Researchers say this new Trump rule could destroy American science as we know it. They’re fighting back

A boat motors by as the Bidwell Bar Bridge is surrounded by fire in Lake Oroville during the Bear fire in September 2020. Human-caused climate change and droughts have exacerbated wildfires in the US and around the world. (Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Scientists across multiple disciplines are sounding the alarm after the White House proposed taking greater control over how scientific research gets funded and allowing political appointees to decide whether to approve scientific grants.

Critics of the proposed rule say it would codify the administration’s attempts to destroy the scientific research enterprise in the U.S. that has led to remarkable discoveries on treating cancer, HIV and rare diseases — as well as understanding weather and climate science and developing artificial intelligence. It could have far-reaching implications on what kinds of research topics get studied in the first place.

One of the main casualties in OMB’s proposal would be the country’s longstanding scientific peer review process for grantmaking. Peer review has been widely used since after the Second World War research boom, and relies on panels of experts in their fields judging federal funding decisions on the scientific merit of the grant proposals, rather than any politically-motivated criteria.

The proposed rule would also ban research on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as gender, and stop federally funded international scientific collaborations. And OMB’s changes could target more than scientific research — applying to other federal grant awards from agencies to state and local governments.

“This proposal does not just apply to scientific research funding, it applies to other federal awards in all kinds of contexts,” said Stanford Law School professor Lisa Larrimore Ouellette.

Kate Marvel, a climate scientist who recently left NASA due to political interference in climate-science research there, said peer review has long been an enabler of America’s scientific leadership.

“One of the reasons the USA has historically been such a research superpower is that we’ve had a merit-based science funding system, where research is funded by the federal government based on the assessments of other scientists,” she said.

“The system wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t stupid,” Marvel added. “Putting uninformed political hacks in charge of it is deeply stupid.”

An OMB spokesman said the proposed rule would “bring transparency to the grantmaking process and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.”

“Federal grants were already politicized to promote a far-left agenda,” the spokesman said. “That ends now.”

A plan to protect science

Like any other federal regulation, the OMB proposal is undergoing a public comment period before it gets finalized. Now, individual researchers, scientific journals, universities and medical societies are using this time to flood the zone with public comments. It’s a longshot attempt to trigger Congressional review.

“My goal was to try and mobilize as many people in the scientific community or adjacent communities — patient communities, science lovers, anybody can submit to this docket,” said Elizabeth Ginexi, a former senior program officer at the National Institutes of Health. “They’re required by law to read every single comment and respond to every single comment.”

Ginexi left the NIH after more than 20 years when the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency came in and started slashing programs all over the federal government. She took the deferred resignation program and has watched the administration try (and sometimes fail) to cut various grant programs. Ginexi said the sweep of the proposed OMB rule alarms her.

“When we’re trying to come up with new clinical trials to test out a new therapeutic for a rare form of cancer, we want the scientists to be judging the merit of those applications,” she said. “Is this clinical trial ready for prime time? Is the molecular biology correct? Who should be making that decision — other scientists, oncologists, or do you want Russell Vought and Donald Trump making that decision?”

Far-reaching impacts

The changes at OMB could impact issue areas from climate science to addiction research.

“Quite frankly, if this goes through, we’re going to see an uptick in addiction and overdose,” said Diane Fishbein, a senior scientist studying addiction at the University of North Carolina, representing the Addiction Science Defense Network.

Eliminating addiction research on the basis of race, ethnicity or gender is not an abstract concept; it could be devastating to real-world people struggling with addiction, Fishbein said. For instance, federally funded research has shown that intervening early with children and adolescents who may be experimenting with less addictive drugs can be a big part of stopping addiction early.

“If we ignore the social determinants of health and other very scientifically important topics, what will happen is this unequal, uneven distribution of services that could otherwise help all communities, all children, all families,” Fishbein said. “This rule basically takes out the ability to really focus on scientific terms, they’re not ideological terms.”

OMB’s rule change could also significantly limit the scope of climate and weather research that gets funded, putting the country at a disadvantage relative to other nations, such as China, which are stepping up in these fields.

Climate scientists warned that the influence of politics in science funding decisions could prevent important new scientific breakthroughs and set their field back years.

“The proposal to base funding decisions on alignment with the administration’s agenda is a particularly acute threat for climate and weather funding, which protects our nation’s infrastructure, economy, agriculture, public safety, and national security,” said Kim Cobb, who leads the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society.

U.S. President Donald Trump has falsely called human-caused climate change a “hoax” and repeatedly proposed budgets that would gut climate research. Congress has pushed back against those funding cuts, but the new rule is seen by some advocates as an end run around lawmakers, since it would assert more executive branch authority over spending.

Rick Spinrad, an oceanographer who headed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the Biden administration, said other countries — such as the former Soviet Union — have let politics dictate research funding with disastrous results.

He also said the OMB proposal contradicts scientific integrity policies put in place at federal agencies, including NOAA, during the past two decades. These have been aimed at limiting political interference in scientific research and communication.

“That all goes down the tube with this rule,” he said.