The war on “woke science” is coming for space research

The Trump administration is launching Culture war on scienceThe latest shot comes in the form of a dry, bureaucratic proposal from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that could threaten the United States. The future of American science as we know it.

The proposal would give political appointees unprecedented control over grant funding, which is how scientists receive federal money to conduct groundbreaking space research such as the search for… Evidence of the presence of organic compounds on Mars Or discovery Some of the oldest galaxies in the universe.

The Office of Management and Budget’s proposed model rule received fewer than 100 public comments. This rule It received more than 54,000 comments The vast majority of them Look negative, including a answer From the nonprofit The Planetary Society, which has criticized everything from proposal rules around publication to its move away from peer review to its chilling effect on scientists in every field.

“Almost every proposed aspect of these rule changes has some harmful or negative consequences for the practice of science,” says Casey Dreyer, head of space policy at the Planetary Society. Edge.

“There is tangible harm, even if you are not a scientist,” he points out. The biggest hurdle is restrictions on funding open access publications, which is the way space science papers are made available to the public for free.

For more than a decade, NASA prides itself Regarding the publication of data collected using NASA instruments, in addition to the scientific papers that come from studying that data. New changes reflect this trend, making access to scientific data more difficult for everyone. Prohibiting the use of grant funding for open access publishing means that it will be more difficult for the public to see the research that their tax dollars helped fund.

“There’s no really good argument for this, unless you’re trying to use it as a way to control scientists themselves,” Dreher says.

Then there is the possibility of grants being terminated due to the political affiliations or leanings of the scientists themselves. Consider the data collected by Mars rovers — precious data that cost billions of dollars and took decades of expertise to obtain — and a scientist who doesn’t work directly at NASA, who wants to study that data and has a new idea for research that his fellow scientists think is worthwhile and important. In theory, the new regulations would allow a non-expert caucus staffer employed by the White House to defund that scientist because he posted an anti-Trump meme on X years ago.

It’s getting worse. “You don’t even have to break any rules” to have your funding cut, says Dreyer. Grants can be canceled at any time, for any reason, if they are deemed to conflict with the interests of the president’s whims: “There are fluctuations enabled by these changes, and ambiguity surrounding the decision-making process.”

The problems with regulations are not just ideological. It imposes a largely bureaucratic burden: would any scientist want to set up an international partnership, attend a conference, or try to make his or her data public and free, when doing so requires the time and paperwork of applying for exemptions that may or may not be granted by a government body with no experience or interest in their work? Will they forge potentially fruitful collaborations with other scientists in China, Russia, or even Canada, when it poses a risk to their work, knowing that their livelihoods could be taken away when the president decides he doesn’t like another country tomorrow?

This is a separate, though perhaps more serious, attack on science than the attack Proposed cuts to NASA funding That affects programs such as the operation of Mars rovers. Under proposed Office of Management and Budget rules, contracts through which NASA builds spacecraft and collects data would remain in place, but grants to scientists to analyze that data would be under political threat.

“There’s a difference between data collection and science,” says Dreier. Building amazing instruments like Mars rovers or the James Webb Space Telescope and using them to collect data is only the first step in making progress: “Science is what happens when you pay a scientist to sit down and look at the data, interpret it, model it, test it, and then present it and go through the process of arguing about it.”

“Why collect data, if we are not supporting scientists to study it?”

Despite the great public opposition against this move, including A Senate hearing With Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought calling Democratic senators the rule’s effects “ridiculous” and “bias,” it does not appear that the Office of Management and Budget is ready to back down and withdraw the proposed rule. Instead, it will likely face a series of legal challenges, Including from A group of 24 governors and attorneys general say the rule is unconstitutional and violates the principle of separation of powers.

What is at stake here is bigger than reduced funds or a temporary refocus on ground-based concerns about space research. “This is not a budget cut,” Dreyer points out. Budget cuts are easy to understand and easy to argue against. What is happening here is even more harmful: “This is a surgical, scalpel-like attack on the actual process of science buried under procedural rules and boring language.”