Comment from Robin Snyder

[200.205, 200.340] To Whom it May Concern: I am a full professor of ecology. 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. If political appointees had been able to override peer review, as would start happening under section 200.205, I don't know that my grants would have been funded. I create mathematical tools that other scientists find useful, but to a lay person, they might seem too abstract to be worth funding. In addition, section 200.340 would allow active grants to be terminated at any time for political reasons. If I can't count on the money being there, then I can't plan the travel to work with collaborators, nor can I tell a new graduate student that yes, I have funding for you, with any certainty. Indeed, my department would almost certainly have to reduce the number of graduate students we accept, because we would need to be certain we could support them if the grants they were on were terminated. Science goes astray when it's controlled by commissars: Lysenko's stranglehold on Soviet agronomy and genetics in the 1940s contributed to famine. To have strong science, we need to award grants according to scientific peer review, not political review. Additionally, the uncertainty in whether grant funding would persist would force universities to cut back on how many science graduate students we train.