🌎 Resumen en español · traducción automática
La Oficina de Administración y Presupuesto federal propone cambiar cómo se asignan los fondos de investigación científica, requiriendo que funcionarios políticos aprueben personalmente cada beca de investigación discrecional para asegurar que avance las "prioridades políticas del Presidente", lo que contrastaría con el sistema actual donde expertos científicos independientes evalúan las propuestas por mérito científico. El autor argumenta que este cambio abandona los principios que han mantenido a Estados Unidos como líder en ciencia durante 80 años, y advierte sobre los riesgos de aplicar criterios políticos a la investigación, como ha ocurrido recientemente con propuestas marcadas por contener palabras como "diversidad". El público tiene hasta el 13 de julio para objetar la propuesta publicada el 29 de mayo.
Traducción y resumen generados por IA a partir del artículo en inglés. Puede contener errores; consulte el texto original.
Proposed federal rules would change how research funding is awarded. (Getty Images)
The nations that lead in the future will be the ones that lead in science, and for the past 80 years that has been the United States, by a decisive margin. We did not get there by letting whoever held power in Washington choose which research deserved funding; we got there by trusting expert judgment over political preference.
The White House has already proposed drastic cuts to next year’s federal research budget — cuts one hopes Congress will reject. Now it wants to change something more fundamental: how the remaining money is awarded. Through a rule published on May 29, (docket OMB-2026-0034), the federal Office of Management and Budget proposes to abandon the approach that built American science. The public has until July 13 to object.
This is not a partisan issue, and it should not become one. Science rests on time-honored, widely accepted principles: follow the evidence, test hypotheses by experiment, subject them to scrutiny by experts around the world, and revise your conclusions when the evidence warrants. The proposed OMB rules conflict directly with those principles. Agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have always operated with a high degree of autonomy, guided by the scientific community itself.
What would the new rules do? Their centerpiece requires senior political appointees to personally review and approve every discretionary research grant before it is awarded, to ensure the work advances the “President’s policy priorities.” Today that final judgment belongs to panels of independent experts who weigh proposals on scientific merit. Until a year ago, even the broad priorities were set, not by politicians, but by committees of scientists.
We have already seen what happens when political litmus tests are applied to research. In the past year, proposals have been flagged merely for containing words like “diversity,” even where the term referred to the variety of viruses or immune cells, with no political meaning whatsoever. Automated keyword screening, cut loose from expert judgment, cannot tell the difference, and the new rule could make such practices permanent. History shows where this leads. In the Soviet Union in the mid 1900s, the agronomist Trofim Lysenko won political favor for theories that flattered official ideology while genuine genetics was suppressed, setting Soviet biology back a generation and contributing to repeated agricultural failures. This is why political appointees should not dictate what counts as good science.
Another dangerous feature of the rule is that it would let agencies cancel grants already underway simply because they no longer match “agency priorities” with no finding of fraud, waste, or failure required. Consider what that means in practice. Since 1989, the University of Kentucky’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging has followed more than a thousand Lexington-area volunteers through yearly exams, many pledging their brains to science, to learn how Alzheimer’s takes hold. Such a study cannot be paused and restarted; its value lies in the unbroken record, built patient by patient across decades. A single shift in political priorities could end that work overnight — the data wasted, the discoveries that might have followed never made.
That cost is not only medical or academic; it is economic and strategic. While Washington proposes to cut funding and put politics in charge of the laboratory, China is pouring resources into research and closing the gap with the United States — in some fields, pulling ahead. Nations that lead in science lead in industry, in defense, and in the jobs of the next generation. A country that funds research by political preference rather than scientific merit does not stay ahead for long.
Of course scientists oppose these changes, and they will file objections through the usual channels. It matters far more that people with no professional stake — civic leaders, business owners, parents, and patients — register their opposition too. So speak up. If you are comfortable navigating the federal bureaucracy, file a public comment before July 13 at regulations.gov under docket OMB-2026-0034. Or write to your representative and your senators, who control the budgets these agencies depend on: tell them you oppose the OMB-2026-0034 rule changes and want the peer-review process preserved. Tell them also you oppose drastic funding cuts for research.
Kentucky has spent decades building research universities that draw talent and federal dollars to the Commonwealth, enhance economic development, and bring hope to families facing Alzheimer’s and other diseases. That work is worth defending — and for the next few weeks, defending it is as simple as making your voice heard.
Dr. Kumble R. Subbaswamy, a Lexington resident, is a former Provost of the University of Kentucky and former Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is a Senior Advisor to the non-profit, non-partisan Stand Together for Higher Ed (standtogetherhighered.org), a free membership organization for higher ed faculty and staff across the country.
