The proposed OMB rule changes (OMB-2026-0034) are problematic and should be withdrawn or substantially altered. At a fundamental level, the rules represent an attack on the peer review process and replace it with an explicitly political, vague, and poorly defined standard and process for review that is more likely to hinder science than promote it.
We should acknowledge the problems and limitations of peer review. The fact that grants are not blind reviewed increases the risk of bias as many studies of publication peer review have shown that author institutional affiliation, author gender, and other characteristics of the author influence the results of the peer review process.
There is a potentially deeper problem with relying on peer review. There are times when scientific consensus and opinion form based partly on evidence, but also on assumptions and values that are shared within the scientific community. Sometimes, this can lead qualified reviewers to reject views and work that challenge orthodoxy and to accept research that ought to be questioned. In the early 20th Century, most biologists rejected the accounts of speciation that were developed by “Naturalists” who studied biogeography, paleontology, taxonomy, and evolution. Instead, the majority adopted a theory based on experimental research by Hugo de Vries that became part of the early emerging field of Mendelian genetics. It was over two decades later that scientists realized that the earlier accounts were correct as they were able to create a synthesis between genetics and evolutionary biology. Similar types of biogeographical and paleontological evidence also supported continental drift in the early 20th century. But despite tremendous evidence supporting drift, geophysicists rejected it and it was an unpopular view until the discovery of sea floor spreading decades later won over the geophysicists.
Peer review processes are not immune to these sorts of biases. In the long run, debates internal to science usually have a way of coming around to correcting for these problems. The existence of critics of the orthodoxy remains an important and respected part of science, and these critics are often critical to the eventual shifting of scientific opinion.
There is an alternative to allowing the scientific community to work its way through what views are correct or well-supported. That is exemplified by another 20th Century rejection of early Mendelian genetics. Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist. He rejected the emerging field of genetics and developed a broadly Lamarckian view of biology that was focused on improving agricultural yields for the Soviet empire. His proletarian background and rejection of the emerging mainstream science (as well as some early agricultural successes) won him Stalin’s support. The result was a dark history for science. Geneticists were forced to abandon their scientific views to support “the People’s Science.” Many prominent geneticists were imprisoned and others were executed. Lysenkoism may have been rejected by the international scientific community, but it was Stalin’s preferred science. The results were catastrophic. Pursuing Lysenko’s vision of science, agricultural practice contributed significantly to famine that causes millions of deaths in the Soviet Union. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Mao’s Peoples Republic of China likewise based their agricultural approach on Lyskenko’s scientifically discredited views which contributed to the famine in China that also killed millions.
The key difference between these stories is that in one, the internal process of problematic orthodoxy allows for debate and exploration, and minority views can be freely expressed, and the epistemic values of science eventually resolve them. In the Lysenko case, political forces entirely external to science determine what is good science for entirely political reasons. This did not work out for the millions who lost their lives in China, Russia and other parts of the Soviet empire to say nothing of the oppression of the scientists who stood up for good science.
The proposed change to the rules rejects the centrality of peer review and the processes that make science largely work (for all its flaws) in favor of non-expert determinations of what science is politically expedient or acceptable to those in power. Scientists would potentially need to conform to a new set of answers that are politically acceptable to the current leadership. Robert F. Kennedy is not a trained scientist, nor is he a medical practitioner. He is a political appointee. The potential that his views might become a funding requirement for the scientific community is deeply concerning.
Attacking mainstream science as “junk” in favor of an undefined “gold standard science” (particularly when these attacks are largely made by non-scientists) is a sign of Lysenkoism, not valuable challenges to entrenched orthodoxy. The proposed change in the rules opens the door to American Lysenkosim.
Obviously, the fact that the federal government funds most scientific research means that it should have a say over what topics are covered and ensuring that the money is well spent. But using that as an excuse to impose substantive views about what must be true based on political views or the views of non-scientists is doomed to create bad science.
The proposed rule changes must be rejected or amended significantly.
David Magnus, PhD, is EIC of The American Journal of Bioethics