Comment from Kenneth Poss
Kenneth PossOpposeAcademic
Summary: A scientist with 23 years of experience at major US universities opposes the proposed regulation. They argue that the current peer-review process is highly effective and that replacing expert reviewers with political appointees would be destructive to the quality and direction of scientific research.
I am a scientist who has run research programs at major US universities for the past 23 years. I've spent hundreds of hours reviewing grants and serving on panels for NIH, and I can tell you that the process is highly competitive and highly effective. Truly expert reviewers consider the importance and impact of the science as well as the quality in their scoring and discussions, and there is no question that the best science comes to the top through this process. We cannot afford to change to a system where a politically appointment non-expert determines what is funded and where science should head. That is not how science works and has worked. It takes many years of experience in scientific research to judge whether exploratory or applied science has a likelihood of reaching its goals of improving human knowledge and health. The proposed policy would be destructive.