Comment from Eric Weeks

[200.205, 200.340] To Whom it May Concern: I'm a professor of physics; I have been a professor since 2001. I study soft materials. My research involves undergraduates and graduate students, and for example, three former graduate students ended up working in the petroleum industry (where soft materials are ubiquitous). I am writing in my personal capacity to oppose the proposed revisions to sections 200.205 and 200.340 that would undermine the integrity of federal grant review processes and federal science agencies' ability to identify and fund impactful research. It is impossible to guess how my grants would have been impacted; I don't think of my grant proposals as having any political implications, only scientific ones. That being said, my understanding is that Congress sets priorities for science funding, not the executive branch. I am very used to my proposals being funded or rejected based on their scientific merits, but I am not sure how I could have done effective science benefitting the United States if my work was judged on criteria other than scientific merit. If grants could be terminated at any time, for political reasons or reasons otherwise unknown to me in advance, it would be challenging if not impossible to recruit students to do the work. I would be ethically concerned that recruiting a graduate student to do a grant-funded paid research assistantship position is the wrong thing to do if the funding is unstable/unknowable. And these students who do federally-funded grant-related research are the ones who become our future science and technology workforce. The United States has been leading scientific progress for decades, and this is because we prioritize scientific merit in deciding which grants get funded. The more other criteria creep into the process, the less progress we make. I am thankful that the American people have been willing to fund science during my career, and I never take that for granted. I owe the American people my best efforts to do the best science possible. The judgement of what is the best science possible, the science most worthy of funding, has always been determined via peer review. I believe the proposed changes will decrease the quality of scientific output, and I strongly recommend we stick with the status quo.