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WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

scientificamerican.com

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Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#131

Post by kelnos »

ncallaway wrote: post #15
delichon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who have the power of the purse should be accountable to the voters.

That’s Congress and they are. The executive branch does not hold the power of the purse, and the fact that you can casually use that phrase in reference to the executive branch shows how far we’ve fallen as a country in a decade. A very sad state of affairs.

If you think the executive branch doesn't now have some de facto power of the purse, you haven't been paying attention for the last 16 months.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#133

Post by nomilk »

defrost wrote: post #126
nomilk wrote: post #105

This means research projects will be optimised for political boasting. Sounds terrible, but is it? It incentivises high-impact research (otherwise politicians can't boast about it), and less research into trivialities that common sense says aren't worth the public funding.

A lot of political appointees struggled with Why should we pay for shrimp running on treadmills? (The case for curiosity-driven research) ~ https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/03/basic-science-curiosity-... Some just couldn't grasp the why, others understood perfectly well why their major donors wanted to squash studies on environmental stressors that might impact fisheries.

Being curious definitely leads to discoveries. But important discoveries can also be made by saying "Topic X, if better understood, might lead to a cure for cancer - let's look into (and fund) that".

We could think of this problem as a slider from 0-100 where we allocate from 'none' up to 'all' our research budget to curiosity-driven research.

Political appointees having a say will likely move the slider toward the 0 (not necessarily to zero). I'm just not sure it's a bad thing.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#134

Post by BrenBarn »

rayiner wrote: post #31
paulryanrogers wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congress can’t turn over the expenditure of taxpayer funds to people who aren’t politically accountable. If Congress doesn't stop the executive and the Supreme Court overrules any legal blockades then ... I guess they can and are doing so RN.

> Congress doesn't stop the executive Congress won't stop the executive because the party that won the executive also won Congress by almost 4 million votes. That's not a sign of the system not working, it's a sign of the system working as intended.

No, it's a sign of the system working so horrifically badly that people have entirely lost sight of how it might actually be able to work.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#135

Post by kelnos »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #95
rayiner wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That question is about appropriate roles. That's exactly what I meant when I said: "the important question is: who are the people who have the power to decide how taxpayer money is spent?" The answer obviously is: political actors. Ultimately it's Congress. And sometimes Congress has delegated that role to the President. Within that framework, the institutional principles of "science" are irrelevant, except insofar…

You've restated your flawed assertions, you continue to reassign the roles, and you're conflating Congress with political appointees. > The problem scientific institutionalists face is that they've squandered a lot of public trust over the decades The left generally trusts science and the scientific community, while the right has fallen prey to the right-wing war on science and truth. This war was explicitly designed…

> You've restated your flawed assertions, you continue to reassign the roles, and you're conflating Congress with political appointees.

That's at best a misunderstanding of the GP's argument, at worst a bad-faith response. GP said:

> "the important question is: who are the people who have the power to decide how taxpayer money is spent?" The answer obviously is: political actors. Ultimately it's Congress. And sometimes Congress has delegated that role to the President.

That is 100% correct. Congress controls spending. Congress delegated the details of that role in this case to the president, and the president wants political appointees making these decisions, not scientists and subject matter experts.

I don't like this state of affairs, but it seems to be an entirely legal one, consistent with the constitution and how our political system is set up. It sucks, but in 2024 the people decided that this is who they wanted in charge.

> The left generally trusts science and the scientific community

I'm not sure that's actually true in general. The left certainly is much more trusting of scientists than the right, but that trust is not absolute, and things have happened (like initial COVID response, as an example) to erode some of that trust.

> while the right has fallen prey to the right-wing war on science and truth.

Agreed.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#136

Post by BrenBarn »

rayiner wrote: post #8
pstuart wrote: post #4

I'm curious to see how this is defended by the party members here. Science should be guided by science, not ideology.

The country runs on the principles of the constitution, not the institutional principles of science. Control over spending of taxpayer funds always must remain within the political system. Voters can always choose to turn over those decisions to scientists they trust. For much of the 20th century, that’s what voters did. But if they don’t trust the priorities of the current scientific establishment, they can also cho…

> The country runs on the principles of the constitution, not the institutional principles of science.

Well no wonder we're so fucked. The constitution is a disaster.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#137

Post by BrenBarn »

rayiner wrote: post #22
jordanpg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lovely thought but it assumes, as with so many other things about our republican form of government, that the political appointees are good faith actors, at least with respect to funding of science. There are many reasons to suspect that the goal here is not just control of funding, but the defenestration of science more broadly because scientific findings tend to conflict with assertions politicians would l…

> That's a lovely thought but it assumes, as with so many other things about our republican form of government, that the political appointees are good faith actors, at least with respect to funding of science. It doesn't assume that. It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution. And the institutional principles of particular fields are subordinate to the constituti…

If everything is just people, why worry about the constitution at all?

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#138

Post by defrost »

nomilk wrote: post #133
defrost wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of political appointees struggled with Why should we pay for shrimp running on treadmills? (The case for curiosity-driven research) ~ https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/03/basic-science-curiosity-... Some just couldn't grasp the why, others understood perfectly well why their major donors wanted to squash studies on environmental stressors that might impact fisheries.

Being curious definitely leads to discoveries. But important discoveries can also be made by saying "Topic X, if better understood, might lead to a cure for cancer - let's look into (and fund) that". We could think of this problem as a slider from 0-100 where we allocate from 'none' up to 'all' our research budget to curiosity-driven research. Political appointees having a say will likely move the slider toward the 0…

Shrimp running treadmills, specifically, wasn't idle curiosity driven blue sky research though - it was tied to creating real metrics for measuring impact of change in marine environments on the health of the food we eat.

It's a good example of "political types" making a song and dance based on "common sense" to save trivial amounts of money while making the health of marine systems opaque for the benefit of political donors.

That's a bad thing for people at large, and a good thing for polluting mega corps that want to privatise benefits and socialise costs.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#139

Post by kelnos »

FireBeyond wrote: post #71
rayiner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a lovely thought but it assumes, as with so many other things about our republican form of government, that the political appointees are good faith actors, at least with respect to funding of science. It doesn't assume that. It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution. And the institutional principles of particular fields are subordinate to the constituti…

> It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution. How many times has this administration blatantly ignored the Constitution, starting with, for a simple example, separation of powers? You're all locked in on "scientists should be beholden to the government, as that is the lay and law of the land" which ignoring the rather large mote that is "this current government c…

I don't think any of that is relevant to the argument. The fact of the matter is that Congress controls spending of taxpayer dollars, and at times has delegated some of the details of that to the executive branch.

There's no law that says "only scientists and subject matter experts can decide where grant money goes". Congress has largely left it up to the executive branch to set up a group of people, with whatever qualifications it wants (such as "loyal sycophant to the president"), to make these decisions.

I agree that this administration has taken a huge dump on the constitution, but that's a completely separate issue.

We can be angry that this what's happening, and adamant that scientists and experts should be making these decisions, but the people elected a Congress and President that wants to go another way, and that's how our system of government is set up.

We'll have to do better this November and in 2028 if we want to change things.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#140

Post by kelnos »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #48
rayiner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a lovely thought but it assumes, as with so many other things about our republican form of government, that the political appointees are good faith actors, at least with respect to funding of science. It doesn't assume that. It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution. And the institutional principles of particular fields are subordinate to the constituti…

It seems like your argument is proving way too much. If next President announces that he feels rural hospitals are an inefficient use of resources, and so all residency programs outside of major metro areas are cancelled, would you accept that as a legitimate use of funding discretion? To me it would sound like an obvious campaign of retribution against groups he finds it politically convenient to punish. (A campaign…

I mean, if that's what the law allows, then sure, that would be a valid thing for the next president to do. It would be bad for the country to do so, but plenty of things that are bad for the country are legal for the government to do.

We'd have no choice but to accept that as a legitimate use of funding discretion, assuming that actually is the case (I don't know the law related to this, so I can't say). We can be upset at that decision, but we'd still have to accept it as legitimate.

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