When Science Relies on Politics: Federal Funding for Research

When Science Relies on

Politics: Federal Funding for Research

Ayushi Hegde is a second-year at the University of Chicago. She is currently working towards a double major in French and Biology, a choice influenced by her passion for languages, literature and research. Outside of SISR, Ayushi is a member of SASA and Chicago Raas, a competitive team on campus that practices traditional dance from the Indian state Gujarat. She also works closely with Student Health and Counseling as a member of The Body Positive, a group that aims to promote positive body image, awareness of eating disorders and inclusivity on campus. In her free time, she loves to pet dogs, eat desserts and go on long runs.

Science—it goes without saying—is not easy. Popular culture is saturated with images of its monumental difficulty: test tubes, scribbled-on blackboards, lab-coated men looking like they’ve stuck their fingers into outlets. In part, the depiction is glamorous because we associate it with difficulty. But if you ask an investigator to name a source of frustration in their field, you’re likely to get the same, surprisingly unglamorous response. The grant-writing process tends to discourage scientists the most, an annoyance that seems almost trivial compared to the content of their work and the long hours and years of schooling demanded by it. Their frustration is understandable. Researchers depend on government and private funds for their work, with grants needed to cover reagents, equipment, and the equally drawn-out process of publishing original research. Federal agencies

[T]he process of securing funds becomes more uncertain with the transience of America’s political landscape: as specific policies change and new policymakers come into power, tides of support ebb and flow.

have historically provided most of the support for basic science with corporate, university, and philanthropic contributions together making up the remaining half of investments in 2015. 3 Still, the government’s role in scientific funding is not uniform. Money can be granted by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes for Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institute for Environmental Health Science, in addition to other agencies. These groups vary in their application timelines and show preference to different kinds of work depending on their own focus. Partitioning support between different fields can alleviate some of the competition involved in the process. For example, cell biologists should be less concerned about competing with social scientists and environmental policymakers for funds. However, these federal agencies still depend on Congress. Not only do legislators decide the amount of money that goes towards research in a given year, they can also dedicate or restrict funding to certain areas. Even when Congress allocates money without an explicit agenda or restrictions on spending, individual appointees and bureaucrats within the executive branch have the power to award or withhold additional grants from specific agencies.

Credit: New York Times In 2001, President George W. Bush ordered a ban on federal funding for research that involved human embryonic stem cells. Five years later, he rejected a bill that proposed to relax the policy. Appearing at a news conference with babies born following in vitro fertilization, he maintained that his ban had allowed research "without sanctioning the practices that violate the dignity of human life."

Without the necessary support for their experiments, many investigators were forced to abandon major projects—in some cases, the culmination of decades of work.

The result is that government policy, which is shaped by partisanship and public perceptions about science, plays an inevitably prominent role in the process of scientific funding. Not only does this prominence inform the kind of research that will be funded in an election cycle, it means that ideas in line with national politics are more likely to gain recognition. To be sure, bias is not unique to the government’s approach. Private foundations have their own biases, preferring projects that are socially relevant, usually with practical implications in line with the group’s mission. At the same time, the process of securing funds becomes more uncertain with the transience of America’s political landscape: as specific policies change and new policymakers come into power, tides of support ebb and flow.

This instability was perhaps most apparent in 2001, when President George W. Bush implemented a ban on federal funding for research involving human embryonic stem cells, citing ethical concerns. 4 Although the ban was not comprehensive, it failed to cover the development of new cell cultures and included strict eligibility criteria for the kinds of projects that would receive funding. Researchers were only considered for grants if they limited their experiments to certain cell cultures, enumerated by the policy without respect to their scientific relevance. Not only were the permissible cultures difficult to work with, the majority came from individuals of European descent. Other genetic backgrounds were shockingly underrepresented, limiting the possibility of research with relevance to minority groups; the politicized nature of funding could also skew scientists’ results. Individual researchers were forced to restructure their research in order to accommodate the new criteria. Publicly funded projects could no longer use reagents or equipment paid for by private institutions.Without the necessary support for their experiments, many investigators were forced to abandon major projects—in some cases, the culmination of decades of work. Although President Obama relaxed the ban in 2009, its dramatic consequences for researchers demonstrate the persistence of uncertainty facing researchers. The National Science Foundation reported that it accepted only 11,447 of the 49,915 proposals that it received in 2017—an acceptance rate of less than 25 percent. 5 These numbers often discourage researchers.

Other genetic backgrounds were shockingly underrepresented, limiting the possibility of research with relevance to minority groups; the politicized nature of funding could also skew scientists’ results.

The difference between a successful and failed proposal may depend on subtleties that seem to verge on arbitrary, calling into question the rigidity of the process. In the past, government agencies have © 2020, The Triple Helix, Inc. All rights reserved.

favored proposals with specific policy implications, either informally or in response to legislation. An example is the Dickey Amendment, which Congress passed in 1996 to withhold funds from studies that appeared to promote gun control. 6 The law was undeniably influenced by partisan politics. Even Credit: bongino.com when it was relaxed Political cartoon depicting the Dickey Amendment's effect on in 2018 to exclude CDC researchers. Passed in 1996, the law withheld federal public health refunds from studies that could be used to promote gun control. search, Republicans and Democrats disagreed on the amount to allocate to the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. Perhaps more importantly, it was politThe Dickey Amendment censored academic inical by nature. The Dickey Amendment quiry for the sake of furcensored academic inquiry for the sake thering a national agenda. of furthering a national agenda. Given how government-funded research has served as a barometer for past political climates, it is difficult to imagine a system completely without bias. Looking beyond politics, however, the process of applying for government funding may have other consequences. Having to appeal to federal agencies with very narrow interests discourages scientists from pursuing interdisciplinary studies. The rigidity of the process requires that more time is spent formatting applications, preventing scientists from fully considering the potential value of their work. 1 the long run. By forcing investigators to question the potential of their own ideas, the funding process also favors the most strategic proposals—not only those that ask the most interesting questions, but those that ask them in the most concise, effective way. While the need to format applications according to the guidelines of different agencies could limit the time spent developing rigorous scientific questions, it could also lead to new, more focused ideas that may not have surfaced in a more streamlined process. Despite the frustrations caused by these hurdles, they can theoretically function to direct On the other hand, the scrutiny that they funds towards the best-developed proface could be constructive for the same posals. The bureaucracy involved may reasons, motivating stronger results in actually be beneficial from a scientific

The bureaucracy involved may actually be beneficial from a scientific standpoint.

standpoint. But is scientificity—the same ‘rigorous inquiry’ central to the University of Chicago’s intellectual mission—the problem? Some might argue that the government’s involvement in the funding process should be a cause for concern on its own. After all, science prides itself on its objectivity; the objectivity of a scientific finding becomes weak when we consider the subjectivity of the system that funds it. Remembering Bush’s ban on embryonic stem cell lines and the Dickey Amendment—policies that actively suppressed research in the interest of furthering a separate, political agenda—a more objective system may have meant the difference between free scientific expression and outright censorship. Efforts to restrict research in pursuit of a partisan agenda are both unscientific and undemocratic. Federal funding should be more than a source of frustration for researchers. In the same way that the funding process is informed by policy, scientific knowledge has the power to transform policy and impact lives. The issue becomes inherently political; the only question is how we choose to address it.

References

1 DeFeo, Christian. “How to Write a Good Research Funding Application.” Mendeley Blog, 14 June 2017, blog.mendeley.com/2017/06/15/how-to-write-a-good-research-funding-application/. 2 “Government-Funded Science.” The Center for Accountability in Science, www.accountablescience. com/issues/funding-in-science/government-funded-science/. 3 MervisMar, Jeffrey, et al. “Data Check: U.S. Government Share of Basic Research Funding Falls below 50%.” Science, 8 Dec. 2017, www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/data-check-us-government-share-basic-research-funding-falls-below-50. 4 Murugan, Varnee. “Embryonic Stem Cell Research: a Decade of Debate from Bush to Obama.” The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, YJBM, Sept. 2009, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC2744932/. 5 Sohn, Emily. “Secrets to Writing a Winning Grant.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 20 Dec. 2019, www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03914-5. 6 Wetsman, Nicole. “After a 20-Year Drought, US Lawmakers Fund Gun Violence Research.” The Verge, The Verge, 19 Dec. 2019, www.theverge.com/2019/12/19/21028779/gun-violence-researchfunding-20-year-freeze-congress-bill-cdc-nih-dickey.