The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a 400-page document last week outlining proposed revisions to the administration of federal awards. The document proposes expanding agency authority to monitor awards from pre-application through closeout and increasing the influence of political appointees and the White House over award decisions.
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“The OMB’s proposed rule is an escalation of the administration’s relentless attacks on independent science,” Jules Barbati-Dajches, an analyst for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement.
The document, called the Uniform Guidance, also proposes enhanced verification processes before funds are disbursed and provides agencies with more tools to suspend or terminate awards.
Advancing “gold standard science”
Under these new rules, scientific peer review at agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation would become advisory rather than decisive. If the proposals are enacted, senior appointees will have to sign off on all research awards to ensure compliance with presidential priorities.
The proposal requires appointees to fund only what the administration deems “gold standard science,” which the White House defined in an executive order as “reproducible, transparent, communicative of error and uncertainty, collaborative and interdisciplinary, skeptical of findings and assumptions, structured for falsifiability of hypotheses, subject to unbiased peer review, accepting negative results as positive outcomes and without conflicts of interest.”
The document also explicitly bars the use of federal funds for projects that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, “deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans,” advance “anti-American values,” contribute to illegal immigration or assist in voter registration and are deemed wasteful, divisive or “woke” by the OMB.
The proposed revisions also eliminate fixed-amount awards unless specifically authorized by statute and expand risk reviews to evaluations of foreign collaborations. They also limit the nonprofit cost principle exemption to organizations that receive 90% or more of their federal funding through contracts or through Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs).
“The proposed rule will ensure spending is aligned with current law, Executive Orders, and agency priorities. Overall, the goal is to promote transparency, efficiency, and responsible stewardship of Federal funds. This change will dramatically improve the ability of agencies to identify and respond to fraud, waste, and abuse,” a spokesperson for the OMB said in an email to R&D World.
Georges C. Benjamin, the chief executive of the American Public Health Association, told the New York Times that the policy could “devastate innovation, science and research” in the U.S. He added that his organization would challenge the proposals.
The OMB plans to finalize these regulations by October. The 45-day window for comment closes on July 13.
The Scientific Integrity Act
“Congress must move swiftly to advance the Scientific Integrity Act. The bill would establish stronger safeguards to protect federal scientists from political interference, require agencies to maintain scientific integrity policies and ensure government decisions are informed by evidence rather than political agendas,” Barbati-Dajches said in their statement regarding the Uniform Guidance.
The act is designed to protect federal scientific research and public data from being altered, suppressed or manipulated by political, ideological or special interests. If enacted, the act would establish uniform, government-wide standards across more than two dozen federal agencies that conduct or fund public science.
The act would force federal agencies to establish clear scientific integrity policies, prohibit political appointees from censoring federal scientists or altering data and require agencies to appoint a dedicated scientific integrity officer to investigate allegations of misconduct or political tampering.
The act is spearheaded by Representative Paul Tonko of New York and Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii. It has been introduced in both the House and Senate and referred to committees.
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