Jun 30, 2024 07:43 PM
(This post was last modified: Jun 30, 2024 07:45 PM by C C.)
The Biden administration’s Scientific Integrity Task Force is rightly opposed by researchers on the ground.
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2024/06/...integrity/
EXCERPTS: In its first year, the Biden administration launched a fast-track Scientific Integrity Task Force, intended to “lift up the voices of Federal scientists of many perspectives and backgrounds” and put scientific integrity “paramount in Federal governance for years to come.” The task force took a “whole-of-government” approach to ensuring the scientific integrity of federally funded research and included representatives from the 21 federal agencies that maintain scientific-research programs. For those with a high pain threshold, the final report may be seen here.
Prominent among the move’s critics have been the Council on Governmental Relations (a consortium of research universities) and the Association of Research Integrity Officers...
[...] As with all things governmental, one looks at this spectacle and asks “why?” It’s not like anyone is in favor of scientific misconduct. ... Nor has there been an absence of means to detect and punish research misconduct...
[...] There is a bigger picture in play, however. As demoralizing as research misconduct is, we should hardly be surprised by its occurrence. The unscrupulous, like the poor, will always be with us. More demoralizing is how research misconduct is actually incentivized in our modern science ecosystem. Few people want to acknowledge that...
[...] Since 1950 ... the science ecosystem has morphed into a “big science cartel,” united through an interwoven network of self-aggrandizing actors who hold a common interest, not around science but around capturing research funds. University administrations are one such actor, but there are many others. A spendthrift Congress is another, comprising legislators whose election prospects are tied to delivering the goods to constituents, which, in many districts, includes universities who look with favor on representatives who can keep the research money flowing in. Those 21 federal agencies represented on the task force constitute another crucial player: bureaucratic entities whose value and very existence is tied to capturing dollars from the federal budget.
[...] We can now begin to make sense of the dust-up between the bureaucracy-based Scientific Integrity Task Force and the university-based Council on Governmental Relations. Neither is concerned so much with protecting the integrity of science; they merely differ on who shall be the enforcers...
[...] At this point, it’s apt to recall Henry Kissinger’s famous quote about the 1980s Iran-Iraq war—that it’s a “pity both sides can’t lose.” Yet, while I’m no friend of the shenanigans of university administrations and the games they play, I’m far more concerned about the Biden administration’s move to complete the federalization of university science begun in 1950, which may finally squash the very people who are the most effective custodians of scientific integrity: scientists themselves.... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2024/06/...integrity/
EXCERPTS: In its first year, the Biden administration launched a fast-track Scientific Integrity Task Force, intended to “lift up the voices of Federal scientists of many perspectives and backgrounds” and put scientific integrity “paramount in Federal governance for years to come.” The task force took a “whole-of-government” approach to ensuring the scientific integrity of federally funded research and included representatives from the 21 federal agencies that maintain scientific-research programs. For those with a high pain threshold, the final report may be seen here.
Prominent among the move’s critics have been the Council on Governmental Relations (a consortium of research universities) and the Association of Research Integrity Officers...
[...] As with all things governmental, one looks at this spectacle and asks “why?” It’s not like anyone is in favor of scientific misconduct. ... Nor has there been an absence of means to detect and punish research misconduct...
[...] There is a bigger picture in play, however. As demoralizing as research misconduct is, we should hardly be surprised by its occurrence. The unscrupulous, like the poor, will always be with us. More demoralizing is how research misconduct is actually incentivized in our modern science ecosystem. Few people want to acknowledge that...
[...] Since 1950 ... the science ecosystem has morphed into a “big science cartel,” united through an interwoven network of self-aggrandizing actors who hold a common interest, not around science but around capturing research funds. University administrations are one such actor, but there are many others. A spendthrift Congress is another, comprising legislators whose election prospects are tied to delivering the goods to constituents, which, in many districts, includes universities who look with favor on representatives who can keep the research money flowing in. Those 21 federal agencies represented on the task force constitute another crucial player: bureaucratic entities whose value and very existence is tied to capturing dollars from the federal budget.
[...] We can now begin to make sense of the dust-up between the bureaucracy-based Scientific Integrity Task Force and the university-based Council on Governmental Relations. Neither is concerned so much with protecting the integrity of science; they merely differ on who shall be the enforcers...
[...] At this point, it’s apt to recall Henry Kissinger’s famous quote about the 1980s Iran-Iraq war—that it’s a “pity both sides can’t lose.” Yet, while I’m no friend of the shenanigans of university administrations and the games they play, I’m far more concerned about the Biden administration’s move to complete the federalization of university science begun in 1950, which may finally squash the very people who are the most effective custodians of scientific integrity: scientists themselves.... (MORE - missing details)