Don’t apply politics to scientific research

How do you ensure federal research money flows to projects that are scientifically rigorous and likely to succeed? For decades, the answer has been: Have scientists evaluate projects in their field, then have government fund the projects according to those scores.

Now, the Trump administration has proposed injecting politics into federal grant issuance to an unprecedented extent, in ways that threaten to undermine scientific rigor and insert grave uncertainty into federal funding. The federal government should not move forward with its proposed new rule, which, if finalized, will likely be challenged in court.

On May 29, the Office of Management and Budget released its proposed Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance, which has garnered nearly 40,000 public comments. The lengthy document sets parameters around all government grants, which could range from scientific research to teacher training to transportation projects.

The president and Congress already have latitude on what programs are funded. For example, a president can — with money appropriated by Congress — direct money toward cancer research or space exploration. Trump’s new regulations, however, would go further in requiring a political appointee to review every discretionary grant to ensure it advances the president’s policy priorities.

The biggest impact may be in scientific research, where grant proposals today are peer reviewed by scientific panels and funded based on that scoring. The guidance would make those panels advisory, and they could be overridden based on political interests. “This really risks somebody who doesn’t understand the science making decisions,” said Paul Anderson, chief academic officer at Mass General Brigham, which receives around $1 billion a year in federal research funding. “Scientists should make decisions about science. This guidance turns that on its head and put the onus on these political appointees.”

The proposal would also let the federal government terminate a grant at any time if it no longer advances federal agency priorities. While Trump previously tried to do this by executive order, his attempts at actually cancelling grants midstream were frequently overturned by the courts. According to the Office of Management and Budget, “The proposal recognizes that Federal agency priorities may change after an award is initially made.” This policy would effectively put every multiyear grant approved at the end of a presidential administration at risk of being cancelled when the next president takes office.

Allowing midstream terminations could have dire consequences for patients in the middle of clinical trials. It also has workforce implications for scientists, students, and employees. Corey Fehnel, assistant scientist at Hebrew SeniorLife Marcus Institute for Aging Research, said he can’t imagine hiring a research assistant or other junior-level employee without a guarantee that he’ll have money to pay them for the proposed length of a grant. Previously, Fehnel said, “no one looked to government as being an unreliable partner in contracts, but my worry is this could change that.”

Other sections of the proposed rules could impose more administrative burdens on international collaboration, potentially affecting, for example, a Cambridge institute studying HIV that collaborates with partners working to curb the HIV epidemic in South Africa.

The universities and hospitals that power Massachusetts’ economy are particularly vulnerable to the new rules, since many rely heavily on federal grants.

State government could also be affected if these rules introduce a greater political element into grants for education, child welfare, or transportation. House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, wrote a letter to OMB demanding that the federal government not move forward with the proposed new rules. Neal wrote that in fiscal 2024, the federal government gave state and local governments $1.1 trillion in discretionary grants, which could become subject to these rules, if they go into effect.

As Jorge Chavarro, dean for academic affairs at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told the editorial board, the US has become a world leader in science over the past half century largely because government funds science through a highly competitive system. The proposed regulations, Chavarro said, “would completely change the way biomedical research is conducted from being essentially the most rigorous, competitive, and merit-based system in the world to a system that becomes very susceptible to political interference.”

Or as Neal wrote in his letter, “Subjecting research grants to a political loyalty test, rather than awarding funding based on true scientific merit, functionally eliminates this nation’s capacity to produce gold-standard independent research.”

At a time when public trust in science is already low, increasing political interference will only further undermine confidence in the system, while eroding America’s scientific prowess in the world.

Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.