For more than half a century, Susan Gerbi built her career inside a Brown University laboratory filled with microscopes, centrifuges and other specialized equipment.
“When I retired, I had to clean it out,” she recalled. “Brown said, ‘Oh, that’s so simple. You just tell us when and we’ll take everything to the dump.’ However, scientific equipment is really expensive, so I spent about half a year cajoling my colleagues into realizing that they should want some of my used equipment, even if it was 20 years old.”
Gerbi, the founding chair of Brown’s department of molecular biology, spent decades conducting federally funded basic research on ribosomes and chromosomes. Around the Providence campus, her research earned her the nickname, “Lady of the Flies.”
“Our lab worked with a unique fly — not the common fruit fly, but a distant relative called Sciara,” she said. “It’s the fungus fly.”
Gerbi closed her lab last year when she retired after 51 years on the faculty, but remains active in the scientific community, advising professors and students.
So when she read the Trump administration’s proposal to overhaul how federal research grants are awarded, she says she was horrified and aghast.
“Instead of having the final decision made by scientists based on scientific merit, which is what currently occurs, the final decisions will be made based on how closely the proposed research aligns with presidential priorities,” she said.
At stake is far more than who signs off on research grants. The proposal could fundamentally change how the federal government decides which scientific discoveries are worth pursuing. Decision-making authority would shift from independent scientists who evaluate research on its merits to political appointees empowered to reject grants that don’t align with the president’s agenda.
Under draft rules recently released by the federal Office of Management and Budget, political appointees in the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation would be required to approve grant awards before they’re finalized — a significant departure from the current peer-review system, which is widely considered the gold standard in science.
Public comment on the proposal is open through July 13.
Supporters say the changes would make billions in taxpayer-funded research more accountable to elected leaders. A spokesperson for the OMB told GBH News, “Federal grants were politicized under the last administration to promote a far-left DEI agenda... That ends now. With this new rule, the Trump Administration will bring much-needed accountability to the grantmaking process and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.”
OMB added that the new procedure “does not replace peer review.”
Jonathan Butcher, who directs the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, says public trust in experts changed after the COVID pandemic.
“There was a flip and a significant constraint on forcing masks on people, closing down schools and then keeping them closed,” Butcher said. “I think that made people second-guess really what quote ‘the experts’ may be telling us, either from science or from the media.”
But critics warn the change would inject politics into a process that has long depended on scientific expertise.
Researchers say the change could weaken a process that relies on subject-matter experts to evaluate scientific merit.
The proposal would also limit the use of grant funding for conference travel and scientific publications, potentially restricting how researchers share their findings. Another provision would allow agencies to deny funding based on a researcher’s public statements if they’re deemed inconsistent with the administration’s priorities.
All that has many scientists and academic leaders alarmed.
“I think it’s very important to have those who are engaged in the free pursuit of knowledge be the people who are adjudicators of the free pursuit of knowledge,” said Laurie Patton, president of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
“I think legitimate government oversight is essential. That’s part of how we became a great scientific powerhouse after World War II, and I think that the power ultimately for that adjudicatory process should rest with the people who are pursuing the knowledge.”
“As scientists, our job is to describe the natural world as it is and to report on how we best understand how it works,” said Andy Ewald, a Johns Hopkins professor studying how cancer cells spread. “The job of politics is to decide how to use those facts to inform policy.”
Ewald also serves on the executive committee of the American Society of Cell Biology. He worries the uncertainty surrounding federal research funding could discourage would-be scientists who require years of training from entering the field.
“Young researchers need to feel confident there’s going to be a job at the end of that,” Ewald said. “Volatility in grant funding also makes it harder for young researchers to complete their research projects and publish their discoveries.”
Ewald believes American science will continue, but he warns the U.S. risks falling behind countries investing aggressively in research. China has now surpassed the United States in overall research and development spending — a milestone that the journal Science described as a structural shift in the global research landscape.
Gerbi worries the uncertainty could accelerate a brain drain.
“We’re already seeing scientists move to Canada and to Europe and to Asia,” she said.
She calls the proposed changes “unprecedented,” warning that politically driven funding decisions rather than scientific evidence could shape the direction of basic research for years to come.
Still, Gerbi prefers to take the long view. She began her own career in the early 1970s, just as President Richard Nixon froze funding for the National Institutes of Health.
“It was a very hard time for young scientists to get started, and you couldn’t get any grants for half a year or more,” she said. “But if you persist, usually you survive.”
