> That's a lovely thought but it assumes, as with so many other things about our republican form of government, that the political appointees are good faith actors, at least with respect to funding of science.<p>It doesn't assume that. It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution. And the institutional principles of particular fields are subordinate to the constitutional structure.<p>What you're overlooking is that everything is just people. Political appointees are people. But "institutions" are also people. "Science" is just people. And the important question is: <i>who are the people who have the power to decide</i> how taxpayer money is spent?<p>The only possible answer in a republic is that people accountable to the political system are allocated that power. People in the scientific establishment--people with degrees from universities and credentials from professional organizations--cannot be granted power to spend taxpayer money independent of the political system. They only have power over those decisions to the extent the political system chooses to confer that power.
The political system, representing the taxpayer (primarily via Congress), has always dictated scientific <i>strategy</i>--do we build the Superconducting Supercollider or cancel it; do we return a sample from Mars or not; do we sequence the human genome. How big a budget do we devote to medical research compared to physics, etc. Scientists advocate, but politicians decide.<p>However, the nuts-and-bolts day-to-day <i>tactical</i> decisions have before been made through expert peer review, by scientists. Given a fixed and finite budget set by Congress, what is the best way to make discoveries?<p>Having been on grant review panels, it's brutal--at 5 or 10:1 oversubscription rates, your peers will find any flaw in your proposal.<p>Political appointees are deeply unqualified to make these judgments. To take a very specific example: the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is headed by Michael Kratsios. He has a BA in politics and has never written a scientific publication. (Every prior OSTP head was a PhD scientist.) The OMB memo says he and those like him should decide what to fund without deferring to scientists. How is he going to assess which of 50 proposals on (say) "hypothalamic SH2B1 neurocircuits and SH2B1 signal transduction pathways" is the good one?<p>He can't, so he'll either choose AI or graft. Both are destructive to our once world-leading scientific enterprise.
The division of responsibility you describe has no legal significance. <i>All</i> decision-making authority ultimately rests and must rest with the political system. Of course, the political system may <i>choose</i> to delegate certain decisions to experts and panels and whatnot. But that's a <i>choice</i>. The institutional principles of science are irrelevant except to the extent the political decision-makers find those principles persuasive (which they often do).<p>Our laws actually are written to reflect more or less what I'm describing. The laws governing HHS grants, for example, provide for various expert committees and whatnot. But they also provide the appointed director of the HHS tremendous discretion to override those decisions. That's not new--those laws are decades old.
You seem to be forgetting that one man is making these calls, not the people.
And when they made Islam official religion of Bangladesh in the constitution, what’s your take on that?
> It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution.<p>How many times has this administration blatantly ignored the Constitution, starting with, for a simple example, separation of powers?<p>You're all locked in on "scientists should be beholden to the government, as that is the lay and law of the land" which ignoring the rather large mote that is "this current government couldn't give one single fuck about following the laws of the land", like issuing directives to federal agencies to consider federal court rulings as "advisory" or "not final" or "not applicable".<p>When the corruption of the law of the land starts at the top, you're busy insisting that those trying to follow the <i>stated intention</i> of the institutions that employ them ignore that because, well, what RFK Jr or worse, Stephen Miller, are the way we do things now, law, constitution be damned.
The statement, "everything is just people" begs the question. That question is about appropriate roles.<p>No one is debating that Congress has the power of the purse. That is one of their primary roles. They appropriate, but obviously cannot and should not make every detailed decision, particularly where expertise is required and political neutrality is preferred. Accountability is another primary Congressional role. That comes through oversight, not day-to-day decision making on behalf of those being overseen.<p>Even if it were desirable to have politicians making decisions in place of scientists, granting that decision-making power to political appointees instead of Congress actually undermines the public's representation and further shifts the balance of power to the Executive.
It seems like your argument is proving way too much. If next President announces that he feels rural hospitals are an inefficient use of resources, and so all residency programs outside of major metro areas are cancelled, would you accept that as a legitimate use of funding discretion? To me it would sound like an obvious campaign of retribution against groups he finds it politically convenient to punish. (A campaign of retribution I will happily support, if Trump gets away with things like this - but I'd prefer to avoid going down that road!)