Scientific Integrity is Not a Partisan Issue
That National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the steward of medical and behavioral research for the nation, awarding more than $40 billion per year. Its mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.
The science-based mission of NIH makes it an institution where strong scientific integrity must be in-place, particularly to protect the agency’s work from political interference. Since its inception, NIH has remained rather insulated from political interference. However, the agency did see some politicization of COVID-19 science under the Trump administration, as well as funding of research utilizing fetal tissue.
Prior to the Biden administration’s actions to strengthen scientific integrity, the NIH did not have a scientific integrity official, and a policy that was weak in a number of different areas. The policy has since been updated and is much stronger than its prior version, and the agency has designated a scientific integrity officer.
Politico reported yesterday on NIH’s scientific integrity progress, although, I feel, with a narrative that is not entirely accurate. The article discusses scientific integrity at the NIH as a tool put in-place by the Biden administration to prevent a possible 2nd Trump term from interfering in the agency’s scientific work. While scientific integrity policies may help deter or prevent future cases of political interference in agency science - the Biden administration’s actions on scientific integrity were not taken as preventative measures against a future Trump administration. Strengthening scientific integrity was not a plan crafted to protect science from Trump - it was a plan to protect science from political interference, period.
Republicans, Democrats - They All Politicize Science
Former president Trump’s record of attacks on science certainly makes him one of the leading anti-science presidents in history, but he’s not the only president to have sidelined science in decision-making processes. In a paper that I co-authored with my former colleague, Emily Berman, we show that every president dating back to at least President Eisenhower has attacked science in a federal decision-making process. Republicans and democrats - they all attack science for political purposes.
For example, Jimmy Carter’s administration buried the results of a study conducted by a chemical engineer because they didn’t like the results.
Also in 1977, Carter’s team assigned government chemical engineer Christian Knudsen to head a task force within the Market Oriented Program Planning Study that would examine the supply and production costs of natural gas for the next few decades. Knudsen’s optimistic calculations, however, displeased the administration, whose National Energy plan projected a dire forecast. Knudsen’s work was subsequently buried by the administration and Knudsen himself was fired as chairman of the task force.
The paper also documents multiple scientific integrity issues under the Barack Obama administration, including politicizing the science to make Plan B an over-the-counter drug to people of all ages. The commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and science advisors approved of the manufacturer’s application to make the drug available over the counter without age restrictions, but the Secretary of Health and Human Services overruled the FDA. In April 2013, a judge ordered the FDA to make emergency contraception available to people of all ages, arguing that the Secretary’s action was “politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent”
These are just a couple of examples of attacks on science under democratic administrations, but there are also examples from republican administrations as well. The party affiliation doesn’t make these attacks any less different or any less dangerous to public health and safety. Scientific integrity policies are there to ensure that policy decisions are informed by the best available science that is free from political interference - to the benefit of all of us. The policies are not there to protect science from any particular political party or candidate - nor were they created to advance, or stifle, progress of a particular administration.
Sidelining Science Didn’t Start with Trump
The take-away message from mine and Emily’s research was that the strategies the Trump administration used to sideline science were not new. Not only did we find examples of attacks on science under nearly every administration, but we also found the same strategies used over and over again to attack science. Understanding these strategies and how to protect science, and science-based decision-making processes, from them is the key to developing strong scientific integrity policy.
I believe that the Biden administration’s processes to strengthen scientific integrity have done a good job at allowing research of prior scientific integrity issues, and understanding of this research, to guide policy updates. The policy updates were made to protect science under any administration - republican or democrat. Science is worth protecting from anyone who would politicize it - and I am hopeful that the new scientific integrity policies and processes that we see coming out will do just that.