their own free will...effectively objecting to the voters choice of leadership. They have that right. Of course, the elected leaders chosen by the people have the right to respond by giving the protesters their wish of not working in science with public funds under a system they object to.
The protests from the scientific community are not really all that different than those of industry when child labor and environmental regulations were first put in place. While such regulations can go too far and stifle productivity (which Trump has tried to reign in) they also often serve an important societal purpose. The Southern Plantation owners made the same argument about how ending slavery would impact their economy. In reality, the plantation system actually retarded economic growth in the South compared to the North even before the devastation of the Civil War the Southerners fought to retain that system.
If the presence of government appointees overseeing science is as harmful as stated, explain the success of China. Surely they are not engaging in scientists only decision making about science research spending. Thoughts?
This is a good question. Right now China looks like it is progressing rapidly, but I wonder how long this will continue. The Soviet Union was doing extremely well in some branches of STEM for a few decades, but it did not persist.
Eventually a lack of freedom starts to have an effect. I have worked in a variety of settings in the American R&D system, and places with less freedom started to falter. Some of the very "best" places for research in the US began to stagnate once the freedom began to dissipate. I have seen this over and over, firsthand, actually.
Maintaining a reasonable research environment over the long haul is not an easy thing to do. It is something I have given a fair amount of thought to. I believe such systems can be designed, but this has to be done with care.
This is exactly right. Authoritarian regimes have some robustness, but it does not endure. In the long run, central planning and lack of freedom lead to stagnation and economic demise.
Agreed! My point was that political oversight does not necessarily translate into authoritarianism. There is a middle pathway between the extremes that is probably the best for society overall.
Yes. I think it can be done, but it is not necessarily easy. One has to "thread the needle".
I have written several long essays on this topic over the last 5 or 6 years. I am not sure if any of these could or should appear on HxSTEM since they are somewhat polemical in nature. They are undoubtedly too long for the HxSTEM audience as well.
In addition, HxSTEM consists mainly of academics. I was disappointed by what I observed in the academic sphere more than 30 years ago, so I departed for other shores. I have learned quite a bit from my wanderings, but I am unsure if academics are open to hearing about the wider world of research and development.
We need a functioning R&D community, not only in the West, but worldwide. This includes a functioning academic R&D community, but it is not limited to academia by any means. Can we maintain our current situation and possibly reform it or improve it? Possibly, but this will not be easy.
It will take substantial resources, as well as lots of willpower. I am contemplating this task at the moment.
Agreed. I would argue that the politicization of science in the US has had this effect over the last few decades as academia has become a partisan echo chamber. Critics of NSF and NIH point out that the system increasingly rewards "safe" science without producing nearly the level of breakthroughs we saw in the first years after World War II.
"Whether political control comes from the left or the right, the result will be the loss of our technological supremacy, with devastating consequences for industry and society at large. Moreover, the volatility in how science is prioritized and funded is itself damaging to the scientific enterprise."
Evan, I don't buy this. What Trump did was cut the indirect costs that universities have used to pay for very large non-academic, even anti-academic programs. DEI comes to mind and cost billions of dollars. Administrators screamed that the cuts would jeopardize things like running cyclotrons. But that's false--it requires economizing. Economics isn't only about money--it's the uses of scarce resources that have more than one use.
This happens to be a case in which the scarce resource is money, and schools are being forced to choose between obeying the law, getting rid of illegal DEI programs or financing the things that they're supposed to be financing with those moneys. If 6 grants get 50-70% "indirect costs" to cover running a single cyclotron, that leaves a lot of mad money for the admin to use in ways they shouldn't. Pegging it a a fixed 15% forces them to use it wisely.
I have yet to hear about research programs being shuttered because of lack of funding. Have you?
If you live off the government teat, expect the process to be political.
There is no delegated constitutional power for the Federal government to fund non-defense research. I would strongly support getting the government out of research entirely (with the exception of defense); there will be fewer papers, fewer academic researchers, fewer journals (especially predatory and other junk journals), and as a result of the pruning, much stronger and rigorous science. No government, no politics.
NB: No sour grapes, either. Though most of the funding for my research over the 5 decades of my career have been from non-government sources, I successfully won millions of dollars from NSF and NIH during a brief period. I would happily have abjured those funds if the funding agencies would cease to exist.
I second the motion. A long time ago, I learned The Golden Rule: He or she who has the gold makes the rules. If one doesn't like the rules, then don't take the gold. Of course, most academics throughout history have been supporters of the state, since they are either on the state's payroll or heavily subsidized by it or want to use the state's coercive power to implement their policy schemes. The trouble with having the government for a "whale" client is that it is dominant and subject to the tyranny of the majority.
The cost of higher Ed in the US has grown faster than just about any other category due to these subsidies, while the standards and rigor have declined in favor of adding spa-like features or "advisors." I made it through two degrees without having a single "advisor," and another degree where my "advisor" merely authorized my enrollment. A PhD advisor is a different story, necessarily being a master-apprentice relationship albeit the slowest and most expensive form of professional training.
Less administrative bloat, all else being equal, means more money for research. As usual the middle class has ended up funding others, the upper middle class of the academy in this case. Dropouts with real debt and no degree is a high price to pay to cover the fixed cost of buildings and technology left unused for nearly half the year.
Having experienced the effect of the Bayah-Dole Act of 1980, merging academic research with commercial research is, to my way of thinking, why science in America has been corrupted in the name of the all mighty buck. If that is correct, it can and should be amended.
This is a possibility. However, there are counter-examples, like the Weizmann Institute in Israel and the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria.
Permitting investigators to retain ownership and control of some fraction of the intellectual property they generate is not necessarily a bad thing.
Also, in my admittedly narrow experience, US institutions have made very limited use of the Bayah-Dole Act, and seem to be incredibly incompetent at recognizing advances of commercial value. The data seem to support this view.
There are a LOT of potential reasons for why R&D, including academic R&D, is becoming less efficient and less productive. For example, PIs are now overwhelmed with bureaucratic nonsense and paperwork which was minimal before (see the statements of Marsha McNutt on this topic). I can think of a number of other potential reasons. Sabine Hossenfelder the particle physicist who has turned into a science podcaster has created several segments on this topic, featuring a variety of potential explanations. Peter Thiel has some hypotheses about this. I have my own pet theories.
Perhaps this would be something that should be studied more carefully.
Well I experienced the stifling of the free flow of knowledge at meetings during the Q&A, investigators saying that they were not at liberty to share data because they were involved in the monetization of their work.
Of course, it happens. I have been operating in the proprietary and black spaces for decades. As unfortunate as it might be, I have zero interest in sharing the special information I have access to with the public at large, including my STEM colleagues.
It is just how it is. If you want to protect Western Civilization and/or the economy, you have to accept some restrictions. I am prepared to lobby for those constraints.
I personally have given away technologies worth many, many billions of dollars. What did I get in return? Nothing, nada, bupkiss. Not even a thank-you. So, I learned.
It would not have to be this way if human nature were different. However...
As long as academic researchers depend on the public fisc, i.e., tax dollars involuntarily extracted from voters and allocated by politicians, said politicians will make the decisions about research funding. The *only* way to remove politicization of science is to take politics out of science. Asking for one without the other is like asking electrons to change mass- politicization is inherent to allocation of tax dollars.
Get government completely out of non-defense research.
Let's not be simplistic about this. The spectacle of a scientist lik Angie Rasmussen, who pretty much nailed the covid origin to the Wet Market babbling that, "Trans-women are women!" And the domination of HXa's conference by antivax bullcrap are both politicization of scientists.
So is the domination of HXa by climate denialists and broad sympathy for clever science liars like Roger Pielke, and flat refusal to evaluate scientific criticism the politicization of scientists.
"But it is important to acknowledge that we scientists bear some responsibility for the political whiplash in science funding. We remained mostly quiet as ideological distortions of science picked up speed, undermining the principles of meritocracy and open inquiry, and subverting our key knowledge-producing institutions. We were too apathetic — or too enmeshed in our own work — to participate in policy discussions."
To be honest, this is the part that scares me the most. A lot of academics, even some scientists, didn't see the ideological distortions under the Biden administration as a problem and continue to defend them even as the current administration tried to reverse those distortions and insert their own.
Exactly.
This is very accurate, in my view. It is also somewhat dangerous.
I approve of the efforts to change course under this administration, but I worry about the precedent it sets. However, this sort of thing has been building for decades, as near as I can tell.
For example, I was shocked to discover that politicians supposedly in favor of studying global climate change were cutting the funding repeatedly to our most important data in the field. Once this stuff becomes commonplace and accepted, the situation will get worse.
Yes there were some distortions under Biden.
That does not excuse the distortions under Trump.
You too, Anna Krylov.
The authors ask some very relevant questions that must be answered to decide if science is being politicized. I restate their questions and the state of academic science PRIOR to the Trump administration's recent efforts in paranthesis below each.
1. Do political considerations drive and determine the outcomes of the research?
(Yes...political considerations in the partisan scientific community dictated what research is conducted.)
2. Are the funds allocated for only a certain group or class of investigators, but not available to others of comparable or superior qualifications?
(Yes...only tenure track/tenured faculty are given access to research funding which means the extremely partisan faculty staffing universities deny 75% of PhD's the ability to even participate in the research process.)
3. Are investigators prohibited from employing the best scientific or technological tools or theories?
(Yes....see #2 and the consequences to any scientist who dares to question the canon of left wing ideology in science.)
4. Is the language that can be used to describe the proposed research limited or monitored?
(Yes...see #2 and #3)
5. Is the process of identifying the best proposals for funding controlled by political appointees rather than scientists?
(Yes...federal agency program managers who are predominantly on the political left control funding decisions.)
6. Is the process of awarding funds opaque?
(Yes...while scientific panels score proposals, the actual funding decisions remain opaque.)
Given the state of science as created by the academic community prior to President Trump's taking office, it is far too late to complain about the politicization of science. The Trump administration's efforts to DEPOLITICIZE science may not all be fully thought through and some may have unexpected consequences, but the scientific community simply has no credibility in arguing that the government does NOT have the right or need to intervene to de-politicize science. If you doubt this...let us not forget that massive numbers of scientists began protesting the first Trump administration before it had taken ANY actions in 2017 with the "Marches for Science". The scientific community politicized science long before the Trump administration took any action. Time to stop projecting and accept the consequences of those poor decisions.
Do I trust political appointees to make high level policy decisions on the funding of science? Not particularly...but at least they are accountable to the public via election of those who appoint them. The scientific community, as we have seen with Anthony Fauci, Ecohealth Allianc etc. is even LESS trustworthy than political appointees in this regard...and they are not subject to recall or replacement in regular elections.
Sorry...but the scientific community is on the wrong side of history on this one.
I do remember the "Marches For Science". A friend asked me if I would join in.
I investigated them. These were being organized by Islamist terrorist entities dedicated to the obliteration of STEM and Western Civilization. I decided it would not be smart to be involved.
The same thing was true of assorted "Women's Marches", which had the fingerprints of Islamists and terrorists and criminals on them. Many of these women actively advocated for the removal of biological females from the public square, or the imposition of Islamic restrictions on Western women.
When you go out to "protest", figure out who is behind these dopey marches and demonstrations. It might not be who or what you want to support.
Very true. One piece of advice I give to students: " Beware Activists and Advocates. Your best interest is rarely at the core of their agenda." We must remember that those members of the scientific community who protested did so of their own free will...effectively objecting to the voters choice of leadership. They have that right. Of course, the elected leaders chosen by the people have the right to respond by giving the protesters their wish of not working in science with public funds under a system they object to.
The protests from the scientific community are not really all that different than those of industry when child labor and environmental regulations were first put in place. While such regulations can go too far and stifle productivity (which Trump has tried to reign in) they also often serve an important societal purpose. The Southern Plantation owners made the same argument about how ending slavery would impact their economy. In reality, the plantation system actually retarded economic growth in the South compared to the North even before the devastation of the Civil War the Southerners fought to retain that system.
If the presence of government appointees overseeing science is as harmful as stated, explain the success of China. Surely they are not engaging in scientists only decision making about science research spending. Thoughts?
This is a good question. Right now China looks like it is progressing rapidly, but I wonder how long this will continue. The Soviet Union was doing extremely well in some branches of STEM for a few decades, but it did not persist.
Eventually a lack of freedom starts to have an effect. I have worked in a variety of settings in the American R&D system, and places with less freedom started to falter. Some of the very "best" places for research in the US began to stagnate once the freedom began to dissipate. I have seen this over and over, firsthand, actually.
Maintaining a reasonable research environment over the long haul is not an easy thing to do. It is something I have given a fair amount of thought to. I believe such systems can be designed, but this has to be done with care.
This is exactly right. Authoritarian regimes have some robustness, but it does not endure. In the long run, central planning and lack of freedom lead to stagnation and economic demise.
Agreed! My point was that political oversight does not necessarily translate into authoritarianism. There is a middle pathway between the extremes that is probably the best for society overall.
Yes. I think it can be done, but it is not necessarily easy. One has to "thread the needle".
I have written several long essays on this topic over the last 5 or 6 years. I am not sure if any of these could or should appear on HxSTEM since they are somewhat polemical in nature. They are undoubtedly too long for the HxSTEM audience as well.
In addition, HxSTEM consists mainly of academics. I was disappointed by what I observed in the academic sphere more than 30 years ago, so I departed for other shores. I have learned quite a bit from my wanderings, but I am unsure if academics are open to hearing about the wider world of research and development.
We need a functioning R&D community, not only in the West, but worldwide. This includes a functioning academic R&D community, but it is not limited to academia by any means. Can we maintain our current situation and possibly reform it or improve it? Possibly, but this will not be easy.
It will take substantial resources, as well as lots of willpower. I am contemplating this task at the moment.
Agreed. I would argue that the politicization of science in the US has had this effect over the last few decades as academia has become a partisan echo chamber. Critics of NSF and NIH point out that the system increasingly rewards "safe" science without producing nearly the level of breakthroughs we saw in the first years after World War II.
I like it that Heterodox Stem is republishing essays from other places. It acts as a curator for me. Keep doing it!
"Whether political control comes from the left or the right, the result will be the loss of our technological supremacy, with devastating consequences for industry and society at large. Moreover, the volatility in how science is prioritized and funded is itself damaging to the scientific enterprise."
Evan, I don't buy this. What Trump did was cut the indirect costs that universities have used to pay for very large non-academic, even anti-academic programs. DEI comes to mind and cost billions of dollars. Administrators screamed that the cuts would jeopardize things like running cyclotrons. But that's false--it requires economizing. Economics isn't only about money--it's the uses of scarce resources that have more than one use.
This happens to be a case in which the scarce resource is money, and schools are being forced to choose between obeying the law, getting rid of illegal DEI programs or financing the things that they're supposed to be financing with those moneys. If 6 grants get 50-70% "indirect costs" to cover running a single cyclotron, that leaves a lot of mad money for the admin to use in ways they shouldn't. Pegging it a a fixed 15% forces them to use it wisely.
I have yet to hear about research programs being shuttered because of lack of funding. Have you?
If you live off the government teat, expect the process to be political.
There is no delegated constitutional power for the Federal government to fund non-defense research. I would strongly support getting the government out of research entirely (with the exception of defense); there will be fewer papers, fewer academic researchers, fewer journals (especially predatory and other junk journals), and as a result of the pruning, much stronger and rigorous science. No government, no politics.
NB: No sour grapes, either. Though most of the funding for my research over the 5 decades of my career have been from non-government sources, I successfully won millions of dollars from NSF and NIH during a brief period. I would happily have abjured those funds if the funding agencies would cease to exist.
I second the motion. A long time ago, I learned The Golden Rule: He or she who has the gold makes the rules. If one doesn't like the rules, then don't take the gold. Of course, most academics throughout history have been supporters of the state, since they are either on the state's payroll or heavily subsidized by it or want to use the state's coercive power to implement their policy schemes. The trouble with having the government for a "whale" client is that it is dominant and subject to the tyranny of the majority.
The cost of higher Ed in the US has grown faster than just about any other category due to these subsidies, while the standards and rigor have declined in favor of adding spa-like features or "advisors." I made it through two degrees without having a single "advisor," and another degree where my "advisor" merely authorized my enrollment. A PhD advisor is a different story, necessarily being a master-apprentice relationship albeit the slowest and most expensive form of professional training.
Less administrative bloat, all else being equal, means more money for research. As usual the middle class has ended up funding others, the upper middle class of the academy in this case. Dropouts with real debt and no degree is a high price to pay to cover the fixed cost of buildings and technology left unused for nearly half the year.
It's certainly a Heterodox view!
Having experienced the effect of the Bayah-Dole Act of 1980, merging academic research with commercial research is, to my way of thinking, why science in America has been corrupted in the name of the all mighty buck. If that is correct, it can and should be amended.
This is a possibility. However, there are counter-examples, like the Weizmann Institute in Israel and the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria.
Permitting investigators to retain ownership and control of some fraction of the intellectual property they generate is not necessarily a bad thing.
Also, in my admittedly narrow experience, US institutions have made very limited use of the Bayah-Dole Act, and seem to be incredibly incompetent at recognizing advances of commercial value. The data seem to support this view.
There are a LOT of potential reasons for why R&D, including academic R&D, is becoming less efficient and less productive. For example, PIs are now overwhelmed with bureaucratic nonsense and paperwork which was minimal before (see the statements of Marsha McNutt on this topic). I can think of a number of other potential reasons. Sabine Hossenfelder the particle physicist who has turned into a science podcaster has created several segments on this topic, featuring a variety of potential explanations. Peter Thiel has some hypotheses about this. I have my own pet theories.
Perhaps this would be something that should be studied more carefully.
Well I experienced the stifling of the free flow of knowledge at meetings during the Q&A, investigators saying that they were not at liberty to share data because they were involved in the monetization of their work.
Of course, it happens. I have been operating in the proprietary and black spaces for decades. As unfortunate as it might be, I have zero interest in sharing the special information I have access to with the public at large, including my STEM colleagues.
It is just how it is. If you want to protect Western Civilization and/or the economy, you have to accept some restrictions. I am prepared to lobby for those constraints.
I personally have given away technologies worth many, many billions of dollars. What did I get in return? Nothing, nada, bupkiss. Not even a thank-you. So, I learned.
It would not have to be this way if human nature were different. However...
As long as academic researchers depend on the public fisc, i.e., tax dollars involuntarily extracted from voters and allocated by politicians, said politicians will make the decisions about research funding. The *only* way to remove politicization of science is to take politics out of science. Asking for one without the other is like asking electrons to change mass- politicization is inherent to allocation of tax dollars.
Get government completely out of non-defense research.
Let's not be simplistic about this. The spectacle of a scientist lik Angie Rasmussen, who pretty much nailed the covid origin to the Wet Market babbling that, "Trans-women are women!" And the domination of HXa's conference by antivax bullcrap are both politicization of scientists.
So is the domination of HXa by climate denialists and broad sympathy for clever science liars like Roger Pielke, and flat refusal to evaluate scientific criticism the politicization of scientists.