||| FROM MICHAEL RIORDAN for THE SEATTLE TIMES |||
Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency accomplices are taking a chain saw to American science. Once the envy of the world, U.S. scientists and engineers have given us the laser, microchips and magnetic-resonance imaging — plus discovered quarks within the atomic nucleus and pioneered epochal breakthroughs on black holes and the nature of gravity. But the thoughtless antics of these unelected, ill-informed, reckless computer jocks are endangering American science at a time when China threatens to surpass us.
Without any official authority to do so, DOGE acolytes have acted via the White House Office of Personnel Management to order random cuts to federal employment at the Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Science and Technology, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and National Science Foundation. In addition to their demands for similar cuts at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, that agency’s Office of the Chief Scientist is about to be eliminated. While these extralegal actions have been contested in federal courts and may be overruled, irreparable institutional damage has occurred.
These unwarranted cuts are not promoting government efficiency at all; it’s better known as government emasculation.
The two of us have worked with the so-called bureaucrats at the DOE and NSF and found most to be selfless civil servants dedicated to the cause of advancing U.S. science. Its overwhelming success since World War II could not have happened without their efforts.
A shining example of their valuable contributions is how farsighted NSF program officers nurtured the nascent, struggling Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory project for nearly three decades before its breakthrough 2015 discovery of gravity waves caused by spectacular black-hole mergers. Using two kilometer-scale L-shaped detectors in Louisiana and at Hanford Labs in Central Washington, scientists recorded incredibly faint ripples in the fabric of space-time that these distant cataclysms had generated eons earlier. NSF officers’ risk-taking and sustained patience were rewarded by the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics, which was awarded to three of the LIGO leaders.
The thoughtful management of the LIGO project also led to remarkable advances in laser and quantum technologies. And it sparked an exciting new discipline of fundamental physics research — which could never have occurred without wise, sustained NSF support.
Make no mistake: This indiscriminate DOGE hatchet job is an attack on American science itself, likely inflicting irreparable damage on the DOE, NIH, NSF and other science agencies. Should it succeed, they will be left intimidated, cautious and less innovative — with fewer opportunities available for young scientists. This would be a tragic retreat from what has been one of our greatest national strengths.
Thus we call upon our Washington delegation to stand up for science in congressional deliberations and actions. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell occupy two of the most influential Senate positions — as Vice Chair of its Appropriations Committee and Ranking Minority Member of its Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Their resolute voices of support need to be heard loudly, clearly and often, to be followed by staunch opposition to any further attempts to slash science funding.
Sen. Murray has already spoken eloquently on the Senate floor about biological and medical research being threatened by DOGE cutbacks at NIH. We fervently hope that Sen. Cantwell will soon do something similar on behalf of the physical sciences, since NASA, the NSF, NIST and NOAA fall under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee she chaired until last year. She can and should become a powerful spokesperson on behalf of these agencies and the crucial sciences they support — for example, the invaluable weather-forecasting and climate-modeling services provided by NOAA’s National Weather Service, which is now threatened with severe cuts.
Nothing less than a full-court press is now required among advocates of science in Congress, by the scientists themselves and by the general public. The future health of American science may very well depend on it.
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It is indeed a shame that we don’t have a few simple principles designed to limit the metastasizing of government bureaucracies (at all levels). Maybe for every new regulation created, one has to be eliminated? Or for every employee hired, one has to be retired or fired? Or maybe department budgets go DOWN every year to prevent “mission creep”?
Or – and this is my current favorite – ALL laws and regulations must have an automatic sunset clause, with a maximum run-time of ten years before renewing or allowing to expire. Ten years is enough time to see if a law or regulation is doing what it was intended to do and/or to see some of the shorter term, unintended consequences. That simple one line rule would force Congress and regulatory agencies to evaluate, discuss and act in order to maintain existing laws and regulations. Hopefully that will keep them too busy to add to the Brobdingnagian heap that the country is currently laboring under and, over time, maybe even reduce the statutory burden on us.
And, of course, we absolutely MUST have congressional term limits or we will continue to have 435 career-politicians in perpetual gridlock instead of a rotating, ever changing group of citizen legislators. This would also require campaign finance reform and limiting political campaigning to a set period (6 weeks ought to be plenty) in order to work well. Repealing Citizens’ United (which is essentially the unlimited corporate purchase of politicians) is an essential first step to reclaiming our democracy. No campaign contribution over $2000 to any political candidate by citizens and no campaign contributions of ANY kind from any entity other than a legal citizen of the represented area.
Getting this, or any, common sense set of limits in place will undoubtedly face massive resistance from entrenched economic and political camps and frankly, I am too much of a realist to think it will happen in the US without some kind of catastrophe that will force us to do the sensible thing. As Churchill is supposed to have said, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve exhausted all the other possibilities.” And I might add, “… and their 1% have extracted as much profit from the chaos as they can get away with.”