Comment from Daniel Borrero
Daniel BorreroOpposeAcademic
Summary: Daniel Borrero, a physics department chair and researcher at Willamette University, opposes the proposed revisions to federal grant review processes. He argues that allowing political appointees to override peer reviews and terminate funding at will will undermine scientific integrity, waste resources, and prioritize short-term political gains over long-term research benefits.
[200.205, 200.340]
To Whom it May Concern:
My name is Daniel Borrero and I am Chair of the Physics department at Willamette University and a fluid dynamics researcher.
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.
Science is hard and understanding cutting edge science requires expertise. Even more challenging is seeing where the science will eventually take us. Policy changes proposed in Section 200.205 regarding the ability of political appointees to override the results of peer review take the experts out of the room. Given the short term pressures of politics, giving veto power to political appointees could kill promising research avenues that would generate long term economic and societal benefits in favor of sub-optimal ones that only provide short term gain. As someone who studies fundamental fluid mechanics, but whose work might take years to give actionable results, it is worrying to me that my research funding might be cut for a quick sound bite.
Giving political appointees the power to terminate funding at any time and for whatever reason, as proposed in Section 200.340, will likely lead to a lot of waste. After all, I might purchase a piece of equipment or lab supplies a year before they are going to be used, but if I can't pay for the students to run the experiments a year later, they will just be sitting in the lab. Oftentimes, equipment is pretty specialized for a given project and cannot be repurposed for a new project that aligns with the priorities of whoever happens to be in office at the time.
The range of scientific research that is funded by the federal government is immense. It is impossible for an administration (whether Republican or Democratic) to secure enough expertise to gauge what merits funding without resorting to experts. Subsuming merit-based peer-review to the whims of political appointees will make it very challenging for the federal government to accurately gauge the merit of research proposals. After all, who would want to sit on a review panel when you know that all your work could be for naught.