I have been around quite a while. I remember rotary phones and party lines. I have seen a lot and done a lot. I have lived through many “the sky is falling” events. I offer my unvarnished insight, take it or leave it.
This is not me “thinking about” or “supposing” — I speak from experience working with many federal agencies (including NIH) and U.S. universities.
- I have watched formerly objective journals slide down the slippery slope of editorializing, to the point of questioning the reliability of the studies they publish.
- I have talked with prestigious professors who were quite distressed about their universities (yes, plural) being bought out wholly by foreign interests.
- I have had frank discussions with researchers saying it’s not about the science or the mission - it’s about the money.
- I have had frank discussions with senior government leaders explicitly explaining how they (often unlawfully) manipulate the system to line their pockets.
- I have seen so much government funding denied because the lead was not the right sex or did not have the right color skin. (Having been on the inside of many source selection events, it most frequently boils down to favoritism and kickbacks, with ideology being the excuse for the outcome.)
- And pharmaceutical companies, like Novartis? I have watched their drug pushing in person, calling on doctors offices, borderline bribes, and strategies such as a pharmaceutical sales team wining and dining a doctor, using fine food and pretty women to push their wares. (It takes quite a bit of self control to avoid going on a long diatribe about how positively evil the pharmaceutical companies are.)
The whole damned system is corrupt to the core. The root of the corruption is not ideology — it is money. Ideology is the veneer applied to make change palatable to the public. Congress discreetly turned a blind eye until the problem got out of hand. Gerrymandering and winner-take-all politics distorted the proper functioning of Congress. Runaway inflation was the first time the structural problems significantly leaked into the public eye.
Taxes are levied on the American people and collected under threat of violence. That money should first and foremost go toward our collective safety and common defense. Instead, there is a long line of people, hands out, asking "How much will you pay me to not riot in the streets?" The whole system has gone off the rails. Competition for resources, which are no longer so abundant, breeds conflict. Congress has had decades to correct course. They did not. Why? Because nobody is willing to compromise. The incessant argument of “I am right and you are wrong” has lead to a significant cultural shift, which is what we are experiencing now.
What is happening at NIH and NSF has nothing to do with line items or ROI. It is about being swept up in a large cultural revolution precipitated by economic mismanagement and inflamed by a strategy of gradual Orwellian newspeak that has been spreading since the 1990s.