OMB Proposes Rules Undermining Science Peer Review
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Office of Management and Budget released proposed rules in May requiring grants to advance "the president's policy priorities" and codifying oversight of award decisions by political appointees instead of scientific peer reviewers.
- The proposed rules prohibit funds from supporting any collaboration with "covered foreign countries or covered foreign entities" — which the author warns could block US-Chinese scientific work on cancer, environmental health, and new technologies.
- The public comment period on the OMB proposal closes July 14, with the American Astronomical Society stating the rules would "cause significant harm to the scientific community."
- National Science Foundation is cutting budgets for basic science research programs and redirecting money to a new $1.5 billion initiative called "X-Labs" that targets work "outside of traditional institutions," with language the author says points strongly toward private companies.
- Funding uncertainty pushes junior researchers in particular out of science or out of the US, since multi-year projects become impossible to plan around unpredictable grant availability.
- NIH has faced grant freezes and administrative disarray, with new layers of review by political appointees hunting for "forbidden keywords" such as "disparity" and "marginalized," according to the author.
Why it matters: With a July 14 comment deadline and $1.5 billion already being redirected from basic research to private "X-Labs," the architecture of US science funding is being reshaped mid-stream: if the OMB rules pass as written, political appointees — not peer reviewers — would decide which cancer, environmental health, and technology projects get funded and which international collaborations survive.
