Ever since Donald Trump was elected President for a second time in 2024, I’ve been first warning about, and then lamenting, how his administration would devastate US federal science problems. Specifically, it was very obvious that President Trump, Project 2025, and the entire right wing establishment that supports him wanted to transform US science policy, particularly biomedical science policy, to make it conform to their ideology, regardless of what rigorous, high quality science found, surrounding topics such as vaccines, transgender people and gender-affirming care, public health, nutrition, climate science, and a number of other scientific topics. It’s a trend that I soon started calling either “Lysenko 2.0” or the “Lysenko-ization” of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other science organizations in the US government. Indeed, I started calling the “make America healthy again” (MAHA) movement promoted by Secretary of Health and Human Services—and long time rabid antivax activist—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. the “new Lysenkoism.”
For those not familiar with Lysenkoism, it’s a term inspired by the career of Trofim Lysenko, a geneticist and agricultural scientists whose ideas regarding agriculture and genetics appealed to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. In brief, Lysenkoism was the disastrous political campaign led by Lysenko against science-based agriculture because of his rejection of Mendelian genetics in favor of Lamarckism. (For a lot more detail on Lysenko’s career and purges of scientists who tried to stick to actual science when it came to genetics and agriculture, I recommend Ethan Siegel’s article detailing the history, as well as my post on how MAHA is the new Lysenkoism.) In brief, during his time as Josef Stalin’s favorite scientist, Lysenko and his version of biology that came to be known as Lysenkoism led to the persecution of biologists who stuck to science-based views regarding agriculture that conflicted with Lysenko’s, up to and including imprisonment and, in some cases, execution. Worse, his ideas applied to Soviet Agriculture clearly led to crop shortfalls and ended up massively worsening famines. Although no one has been imprisoned (yet) or executed, under the reign of President Trump and HHS Secretary RFK Jr., science policy is being transformed to look a lot more like agricultural science policy dictated by Trofim Lysenko in the 1930s and 1940s, when he was at the height of his power. We see this in the deceptive term “gold standard science,” the mass cancellation of already funded NIH research grants because they mentioned “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) or funded studies now-proscribed topics, and how NIH Director “Podcast Jay” Bhattacharya wants to turn the NIH into the “research arm of MAHA,” among other developments since Trump took power again.
This week, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued proposed rules covering federal scientific grantmaking, publishing them in the Federal Register under the title Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance, with a deadline for public comment of July 13. It is the fruition of a process that I first discussed last August, when President Trump issued an executive order basically demanding just such changes in rules. If implemented, these rules could spell the end of US science as an endeavor that’s been relatively immune to partisan politics and the direct control of the party in power. It is a blueprint for the completion of the Lysenko-ization of US science.
Russell Vought codifies how the Trump administration will Lysenko-ize US science
The most obvious and blatant indication that the Trump administration wants to Lysenko-ize federal science, however, has been its push to change the system of research grants at the NIH and other federal agencies that issue research grants, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) to de-emphasize peer review and shift the real power in deciding which scientists and research organizations receive federal grants out of the hands of career scientists at the relevant organizations and into the hands of political appointees. I last covered this topic in August, when Trump issued an executive order, Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking, which claimed that “Federal grants have funded drag shows in Ecuador, trained doctoral candidates in critical race theory, and developed transgender-sexual-education programs. In 2024, one study claimed that more than one-quarter of new National Science Foundation (NSF) grants went to diversity, equity, and inclusion and other far-left initiatives. These NSF grants included those to educators that promoted Marxism, class warfare propaganda, and other anti-American ideologies in the classroom, masked as rigorous and thoughtful investigation.”
In the name of eliminating supposedly rampant waste that doesn’t exist, eliminating all the supposed ideology described, and improving the quality of federally-funded scientific research, gave several instructions to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and others in charge of “discretionary” funding of research grants. Among these were instructions that:
- “Senior appointees and their designees shall not ministerially ratify or routinely defer to the recommendations of others in reviewing funding opportunity announcements or discretionary awards, but shall instead use their independent judgment.” Translation: Political appointees don’t have to defer to the recommendations of peer review panels, such as NIH study sections, in deciding which grant applications get funded if they don’t want to. This is a very dangerous and different change in policy. While it is true that elected officials and political appointees would work with career scientists to determine areas of national priority in science, political appointees were never front-and-center in deciding what is and is not good science worthy of government funding. this policy in essence gives political appointees power over exactly that.
- “Discretionary awards must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.” This one is self-explanatory. While it is true that Presidents and Congress have issued policy instructions to the NIH and other grant-issuing agencies regarding which scientific questions they consider important, I do not recall ever having seen such a diktat before from any administration since I started my involvement in science in the 1980s. Not even Ronald Reagan went this far.
- Discretionary awards. “Discretionary awards shall not be used to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate:” the usual cast of bogeymen, including “racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination by the grant recipient”; “denial by the grant recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic” (seriously, do even the “gender critical” scientists like Jerry Coyne support such a ban?); “illegal immigration”; or “any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values,” “anti-American values,” apparently, being defined by the Trump administration.
- “Research grants should be awarded to a mix of recipients likely to produce immediately demonstrable results and recipients with the potential for potentially longer-term, breakthrough results, in a manner consistent with the funding opportunity announcement.” I wouldn’t necessarily be troubled by this requirement, if it weren’t this administration. Under this administration, I rather suspect that this diktat means that grantmaking agencies will be forced to operate under some “DEI” and fund, in addition to real scientists, cranks whose “science” is based on ideology more than science, such as climate science deniers, antivaxxers, and “lab leak” conspiracy theorists.
Trump gave the game away with this passage, however:
Nothing in this order shall be construed to discourage or prevent the use of peer review methods to evaluate proposals for discretionary awards or otherwise inform agency decision making, provided that peer review recommendations remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding by senior appointees or their designees. Further, nothing in this order shall be construed to create any rights to any particular level of review or consideration for any funding applicant except as consistent with applicable law.
As I said, political appointees making the final decision on which grants will be funded can listen to the peer review reports coming out of, for instance, NIH study sections if they want to—nudge nudge, wink wink—but they really don’t have to and are, in fact, being encouraged not to. The part about “provided that peer review recommendations remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding by senior appointees or their designees” gives the game away. In contrast, members of the scientific councils at the NIH that finalize all grant funding decisions already have a degree of latitude in how they rank grants for funding and can override priority scores determined by the NIH study sections’ peer review process, but in general are, more or less, “routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding by senior appointees or their designees.”
Which is as it should be if you want to fund the most promising and most rigorous science.
Now let’s look at OMB Director Russell Vought’s proposed rules to implement Trump’s executive order. In fairness, these rules, if implemented, would apply to more than just scientific agencies in the federal government, as pointed out in the beginning:
A Proposed Rule by the Management and Budget Office, the Health and Human Services Department, the Agriculture Department, the State Department, the Agency for International Development, the Veterans Affairs Department, the Energy Department, the Treasury Department, the Defense Department, the Transportation Department, the Commerce Department, the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the United States Agency for Global Media, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Social Security Administration, the Housing and Urban Development Department, the National Science Foundation, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Small Business Administration, the Justice Department, the Labor Department, the Homeland Security Department, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Education Department, the Export-Import Bank, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Peace Corps, the Election Assistance Commission, the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council, the Federal Communications Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Delta Regional Authority, the Appraisal Subcommittee of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, the Marine Mammal Commission, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the National Credit Union Administration on 05/29/2026.
The summary really is some great Orwellian Newspeak:
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposes to revise the Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance to improve government-wide policies and requirements related to the management of grants, cooperative agreements, and other forms of assistance. OMB is proposing revisions that would improve transparency, accountability, and oversight for Federal awards across the Federal Government. This includes ensuring that American tax dollars are not wasted or misused, activities performed under Federal awards are consistent with law and policy, and recipients are held accountable when they fail to meet relevant standards. The revisions also aim to ensure that basic American principles of equality and equal opportunity are upheld throughout all stages of the award making process and that unlawful discrimination is no longer permitted. Proposed changes also include providing further clarification on the regulatory status of the OMB requirements and on the process for future updates to the government-wide requirements. Finally, OMB also proposes changes to reduce recipient burden. The listed Federal grant-making agencies propose conforming changes to their respective adopting regulations, or, in the case of some agencies and other entities, establishing new adopting regulations or policies. The proposed changes reflect the administration’s commitment to transparency, accountability, and proper oversight for the Federal grantmaking process. The proposed regulations seek to ensure that American tax dollars are ultimately used to serve the needs of the American public.
All of this sounds reasonable on the surface. When you get into the weeds, however, you’ll see that it’s basically Trump’s executive order warmed over, with few changes, in which Vought makes it explicit right in the executive summary that this is all designed to combat “wokeness”):
This lack of transparency, accountability, and proper oversight became increasingly clear between 2021 and 2024. Federal awards were often used during those years to promote a “woke” policy agenda that did not reflect the values of the vast majority of the American public.[2] For example, Federal programs and funding opportunities were designed to advance unlawful identity-based “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) policies and preferences across the country.[3] These policies were inconsistent with basic American values and civil rights laws, including the equal protection principles of the U.S. Constitution.[4] They were also misaligned in many cases with underlying public purposes authorized by law.[5] Collectively, these policies wasted a great amount of taxpayer resources and caused great harm to public trust in government.
The White House Fact Sheet of August 7, 2025, describes examples of the types of wasteful spending that occurred as a result of such policies. For example, Federal grants funded unlawful DEI practices,[6] various anti-American ideologies in American education,[7] non-replicable and highly misleading studies,[8] labs engaged in gain-of-function research,[9] and AI-powered social media censorship tools.[10] More recently, another White House Fact Sheet of January 8, 2026 provided examples of the rampant and pervasive problem of fraud in the United States, including under assistance programs in Minnesota.[11]
The “White House Fact Sheet” was really just propaganda justifying Trump’s executive order from August. In any case, as I pointed out at the time, the evidentiary basis behind these claims was really quite transparently poor. For instance, reference 3 is a 2022 Heritage Foundation report entitled President Biden’s `Equity Action Plans’ Reveal Radical, Divisive Agenda, which is hardly what one would call anything resembling a nonpartisan, unbiased (or even not that biased) source. References 4-8 go to Presidential executive orders whose standards of evidence for backing up their claims are not what anyone would call rigorous. And, of course, adding the reference to “pervasive” fraud involving assistance programs in Minnesota is just the cherry on top of the propaganda cake, particularly when used to justify cracking down on scientific grant programs, which have a very low level of fraud.
Let’s first start with the proposed rules that flow directly from Trump’s executive orders, and then move on to some equally problematic rules that are related. The first and most obvious big one is that, consistent with Trump’s executive order, the proposed rules want to make rigorous peer-review non-binding and strictly “advisory”:
OMB proposes to revise § 200.205 to strengthen requirements for agency merit review and to establish a new pre-issuance review process consistent with Executive Order 14332. Under the proposed requirements for pre-issuance review, as part of the broader merit review process, agencies must ensure that proposals selected for funding are consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest. Consistent with the Executive order, senior appointees must conduct these reviews and apply specific principles when evaluating proposals. These principles include ensuring that discretionary awards advance the President’s policy priorities, prohibit the use of funds for discriminatory or otherwise impermissible purposes, and emphasize ensuring compliance with applicable law. Additionally, the proposed revisions encourage agencies to broaden the range of recipients, prioritize institutions demonstrating rigorous and reproducible scholarship, incorporate benchmarks for measuring performance of “Gold Standard Science,” and direct agencies to weigh institutional commitment to research integrity when making award decisions. Proposed revisions in this section also clarify that peer review remains advisory and does not replace agency discretion. Finally, the proposed revisions clarify that agencies are not required to issue awards solely as a result of issuing a NOFO. These proposed updates are intended to enhance consistency across agencies, accountability, and alignment of Federal awards with administration priorities, while also reducing the risk of award being made contrary to statutory or policy requirements.
Again, this is very much in contrast with how the system currently works for scientific grants, in which peer review scoring is the single most important factor driving which grants are funded. Indeed, this is a full frontal assault on the system used since World War II by federal scientific agencies including the NIH, NSF, NASA, CDC, and the Department of Energy, in which peer review by a panel of relevant experts has been the primary means by which scientific merit was assessed. Are these peer review processes perfect? Obviously not. I myself have discussed the problems with NIH study sections and peer review a number of times on this very blog. However, ask yourself this: Is peer review by study sections and panels made up of relevant independent experts, who produce a report and scientific priority score for each grant application that is used as the primary—although admittedly not the only—measure determining which grant applications are funded a better system than downgrading peer review to being merely “advisory,” a suggestion that can easily be overridden on the whims of political appointees? I would argue that it is.
I also have to wonder if Vought has thought this through. If his rules take effect, what happens if Democrats take the White House in 2028? A future Democratic President could use these rules to bend the grant approval process politically to the left by defining all those “anti-American values” in a way totally different from what the Trump administration does. True, a Democratic President would have to issue new rules to get rid of the anti-DEI components of the proposed rules, but a lot could be done without that. One wonders if the administration is acting under the assumption that no Democrat will ever be President again. Seriously, fear of what the other side would do while in power has long been a reason why Presidents of both parties have not tried to make scientific grantmaking as nakedly political as the Trump administration wishes to. Lysenko 2.0, indeed. Under these rules, presidential appointees will have absolute veto power over funding any science that the administration doesn’t like—or even science proposed by scientists whose political views it does not like.
“Gold Standard Science,” Lysenko, and Humpty Dumpty
Ever since the administration coined the term “gold standard science,” I’ve repeatedly pointed out how the term is very much akin to Humpty Dumpty’s view of words in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, as epitomized by this exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty. I’m going to quote liberally, because I don’t think that citing the shorter quote that most people cite when referencing this “philosophy of words” quite gives the full flavor, and, believe me, the Trump administration is going full Humpty Dumpty with “gold standard science”:
`I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”‘ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don’t– till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”‘
`But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”‘ Alice objected.
`When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’
`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.’
`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master– that’s all.’
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. `They’ve a temper, some of them– particularly verbs, they’re the proudest–adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs–however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!’
`Would you tell me, please,’ said Alice `what that means?’
`Now you talk like a reasonable child,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. `I meant by “impenetrability” that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.’
`That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
`When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `I always pay it extra.’
`Oh!’ said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.
Trust me, the Trump administration, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Russell Vought, and their ilk are definitely paying the term “gold standard science” extra. Note, for instance, that nowhere in the rule is the term “Gold Standard Science” ever explicitly defined, although it is used five times. We can, of course, glean its current meaning from the references, which link to prior executive orders, including the document originally codifying the term “Gold Standard Science,” namely last year’s “MAHA Report” and a May 2025 executive order. On the surface, the definition sounds not unreasonable:
For the purposes of this order, Gold Standard Science means science conducted in a manner that is:
(i) reproducible;
(ii) transparent;
(iii) communicative of error and uncertainty;
(iv) collaborative and interdisciplinary;
(v) skeptical of its findings and assumptions;
(vi) structured for falsifiability of hypotheses;
(vii) subject to unbiased peer review;
(viii) accepting of negative results as positive outcomes; and
(ix) without conflicts of interest.
The problem is that the EO mandating “Gold Standard Science” was, as I discussed, full of misrepresentations of existing science based on right wing ideology. Again, if you just read the definition, it sounds peachy keen, something few scientists could argue with. When you put it in context of the “background” included attacking “DEI” and promoting pseudoscientific narratives about vaccines, “lab leak,” and public health, not to mention a biased reading of the science downplaying the dangers of human-caused climate change and promoting the use of fossil fuels, it becomes apparent how Orwellian—or Humpty Dumpty-like—the term “Gold Standard Science” truly is. One also notes that there is a direct inherent conflict between the part about Gold Standard Science” being “subject to unbiased peer review” and the new diktat that peer review is basically not to be taken as anything more than advisory, not that this administration has ever cared about such contradictions. Neither did Lysenko, and the topics for scientific research funded by the federal government that this rule would outright ban is very much Lysenkoist. Basically, any grants that “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” any of the following are verboten:
- “Gender ideology”
- Anything that has even a whiff of “DEI”
- Assistance with gender transition for anyone under 19 years old
Indeed, the proposed rule even goes so far as to remove any mention of Bostock v. Clayton County, a US Supreme Court ruling that found that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, claiming that the decision is “legally untenable and has harmed women.”
And:
Finally, OMB proposes to add a new paragraph (c) regarding non-discrimination against faith-based organizations. The proposed paragraph (c) provides that Federal agencies and pass-through entities may not discriminate against or in favor of an applicant on the basis of the organization’s religious character, affiliation, exercise, or lack thereof, nor on the basis of conduct that would not be considered ground to favor or disfavor a similarly situated secular organization. It also provides that faith-based organizations are eligible to apply for Federal financial assistance on the same basis as any other organization. It also explains that applicants that meet all eligibility requirements may be considered for a Federal award under a notice of funding opportunity.
Of course, discrimination based on religion is already illegal. So why insist on adding passages like this? One can easily see how this might remove a barrier to federal science agencies funding, for instance, studies in creationism based on creationism being bad science. (Creationists often claim “religious discrimination” when their pseudoscience isn’t taken seriously.) One might also think of a number of other potential examples; e.g., reproductive health.
Meanwhile the proposed order states:
Additionally, OMB proposes a new provision that agencies may consider an applicant’s affiliations with organizations engaged in activities that violate Federal law, undermine public safety or national security, or advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government.
Given how expansively this government defines “undermining public safety or national security” and advocating for “the overthrow of the United States government,” it’s not difficult to see how easily this provision could be used to deny funding to researchers associated with civil rights organizations or various public health or environmental advocacy organizations. Humpty Dumpty and Lysenko strike again.
And all the rest…it’s bad, really bad
In addition to the above attacks on scientific merit and rigor as determinants of funding, there are also a raft of restrictions on assembly and speech that grantees use federal research grant money to engage in. For example:
OMB proposes to expand § 200.432 to add a requirement that costs for attending conferences are allowable only if participation in the conference is expressly approved by the agency and included in the terms and conditions of the award. The revision would clarify that recipients are not authorized to attend conferences using Federal funds that do not serve to advance program outcomes.
In other words, scientists can’t, as they have in the past, use grant money to attend conferences without prior approval of the agency issuing the grant. This is a massive change that would give political appointees the power to dictate which conferences scientists can attend to report their scientific findings; that is, unless the scientist has other, non-federal funding to attend. Again, it used to be assumed that it was a good thing for scientists to go to conferences to report the findings of federally funded research, which is why the instructions for grant applications allowed scientists to budget a certain amount of funding for travel and attending scientific meetings to present the findings of their grant-funded research. Under this rule, scientists can only report the results of their grant-funded research at meetings if it’s pre-approved or if they can pay for the expense themselves. (Many can’t.)
Also:
Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, publication costs (including page charges, article processing charges (APCs), or similar fees such as open access fees for professional journal publications and other peer-reviewed publications) are unallowable under Federal awards. Printing costs (including distribution and general handling) are allowable.
The only exceptions being:
The only exceptions to paragraph (a) of this section are for publication costs that are specifically required by Federal statute or approved in advance by the Federal agency on a case-by-case basis. A general requirement to make results publicly available must not be construed as authorizing publication costs.
Again, previously it was assumed that reporting and publicizing the findings of government-funded scientific research in the peer-reviewed biomedical literature was a good thing, which is why grant applicants could include funds in their budgets for page charges and open access charge costs. No more. As Elizabeth Ginexi points out, this diktat directly conflicts with longstanding federal mandates for open access reporting of the findings of federally funded scientific studies, including the 2022 OSTP memorandum requiring that the findings of federally funded research be made publicly available.
Then, of course, if you’re a researcher, you’d better not have collaborators in China or other countries deemed inimical to the interests of the US by this administration:
The proposed § 200.220 establishes a government-wide baseline rule prohibiting recipients and subrecipients from using Federal funds to support bilateral or multilateral collaborations, agreements, programs, or activities with covered foreign countries or covered foreign entities, unless expressly authorized by Federal statute or approved by the Federal agency in accordance with the proposed exception authority and applicable law. This provision is intended to ensure that Federal financial assistance is not used, directly or indirectly, to support activities that may pose a risk to U.S. national security, defense, or intelligence interests. Congress has expressly determined that such a risk exists in the case of some agencies.
The prohibition would apply regardless of whether Federal funds are used for direct programmatic activities, research, technical assistance, travel, or indirect costs allocable to such collaborations. This approach would ensure that restrictions on foreign collaboration—including those expressly required by law—are not circumvented through the structure of funding mechanisms or cost allocation practices.
While one might see the need for such a restriction in the case of secret military and otherwise sensitive technologies and research, the Trump administration proposes to go beyond that, basically saying that its “America First” slogan should apply to all scientific grants:
When designing research and development programs, and evaluating applications, Federal agencies must apply a domestic-first framework, under which international elements may be included only if the Federal agency determines that such elements are justified, consistent with program objectives, and in the national interest of the United States.
This passage suggests to me that, should the proposed rules go into effect, any research involving a significant international collaboration in which critical parts of the research are carried out in countries other than the US (which applies to a lot of research) will be at a major disadvantage in funding decisions. In essence, by making it far more difficult for US researchers to collaborate on research projects for which they need US federal agency funding, the Trump administration is siloing off US scientists from the rest of the world. In the long run, such siloing will be yet another policy resulting in the degradation of US science and making US science more prone to ideological control by the administration.
Finally, one of the most chilling rule changes proposed is the ability of the federal government to terminate any grant for basically any reason whatsoever, or, as the proposed rule puts it, “terminate awards found to be inconsistent with program goals or agency priorities.” Who dictates program goals and agency priorities? It used to be, for the most part, career staff, overseen by the political appointees running the agency, and, in general, in federal science agencies it was not political appointees making these decisions. Obviously, this rule change was motivated by the pushback and lawsuits that resulted from the mass cancellation of grants by the administration in the weeks immediately after Trump reassumed power, to preclude legal recourse available to grantees whose grants are arbitrarily canceled because the administration doesn’t like them.
The Lysenko-ization of federal science agencies is at hand
Science advocates have been warning of Lysenko 2.0 since Trump became President again, and everything that the current administration has done with respect to science policy has shown that our warnings have been, if anything, not alarming enough. President Trump’s executive order from last August is now at the stage where it will be codified in federal rules governing how federal science agencies dole out grant funding, implementing key principles:
- Placing funding decisions squarely in the hands of political appointees instead of career federal scientists in a direct way that’s never before been done
- De-emphasizing rigorous peer review to give these political appointees “flexibility” to veto any scientific research that the administration opposes, giving them power to decide what is and isn’t funded in a manner that wasn’t the case before, at least since after WWII
- Implementing a Humpty Dumpty-inspired term “Gold Standard Science” that determines the scientific projects that will be funded and can mean whatever
Humpty Dumptythe administration wants it to mean. - Making it more difficult to publicize the results of federally funded science, both in peer-reviewed journals and at scientific conferences
- Providing the government with a powerful punitive tool to keep scientists in line, specifically the power to terminate any funded grant at any time for any reason whatsoever, just by declaring that it is inconsistent with agency goals and priorities and/or administration goals and priorities.
Since World War II, one of the greatest accomplishments of the federal government has been the expansion of support for scientific research through federal grants. Science advocacy groups, such as Stand Up For Science, are not exaggerating when they say that these changes in federal rules would end American support for science as we have known it for decades through the administrations of Presidents of both parties:
What this administration is proposing is no less than the permanent codification of Lysenkoism as the defining trait of federal government-funded scientific research, such that what is deemed to be good science worthy of funding is determined not nearly as much by scientists and scientific peer review anymore but will be increasingly determined by political operatives. Liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, you should be able to see why this is a bad thing. For example, if you are Republican, just imagine American science under these rules under the administration of a President Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom. Hopefully, regardless of political leanings, you can easily perceive how disastrous these proposed rule changes will be for US science, if only because President Trump and his minions have made it very clear that they want to go the way of Lysenko and put political appointees in charge of federal science, a policy that is bad for science regardless of the party in power—but, it must be said, will be particularly destructive to US science under this administration. If you support scientific funding that is as non-partisan and unbiased as a political system can produce, a system that remains relatively stable and close to apolitical as achievable, regardless of who is in the White House, you know what to do.
ADDENDUM
Here are the instructions to start by commenting on the proposed rule, and here is the webpage to comment on the proposed rule changes, specifically docket OMB-2026-0034. I like the first comment, and so far all the comments I’ve read have been very negative. Good. Let’s add to them.