At the risk of appearing to revive battles between Whigs and Jacksonians or some such antiquarian controversy, allow us to quote Dwight Eisenhower. Yes, kids, he was president of the United States waaaaaay back in the ‘50s. When men wore hats. (The 1950s. In the 1850s it was Millard Filmore and that crowd.) Roger Pielke Jr. recently warned of “The Price of Partisan Advocacy by Science Institutions” reminding us that on leaving office, Eisenhower warned against a takeover of scientific research by the government, including “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.” Indeed. Just think what might become of the prestige of science if it were skewed so as to declare carbon a pollutant, COVID a natural outbreak that required children to miss two years of school and socialization, and puberty a toy to be turned off then back on at will.
The premise of the sudden surge of US government funding of science was that the world had changed, we were living in a “knowledge economy” and in a high-tech battle with our foreign foes. Which is comical in some ways given an outburst of similar enthusiasm about 40 years later by people who’d never heard of the first one, or possibly of Eisenhower (despite his also being Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force on and after D-Day). But it has been argued, and indeed cogently, that the promise that state funding would boost the economy and without it the US would face-plant strategically, socially and materially, was false. Instead public research money crowded out the private kind, so the amount remained essentially constant.
In that respect it wasn’t exactly a failure. It was just pointless. But anyone who got to peek behind the Iron Curtain, which included Ontario liquor stores in our distant youth (you lined up once to order, once to pay, and once to collect, all from a dismal selection), is aware that when the state takes over functions that are properly private it isn’t just substitution. Things get worse. Because he who pays the piper calls the tune, as we used to say in those backward days when we didn’t say “they” and knew about incentives.
When governments fund research, researchers study what governments want and, worse, find what they want it to. Not because researchers are necessarily venal, though some may be suspected of sharp practice. The big issue is that researchers who study what the state cares about, and tells it what it wants to hear, get more grants and those who do not get few or none. And given a few generations, those who prosper in the state research-industrial-complex become so dominant that they only train like-minded graduate students and the whole field becomes narrow and, yes, partisan. Even grasping and venal.
For instance, The Chronicle of Higher Education is peddling a report The High-Stakes Hunt for Research Funds by saying:
“For decades, a powerful partnership between higher education and the federal government fueled breakthroughs in national security, medicine, energy, and beyond. Today, that foundation is shifting. Amid policy changes and funding uncertainty, universities are facing difficult choices about priorities, talent, and long-term strategy. While some research areas have weathered delays, others have been hit hard, raising critical questions about sustainability and global competitiveness.”
Nobody reading that passage could fail to recognize the call to find ways to beg for state money that resonate with the state. Which especially means with people in key positions who believe in big government.
As RPJ observes, publication after publication from Nature and Scientific American to the Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine and others gave editorial endorsements to whoever was not Donald Trump. The first time many of them had made such an endorsement. But not the last.
Worse, they pretended what was happening wasn’t. As Pielke Jr. wrote:
“The 2017 ‘March for Science’ brought more than a million participants to rallies worldwide. More than 100 scientific organizations endorsed the march — among them the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Psychological Association, the American Anthropological Association, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Organizers insisted the march was political but not partisan — after all, what could be partisan about marching for science? However, the reality was that the ‘March for Science’ was less about science and more about marching against President Donald Trump. A survey of participants in the march at three locations published in Science Communication, found that among the 110 participating scientists surveyed, exactly one — <1% — self-identified as Republican, while ~72% identified as Democrats, as you can see in the figure below. At best, the march was a form of stealth partisan advocacy, endorsed by more than 100 scientific societies.”
Now Donald Trump may be a skunk bucket. He may especially stink on science. But he’s not the only president not to be trusted with a test tube.
And let us not forget the ghastly spectacle of Anthony Fauci during the COVID lockdown panic declaring in words that would have made Louis XV blush that:
“So it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous. To me, that’s more dangerous than the slings and the arrows that get thrown at me. I’m not going to be around here forever, but science is going to be here forever. And if you damage science, you are doing something very detrimental to society long after I leave. And that’s what I worry about.”
What we worry about, and he should have, is a government official claiming to “represent science” because he represents the government.
