Laughably, unhappy scientists complain proposed grant system overhaul could politicize research funding — as if that weren’t already happening.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is proposing major changes to the rules that govern how federal grants, cooperative agreements, and other financial assistance are managed across the government. The goals are to increase oversight of how taxpayer money is used, align awards with current law and administration policy, and reduce what OMB views as unnecessary burdens on recipients.
These changes apply to all federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The 412-page behemoth certainly has the potential to shake up the science-industrial complex that has gutted American trust in science to a meager 36%.
“OMB has proposed revising the rules that govern how federal dollars are spent. The changes would inevitably lead to unlegislated reductions in funding and damage US leadership in science, both in academia and industry.” via @ScienceMagazine https://t.co/sJx1eIVF7h pic.twitter.com/RSHWTAcW8w
— RealClearScience (@RCScience) June 3, 2026
Among the action items embedded in this OMB plan, the new rules would allow agencies to terminate awards if they conclude that a grant “does not effectuate program goals, federal agency priorities, or the national interest as they exist at the time of the termination,” and also under any additional termination provisions written into award terms. This substantially widens discretion beyond classic noncompliance or performance failures.
Given the grants that continued to fund Wuhan bat virus research, the ability to slash funds for dangerous research should be viewed as a positive.
The proposed rules would also forbid spending federal funds on publication costs (e.g., journal publication fees), which is a significant departure from longstanding practice and directly affects the dissemination of research funded by federal grants.
OMB is revising the section to make publication costs unallowable unless such costs are expressly required by statute or approved in advance by the Federal agency on a case-by-case basis. This change reflects OMB’s objective to strengthen stewardship of Federal funds and ensure that Federal financial assistance is directed toward achieving the programmatic objectives of the award. Publication costs are not inherently necessary to carry out the core programmatic objectives of most Federal awards. In many cases, such activities are discretionary, vary widely in scope and costs, and may serve institutional, professional, or reputational interests rather than the specific objectives of the Federal program.
I would argue that taxpayer monies have essentially allowed journals to become echo chambers of the preferred narratives. The “old-fashioned” way of publication funding may be part of the reason that so many sound scientific theories and data deviating from that presented as “true science” haven’t been able to find their way into the scientific debate and discourse — which goes directly against the principles of the scientific method that is a bedrock of our modern era.
The new requirements also fold in a series of prior executive actions, including those restricting DEI programs and related institutional activities, effectively making them baseline conditions for receipt and management of federal funds. They also prohibit the funding of anything promoting gender ideology or the transitioning of minors.
Of course, the elite scientific community is in hysteria. This passage from Nature is an example of the caterwauling on the subject.
Many comments were from prominent researchers, such as leading oceanographer Dawn Wright, chief scientist of Esri, a global company specializing in geographic information system software, in Redlands, California, who wrote that the proposal “is dangerous and absolutely politicizes science”.
Suzanne Segerstrom, a biostatistician at Oregon State University in Corvallis, wrote: “This regulation harms taxpayers, harms Americans’ health, and contravenes federal policy. I am in strong opposition.”
…The proposal is a “brazen power grab by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and will make future discoveries less likely”, said Sudip Parikh, the chief executive officer of scientific society American Association for the Advancement of Science, in a statement. The American Society for Cell Biology described it as a “massive threat to American science”.
NPR pushes the idea of “peer review” as the great protector of The Science™ .
Since the post-World War II period, the U.S. scientific community has relied heavily on a system of peer review to offer feedback on studies and maintain integrity in research. The same has been true for federal science agencies when evaluating proposals for research funding. Typically, agencies adopt recommendations from independent advisory committees on issues including vaccine schedules, environmental standards, or census methodology.
While not legally binding, peer review in practice has been enormously influential and become part of the norms of government.
“ While it’s been true that peer review panels have always been treated as advisory by agencies, it was usually the combination of peer review with a non-political career expert at an agency that made the determination of whether to issue an award or not,” said Donovan.
However there has been a cascade of fraudulent, AI-slop science papers that have been “peer reviewed.”
In fact, back in 2024, researchers created a fake eye disease called “bixonimania” to see whether AI chatbots would repeat it as if it were real. Not only was that fake disease diagnosed, but it made it into “peer reviewed” journals.
Then, there was the Dr. Anthony Fauci-led paper, also “peer reviewed,” about the supposed “natural” origins of the covid virus.
The status quo the OMB seeks to reform carries its own serious credibility crisis: a peer review system increasingly compromised by paper mills, AI-generated fabrications, replication failures, and institutionally captured journals that have helped erode public trust in science to historic lows.
The decades-old model of government-funded, peer-reviewed science has proven it is not self-correcting; it has required outside pressure to even acknowledge glaring failures like gain-of-function funding and narrative-driven publication practices.
Imperfect reform is not the same as wrong reform; the far greater risk lies in defending a broken system simply because dismantling it is uncomfortable for those who have long thrived within it.
