This weekend news broke that the Trump Administration fired members of the National Science Board—an apolitical board of eminent experts charged with advising and providing oversight of the National Science Foundation. These experts serve staggered six-year terms, but on Friday members had their service abruptly terminated in a message signed on behalf of the president.
This unseemly political maneuver must be seen for what it is: An attempt to silence independent scientists, shut down evidence-based decision making, and keep the public in the dark.
Politicization of the National Science Foundation
The move is troubling because the National Science Board plays a critical role in oversight, accountability, and transparency in how the nation’s premier scientific research agency makes decisions on everything from major research investments, to international partnerships, to merit criteria for grantmaking. Without a functional National Science Board in the near term, the agency is left without the guidance and oversight of independent experts, and the public is left without information on how NSF is carrying out its mission. And it’s worth remembering that mission is to serve the public. As my colleague, Dr. Carlos Javier Martinez puts it, “For the past 75 years, the NSF has quietly powered innovations that shape our daily lives, from the classroom to the smartphone, from the weather report to the internet.”
There are many reasons this should concern us, because it is not the first instance of political interference in the National Science Board and NSF during President Trump’s second term. Last year, eminent scholar and former deputy assistant to the president, Dr. Alondra Nelson resigned her seat on the National Science Board, citing a loss of integrity in the institution and political interference from Trump officials in the board’s deliberations. In March, the administration put up an unqualified, conflicted nominee to lead NSF. And earlier this month in an apparent move to obey in advance, the NSF preemptively killed its Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate, citing the proposed presidential budget.
Abandoning science advice
These NSF moves add to larger threats to the federal science advisory system. Since the current Trump administration started, scores of federal advisory committees at science agencies have been disbanded, frozen, or otherwise disrupted—a trend that is similar to disruptions in science advice during the president’s first term.
The pattern is alarming, not only because of the lack of science advice that government officials are now receiving, but also because the Federal science advisory committee system under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) provides an important layer of transparency and accountability for science-based decisions across the government. FACA requires committees to deliberate in public and take public comment. As a result, we in civil society have access to what science advice the government is receiving, and can hold them accountable when they don’t take it. Firing members of the National Science Board cuts science—and the public—out of the picture.
A risk for more inference in federal science
Alarmingly, firing of the qualified and vetted members of the National Science Board clears a path for the Trump administration to appoint conflicted and unqualified individuals in their stead, who could provide political cover for the Trump administration to avoid science-based and mission-aligned decisions at NSF. Such concerns are not just hypothetical. So far this term, the Trump administration has:
- Stacked the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) with tech industry CEOs;
- Filled a quarter of the seats on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board with employees of the chemical industry it regulates; and
- Illegally and secretly stood up a Climate Working Group of climate contrarians to undermine EPA’s Endangerment Finding, the scientific and legal unpinning for the agency’s climate actions, to name a few.
But who’s keeping score? (We are, in fact. And the count is up to 562 attacks on science this term.)
The rise of independent science outside of government
We must not accept these anti-science actions. Instead, scientists across the country must resist by ensuring independent science advice continues beyond the halls of US government institutions. Thankfully, many in the scientific community have been taking matters into their own hands and stepping up to ensure science advice continues. These independent science activities have popped up across scientific fields, with courageous scientists volunteering their time and expertise to inform and advise the public and decision-makers at all levels of government.
You can join us by opposing Trump’s unqualified and conflicted nominee to run NSF, launching an independent science advisory committee if you are in a position to do so, and staying tuned to what’s happening. We in the scientific community must watch diligently what the administration does next and insist on evidence-based decisions at NSF and beyond.