‘Gold Standard Science’ in Theory and Practice – Peter A. Coclanis

After all, what is wrong with trying to ensure that “federally funded science is transparent, rigorous, and impactful,” and above all reproducible? Scientists and philosophers of science have emphasized the importance of replicability and reproducibility since the time of Robert Boyle in the 17^th century. But in recent decades American science has been plagued by numerous high-profile scientific scandals, withdrawn papers, and instances of falsified data, leading many to believe that there is a bona fide replicability crisis in these realms. Highly publicized cases involving Bharat Aggarwal in cancer research, Elizabeth Holmes and her falsified results in blood testing, and behavioral scientist Francesca Gino, whose tenure at Harvard University was revoked following allegations that her data on ethical decisionmaking was fabricated, come immediately to mind in this regard. In light of this, Americans should welcome that type of rigor. As an economic historian teaching at a so-called “public Ivy” with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, I certainly do. 

Similarly, the executive order justifiably calls out the previous administration’s strained efforts to shoehorn diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) considerations into “all aspects of science planning, execution, and communication.” One criterion—merit—should override all others in funding science. Merit seems particularly important in a time of rising challenges from China in scientific research, a country with far more people—in both absolute and relative terms—focusing on STEM disciplines than is the case in the U.S. China would like nothing more than for the U.S. to continue down the DEI sidetrack while it continues to advance its research capabilities.

I have no beef, then, with the principles associated with the executive order calling for the restoration of gold standard principles in science. Rather, it’s the president’s actions and policies regarding research that have me worried. Why? Because by drastically reducing governmental funding and by reducing the flow of talent into science, they threaten to weaken, if not destroy the platform upon which American scientific research supremacy was built, rendering the gold standard in science about as practicable as the gold standard in monetary economics.

The origins of this platform go all the way back to the founding of West Point in 1802 as America’s first engineering school, but most experts date its origins to World War II and the wartime efforts of the engineer/science administrator Vannevar Bush (and others) to rationalize U.S. scientific research. Bush’s July 1945 report titled Science, the Endless Frontier called for the federal government to underwrite the broad advancement of basic science in the U.S. in the postwar period, building on its highly successful support for science with military applications during the war, support ranging from the Manhattan Project to the development of radar and extending into fostering the development of medical breakthroughs like penicillin. 

By providing persuasive intellectual justification for government patronage of science, Bush’s report proved instrumental in facilitating the creation in 1950 of the National Science Foundation (NSF), which along with the older National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been the primary promoter of basic scientific and medical research in the U.S. over the last 75 years. Both institutions allocate funding for scientific and medical research through competitive grant programs, bestowed mostly to investigators affiliated with universities, but also to those at nongovernmental organizations and private businesses. In fiscal year 2024, the NSF awarded almost $7.2 billion in grants to researchers at more than 1,850 institutions, with the much larger NIH grant programs awarding almost $37 billion for research projects in medicine and public health in that same fiscal year.

Early on, the vast majority of the research funded was in the realm of basic research that sought to advance our fundamental knowledge of science and medicine. Over time, however, applied research gained ground as a result of initiatives such as the NSF’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers program, created in 1973, and especially after the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which allowed universities and their investigators (as well as nongovernmental organizations and small businesses) to retain patent rights on discoveries and inventions developed with federal funding.

This evolving system has helped to promote a stream of high-impact, high-return research and development in numerous areas, leading to world-changing scientific and medical innovations and inventions by U.S.-based scientists across the board, from the ARPANET to gene editing via CRISPR. And it has done so by complementing, rather than crowding out, private scientific efforts. Largely as a result of the partnership between the federal government and American universities, the U.S. innovation ecosystem became the most prominent and successful in the world, one that other nations copied—or were heavily influenced by—without achieving similar outcomes.

Now this unparalleled ecosystem is being severely threatened by Trump’s policy initiatives and budget cuts. It is not that the president and his team weren’t justified in criticizing certain practices and protocols in research programs funded by the government, and in “downstream” programs disseminating the products of scientific, medical, and public health research. Clearly, many U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs extended their reach into areas bearing little relationship to “development” (although USAID programs also supported important scientific research in the realms of global health and agriculture). 

Moreover, the justifications for the high rates charged by American universities to the government for research “overhead” or indirect costs were often as opaque as they were unconvincing. DEI concerns have often been often fetishized by university administrators in recent years, and antisemitism at many American universities, particularly at elite schools, is real. And a small number of foreign students involved in this scientific research ecosystem, taking advantage of its relative openness, have run afoul of governmental rules regarding national security, intellectual property, and the like.

But these problems, real as they are, could have been remedied via reform rather than via the scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners approach pursued by the president’s team.    Calibrated incentives and disincentives would accomplish more than brute-force cudgeling. For example, go through the USAID portfolio and strip funding to questionable programs such as those providing financial support to transgender groups in Guatemala, Sesame Street-style children’s programming in the Middle East, and DEI initiatives in Serbia, but retain the funding for effective nutrition and health programs in least-developed countries and for PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) in sub-Saharan Africa. Rather than issue a 15 percent cap  across the board, compel American universities getting money from the NSF or NIH to justify clearly and systematically the rates they charge for overhead reimbursements.   

Most of all, we shouldn’t punish all international students because of the actions of a small number of bad apples who may have disobeyed our policies regarding national security or even because of the actions of larger numbers (though still a tiny percentage of the total number of international students) who involved themselves ill-advisedly in American political protests of one sort or another. As anyone even remotely familiar with the American scientific and medical research landscape—whether its university or private-sector components—knows, international investigators play an outsize role in research and publishing, and increasingly in start-up ventures. This is true of every major research university and it is true of private-sector research and development hubs such as those in Silicon Valley, San Diego, Boston, and North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.

Thus, while it is easy to understand why the president and his team were frustrated and even angry at some of the problems and excesses of the collaborative governmental/university research ecosystem that evolved out of the creation of the NSF,   prudence and equipoise trump tirades and precipitous actions. In 2009 former Harvard Business Review editor-in-chief Suzy Welch, who now teaches at the Stern School of Business at NYU, wrote a bestseller on decision-making called 10-10-10. In this book, Welch advised that in making difficult decisions, it is helpful strategically to envision how the decision made will feel—and what the likely results will be—in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years. 

It seems to me that the president and his team were a bit too focused on the short term—remember Elon Musk’s gleeful waving of his bureaucracy-cutting chainsaw at the 2025 CPAC meeting?—with too little in the way of sober consideration of the implications 10 months and especially 10 years down the line. I can’t help but react to the likely long-term effects of recent policy initiatives, particularly the indiscriminate funding cuts, on the U.S. scientific ecosystem without profound sadness, a sense of lost opportunities, and—think China here—nagging fear.