Congress Must Block New Rules on Federal Grants, Defend Public Health Urges

WASHINGTON, D.C. –  New regulations issued last week by the Office of Management and Budget regarding federal research grants amount to a declaration of war on impartial, evidence-based science, and Congress must act quickly to overturn them, Defend Public Health said today. The rules gut the longstanding practice of peer review, in which independent scientists evaluate research funding proposals for scientific merit, and put complete control of the process in the hands of political appointees.

Those political employees would be required to turn down grants that “promote anti-American values,” and the rules specifically bar objective, impartial research on transgender people and undocumented immigrants, as well as work designed to study anything related to the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in science. Because the rule is sweeping, all research will now be at risk of what is effectively a political veto overriding scientific merit should the proposed research run afoul of the whims of the White House.

“These rules declare war on honest science,” said Gregg Gonsalves, a professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and a member of DPH’s Coordinating Committee. “The U.S. government is the largest single source of research funding, and under these regulations only research that lines up with the politics of the party in power could get funded, whichever party that is. This echoes the actions of totalitarian regimes of the past: Joseph Stalin set back Soviet science for decades by forcing scientists to follow a party-line view rather than honestly seeking the truth. Congress must treat this as an emergency and stop it by any means available.”

“The proposed new OMB rules for federally funded science allegedly are to promote transparency and accountability – but they do the opposite,” said DPH member Nancy Krieger, Professor of Social Epidemiology and American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The OMB version of accountability is to prevent scientists from doing research that identifies who and what harms the public’s health, including policies and corporations. They claim they want to uphold ‘gold standard science’ above the political fray, but they require their version of ‘politically correct,’ right-wing science that would put McCarthy to shame.”

“This administration has a record of promoting  unproven and harmful scientific claims,” added epidemiologist Elizabeth Jacobs, Ph.D., University of Arizona Professor Emerita and a member of DPH’s Coordinating Committee, “such as Tylenol causing autism spectrum disorder, and spreading misinformation about vaccines and water fluoridation. Putting funding decisions in the hands of people who don’t just disregard objective science, but actively attack it, will complete the process of destroying American scientific infrastructure. Congress has the Constitutional authority to control spending and needs to step in immediately.”

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Defend Public Health is a volunteer-driven network of public health researchers, healthcare workers, advocates and allies fighting to protect the health of all from the Trump administration's cruel attacks on proven, science-based public health policies. We believe that everyone has the right to what they need for a healthy life, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity.
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