Benjamin Dubansky, Brooke Dubansky, Brandon Ballengée, and Christopher Just, in collaboration with Le Bleu Perdu Project, "Fresh Sea," from the series Né dans le peche (Born in Sin), 2024. Digitized image from a histology slide of American alligator osteoderm, stained with a modified version of Ramón y Cajal’s picroindigo-carmine and Kernechtrot Nuclear Fast Red. Courtesy of the artists, Le Bleu Perdu Project, Atelier de la Nature.

Events

What IS Going On in Science Policy?

The actions of the second Trump administration have caused disruption across the scientific enterprise. To what extent does the upheaval reflect the administration’s new ambitions for science policy? And how might this era of destabilization itself change the trajectory of the country’s leadership in science and technology?

In this transformed landscape, how can the effects of change be measured? And where does science policy go from here? Join us on Wednesday, April 23 at 3 p.m. ET for a conversation with Divyansh Kaushik, Jason Rittenberg, Caroline Wagner, Carrie Wolinetz, and Mitch Ambrose as moderator about what IS going on in science policy.

Panelists

  • Divyansh Kaushik, vice president, Beacon Global Strategies
  • Jason Rittenberg, principal, Excel Regional Solutions
  • Caroline Wagner, professor, The Ohio State University
  • Carrie Wolinetz, senior principal, Lewis-Burke Associates LLC
  • Mitch Ambrose (moderator), director, FYI: Science Policy News from AIP

Watch the Recording

Chat Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for formatting and to remove Zoom logistical information that is no longer relevant. Please also note that the opinions and perspectives of commenters, writers, interviewees and guests do not represent an official statement, policy or perspective from Arizona State University.

Mitch Ambrose: Here’s a link to the Michael Kratsios letter and the subsequent speech.

Kimberly Quach: Here are a couple pieces by Caroline Wagner and co-authors about balancing security with opennness. “The Trap of Securitizing Science” with Tommy Shih and “Open countries have strong science” with Koen Jonkers.

Bob Cook-Deegan: Agree with Carrie that one remarkable aspect of the many statements on science and tech policy is the focus on AI and infotech, but inattention to health and life sciences.

Megan Nicholson: Other perspectives on balancing research security and openness in the Issues forum.

jon klono: Advent of strides in computational automation took attention away from biotech. I wonder if the NSCEB report will help sway exec admin and other branches/levels of government to include biotech as a salient emerging tech.

Caroline Wagner: “Presidential Memorandum on United States Government-Supported Research and Development National Security Policy” from the first Trump administration.

Deborah Stine: The expansion of OSTP to more focus than in the past on life sciences occurred during the first Obama Administration with the appointment of Eric Lander & Harold Varmus as co-heads of PCAST.  The OSTP of the first Trump Administration was not that active in anything.  Biden kept in the life sciences focus, but it’s not too surprising to me at least that OSTP is returning back to the physical sciences as a focus and leaving it to the HHS leadership for life sciences, which was done in the past.

Kimberly Quach: Do you have thoughts on the speech or letter? We would love to hear from you in the chat as well.

Kimberly Quach: Another perspective on research security by Alex Rubin. “Winning the Tech War”

Deborah Stine: The focus of the Trump letter is really on the economy and making money.  Perhaps because of the pandemic and the response to it, he believes health policy (like environmental policy) is a deterrent to making money.  So perhaps one key for action is to show the relationship between health research and the pharmaceutical industry and the making of money.  At this stage, I haven’t seen statements where Pharma is incorporated into the administration’s definition of manufacturing.

John Alic: Am I’m the only one that thinks OSTP is little more than a talk-shop, close to powerless. The power is in the agencies. And I see no indication that there’s any overall set of priorities in this administration—or will be in the future.

jon klono: Research is a niche that is not subject to export controls (I forgot the policy), but what if that changes as we continue to stress the nat. sec. reverence of research?

Howard Gobstein: does make one wonder John!  Almost makes one think the OSTP talk was given at another time in another place  – divorced from reality of action by agencies

Deborah Stine: I was a staff member in the Obama OSTP and it was definitely more than a talk shop.  The Trump OSTP never really got anything done due to the late appointments (e.g., I think PCAST only was in operation the last year).  I think it’s too early to tell what will occur in Trump 2 OSTP.

Bob Cook-Deegan:   The tension between security and openness is very real in life sciences, especially health research.  The decision two weeks ago to deny China access to controlled access data (e.g., dbGaP) has very little to do with national security in the military sense.  On the Chinese side, national laws requiring government approval to share data and samples across borders truly hampers global efforts to build tools like Earth BioGenome, Human Pangenome, Human Cell Atlas, etc.

E William COLGLAZIER:  US Research in Retreat?

John Alic: OMB has the power over agencies.

Jeff Alexander-RTI: I feel like if the OSTP Director is able to ally with the OMB Director, OSTP will have real influence–we saw that under Jack Gibbons.

jon klono: Agree with John Alic, the only strategy is what the demagogue/authoritarian says. Which is what he wanted for this admin, he hated all the activity in government that he didn’t personally dictate and control.

Judith Weis: The “inattention” to health and life sciences that Bob Cook-Deegan mentions is accompanied by huge cuts in NIH, FDC, CDC funding. The situation is even more dire for environmental research with huge cuts in the EPA (Office of Research and Development) and NOAA research. Some grants in “ecology” have been rescinded because the title included the word “biodiversity” which would be funny if it weren’t tragic.

Juan Ignacio Gonzalez: How dependent are US basic research capabilities to those of China?

Bridget Kelly: Involving the social sciences is critical to continually navigating hat balance.

Megan Nicholson: More from the Issues archives on research security and the complexities of assessing the risks of a “dynamic threat” – a piece from our winter 25 issue by John Gannon, Richard Meserve, and Maria Zuber, “Reconsidering Research Security.”

Deborah Stine: I agree with Jeff that the key will be the OMB/OSTP partnership.  We’ll then see if the OSTP director is able to influence the various federal agency budgets — even if there are budget cuts, the question is which agency and programs get cut.  Jack Marburger (GW Bush Director)  was definitely influential in getting more money for NSF, NIST, and the DOE Office of Science.

Anjuli Bamzai: Around 400 grants at NSF were abruptly terminated last Friday due to changing agency priorities and/or recent EOs. Could the panelists provide insights on what the changing agency priorities are.  Thanks!

jon klono: It’s sad how China restricts the data from their research. Even when their researchers join global initiatives (for example BioGenome, as Bob Cook-Degan mentions)

Deborah Stine: Probably the first notion of budget impact by the OSTP director will be the annual OMB/OSTP joint budget memo in August.

Rodrigo Araiza Bravo: Can you post any links related to proposed science agency funding cuts?

John Alic: On putting an effective filter between know-how—which is what the long ago Bucy report brought to export control thinking–demands considerable sophistication in actually understand technological advance, innovation, and so on. Today there’s just too many agencies with some sort of place in the export control regime. The implication, perhaps, is there’s little chance of anything other than a blunt hammer, rather than some sort of managed strategy.

Kayla Smith: Is there any literature that compares how Trump 1.0 handled science policy and how Obama in both terms handled science policy? This could be a book, manuscript, op-ed, etc.

Lisa Margonelli: Rodrigo—one place to look for science agency funding is FYI.

Michael Thompson:  We should include recent cuts to research in agriculture. USDA funds much research related to food, crop production, soil science, animal science — all under imminent threat — not only in research distributed in collaboration with universities but also with USDA research (ARS and NRCS).

Megan Nicholson: The Kratsios letter, again.

Lisa Margonelli: The piece about trust that Caroline is referring to is here.

Deborah Stine:  The Earth Day note make it clear that it’s all about the money — “leveraging environmental policies rooted in reality to promote economic growth” — and when the Administration says “economic growth” that means in months.  So showing the long-term economic growth due to R&D won’t cut it in this Administration’s priorities.

jon klono: Alongside the leveraging of funding against universities, will the reductions in spending trigger a reorientation of science away from federal funding?

Divyansh Kaushik: Good piece from David Shedd, former Acting Director of Defense Intelligence Agency and former Deputy Director of National Intelligence here.

jon klono: Will industry, philanthropy, private capital now invest more into research?

Emily Trunnell: Re-invigorating science is the right idea. We need to recognize the real need for reform (& the calls for this from the public) but do so in an evidence-based way. I wrote this recently about biomedical research in particular.

Deborah Stine: I remember Norm Augustine talking about when he was CEO at Northrop Grumman and talking about the benefits of investing in R&D there to Wall Street, and they complained how short-sighted he was as they were looking for returns in the next quarter and (if I remember correctly) he had to abandon the program.

E William COLGLAZIER: Question for speakers: what have you seen or expect from foreign science communities and their governments being willing to engage with US scientists or to come to the US for collaborations?

John Alic: On cutting particular projects at particular agencies, I’d think the place to start is numbers—numbers of projects in the agency portfolio & the domain-specific knowledge needed even to understand proposal language, much less grasping the thrust & implications. The obvious place to start is NIH, which in the past has had 40,000-50,000 projects, most extramural, underway at any one time. There is absolutely no way that any kind of Quick Look could evaluate these. Certainly the DOG-E crew couldn’t do anything but look at titles (not even abstracts). Just thin about — 40,000-50,000 projects to be scrutinized so the portfolio can be sanitized. It’s hard to see anything other than slash & burn.

Caitlin Schrein: 400+ grant terminations at NSF this week

Jeff Alexander-RTI: Emily, I absolutely agree. Innovation in PhD training and postdocs is a huge opportunity that might be facilitated by this damaging disruption.

Anthony Boccanfuso: Do we have any proposed recommendations on how to meld the R&D communities priorities with those of the current administration.

jon klono: For @William Colglazier: check this out: “Exclusive: a Nature analysis signals the beginnings of a US science brain drain”

Kennan Salinero: Thank you to whoever asked the question about imagining reform in this time of disruption (or post-disruption).

Zachary Pirtle: I submitted a question about ‘who does science policy’, linking to this Issues survey from last year on the topic. I do wonder if a lot of people who currently call their work ‘policy’ might start referring to it by other names.

jon klono: In the view of the admin, these decisions should be made by political appointees loyal to the administration. That was his vision that he started to try to implement last time and he is continuing now.

Kathryn Kelley: Reminds me of the National Academies of Science “train track” infographic from 2020:

Jeff Alexander-RTI:   For those who haven’t seen it, there’s a crowdsourced list of canceled NSF grants.

Ruby Hickman: Similar crowdsourced list of NIH grant terminations:

Rian Lund Dahlberg: A couple of items that folk might be interested in

– Upcoming NASEM Study: Improving the Regulatory Efficiency and Reducing Administrative Workload to Strengthen Competitiveness and Productivity of U.S. Research

– NASEM Event: Reimagining STEMM Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Career Development

John Alic: We (the US) exemplifies high entropy governance. What we’re seeing is an acceleration in entropy generation. And could argue that’s in fact the priority: it’s the powerful & wealthy players that have at least theoretically the ability to generate negative entropy—to their benefit.

Kimberly Quach: Some recent Issues pieces about trust: (1) The Strange New Politics of Science by Tony Mills and Price St. Clair, and (2) Who’s Afraid to Share Science in Their Listserv? By Celinda Lake and Emily Garner.

jon klono: I would say that industry used to be a bedrock of basic research – the legacy of dew point and dow. It has been the accelerated exception for investment return, and high ROI, in our financial systems. This stripping of basic research from companies was probably accelerated after WW2 (I think), where government stepped in as the premier funder of basic funding. Or correctly me if my perception of history is wrong.

Deborah Stine: @Caroline I think faculty have a rebellious streak but I don’t think university leadership does as you can see that by their responses to Trump Admin action.

Sabrina Sidl: @deborah 100pct agree  academic leadership and administration are super outdated at best

Anthony Boccanfuso: why do we fund R&D if not to improve the human condition?????

Bridget Kelly: A risk with this approach becomes who gets to define what qualifies as ‘value’

Emily Trunnell: YES, Anthony!

Jeff Alexander-RTI: @Jon Klono – Businesses have actually increased their investment in basic research over the last 10 years. The difference is that it is much more highly targeted and linked more closely to potential commercial opportunities (like AI and quantum computing).

Anthony Boccanfuso: UIDP welcomes your input on our SAMI initiative.

Anthony Boccanfuso: trying to think differently about partnerships

Jennifer Kopach: Anyone who can step up in this environment can and must! Even little old Science Olympiad is funding early career research now – filling the gap! LFG! We won’t let science and research wither and die.

Caroline Wagner: Former NSF advisors, please email me about a letter about the role of advisors.

Rami Hussien: break the silo’s, translation for impact, implement a culture of service. #openscience

Megan Nicholson: Thanks everyone for joining and contributing to the conversation. Keep reading Issues!!