Secular Café: US Congress Declares War on Peer Review

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US Congress Declares War on Peer Review May 1st 2013, 22:17 http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencein...criteri-1.html Quote: The new chair of the House of Representatives science committee has drafted a bill that, in effect, would replace peer review at the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a set of funding criteria chosen by Congress. For good measure, it would also set in motion a process to determine whether the same criteria should be adopted by every other federal science agency. The legislation, being worked up by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), represents the latest—and bluntest—attack on NSF by congressional Republicans seeking to halt what they believe is frivolous and wasteful research being funded in the social sciences. Last month, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) successfully attached language to a 2013 spending bill that prohibits NSF from funding any political science research for the rest of the fiscal year unless its director certifies that it pertains to economic development or national security. Smith's draft bill, called the "High Quality Research Act," would apply similar language to NSF's entire research portfolio across all the disciplines that it supports. ScienceInsider has obtained a copy of the legislation, labeled "Discussion Draft" and dated 18 April, which has begun to circulate among members of Congress and science lobbyists. In effect, the proposed bill would force NSF to adopt three criteria in judging every grant. Specifically, the draft would require the NSF director to post on NSF's Web site, prior to any award, a declaration that certifies the research is: 1) "… in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science; 2) "… the finest quality, is groundbreaking, and answers questions or solves problems that are of utmost importance to society at large; and 3) "… not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal science agencies." NSF's current guidelines ask reviewers to consider the "intellectual merit" of a proposed research project as well as its "broader impacts" on the scientific community and society. In short, he wants politicians, not scientists, to decide what the NSF funds and what it doesn't. He has his sights especially set on the social sciences, which he has described as "useless" and "unpatriotic", but anyone who relies on NSF grants is going to be affected, and the proposed criteria are all atrocious and unscientific. Only the second is less so, but (a) the NSF already requires this and (b) peers in a scientific discipline are far more qualified to judge novelty and importance than a Congressional committee. It's extremely similar to the Trofim Lysenko-inspired legislation that nearly destroyed Soviet science research prior to Stalin's death. Lysenko similarly attempted to destroy peer review and replace it with government directives, though in his case it was due to alleged anti-Communist academic activity making peer review injurious to the interests of the state. Similar methodology here, though, and it would have the same effect if it succeeds. I'd like to think that the bill has no hope of succeeding, but the passage of the spending bill mentioned in the article, just a few months ago, proves that it isn't just Republicans who are anti-science. It's our leaders, period. Dark times.

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