The Politicization of Federal Science Grants
City Journal | Leif Rasmussen
Northwestern Ph.D candidate Leif Rasmussen argues that progressive politics are dictating (and compromising) science: “Whether a scientist is competent is often overlooked. Instead, his work’s political palatability determines whether he is hired, funded, promoted, or granted tenure.”
He goes on to provide an example of ideological infusion and homogeneity:
“I browsed through the archive of abstracts of research projects funded by the National Science Foundation—a government agency that provides about $8 billion in annual monies. NSF funding goes largely to basic scientific research conducted at U.S. colleges and universities. The agency evaluates grant proposals on two criteria: intellectual merit and broader impacts….In 1990, only 3 percent of award abstracts contained one of the following terms: ‘equity,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘inclusion,’ ‘gender,’ ‘marginalize,’ ‘underrepresented,’ or ‘disparity.’ As of 2020, 30 percent of all award abstracts had at least one of these terms.”
“My analysis showed a general stagnation in the linguistic diversity of award abstracts over time…All that talk of ‘diversity,’ in other words, has been accompanied by diminishment of the actual diversity of ideas within these grant applications.”
How will such a shift impact science?
“The infusion of fashionable political platitudes into scientific research is bound to have a deleterious effect on both the quality of science and the public trust in scientific institutions. The growing view of science as a vehicle for activism detracts from its vital role: acting as a dispassionate referee to adjudicate the validity of empirical claims.”
