Americans, like citizens in countries throughout the world, have come to accept that politics plays an important role in the appointment of certain kinds of public officials. Few of us are surprised -- though some may be disappointed -- when a federal judgeship is awarded or a senior diplomat appointed because the candidate passes a litmus test of loyalty to some principle that is important to the president's or prime minister's party. But science, almost everyone agrees, is different, and here the US is beginning to stand as a cautionary example to the rest of the world.
Hiring and loyalty
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
Scientific appointments should rest on objective criteria of training, ability and performance. Clearly, it is legitimate to interrogate a future US secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) about his views on abortion. But it is entirely out of place when appointees to scientific advisory committees are subjected to tests of political loyalty. Similarly, membership of bodies that conduct peer review of scientific proposals -- a pro-cess that is fundamental to scientific progress -- surely ought to be free of all barriers to entry that are unrelated to professional qualifications.
Unfortunately, scientists in the US are running up against such barriers more and more often. During the past fall, the journal Science published several news stories related to the issue.
One involved the wholesale replacement of members of the advisory committee to the National Center for Environmental Health, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), without consulting the center's director. Similar cases involved the CDC's Advisory Committee on Lead Poisoning and Prevention, the Advisory Committee on National Human Research Protections and the Advisory Committee on Genetic Testing.
Vetting for views
The current epidemic of ideology, in which advisory committees are shut down and reassembled with new mem-bers and candidates are subjected to loyalty tests, seems old hat to some observers. Officials at the HHS call it "fairly standard practice."
Well, it isn't standard practice in the US -- or at least it wasn't. In any case, what's really worrying is not that the Bush administration examines candidates for compatibility with its "values." The most alarming development is how deep the ideological vetting now cuts, invading areas that once were immune to this kind of manipulation.
Indeed, perhaps the most telling case in the widening political epidemic was a membership re-shuffle of the study section at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health that evaluates grants for studying workplace injuries. Advisory committees might have been vulnerable to occasional stacking of this kind in the past. After all, they recommend the policies that politicians may or may not want to consider. But study sections?
In October 2002, Science published an editorial by David Michaels and a group of colleagues. Several were distinguished former public servants who had been involved with some of the committees in question, and they brought a valuable perspective to the issue, one based on their personal experiences.
Their account was a story in itself, but what followed was even more interesting. It set off a volley of letters in which scientists told of similar experiences.
A nominee for the National Institutes of Health's Muscular Dystrophy Research Coordinating Committee told of being vetted by a White House staff member. After being asked about her views on various Bush administration policies -- none of them related to the work of the committee -- she was asked whether she supported the president's policy on embryonic stem cells.
Your vote, please?
Another letter writer, a distinguished professor of psychiatry and psychology, reported receiving a call from the White House about his nomination to serve on the National Council on Drug Abuse. The caller declared his intention to determine whether the professor "held any views that might be embarrassing to the president."
According to the professor, a series of questions followed, with the White House official keeping a running score. One example: "You're two for three; the president opposes needle exchange [for intravenous drug users] on moral grounds, regardless of the outcome." Then the exchange took an even more chilling turn. The official asked the nominee whether he had voted for President George W. Bush, and, on being informed that he had not, asked: "Why didn't you support the president?"
This is the stuff of dictatorship, not democracy. The purpose of scientific advisory committees is to provide balanced, thoughtful advice to the policy process. Nothing is gained -- and much is lost -- when a desired policy outcome is put first. This is why deciding which research projects to support has always been a matter for objective peer review, not politicians. In fact, the applicable statute for all this -- the Federal Advisory Committee Act -- specifically requires that committees be balanced and "not inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority."
HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and the White House Personnel Office ought to set an example to the rest of the world. They can do so very easily: by following the law.
Donald Kennedy is professor of environmental science and a former president of Stanford University. He is editor in chief of the journal Science.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past