Comment from James Druckman
James DruckmanOpposeAcademic
Summary: A professor at the University of Rochester expresses concern regarding the proposed regulations, arguing that the existing merit-based review process for the National Science Foundation Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences program is already effective. The commenter suggests that adding an extra layer of evaluation could be inefficient and unnecessary.
I am a political science Professor at the University of Rochester. I have been a principal investigator of the National Science Foundation Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences program for more than a decade (https://tessexperiments.org/). This program has funded 100s of projects that advance knowledge about society on topics such as trust, food labeling, consumer preferences, and well-being. It is currently on hiatus due to funding uncertainty. The program's main purpose is to oversee a rigorous review process to ensure funds are allocated based solely on merit. This has proven highly effective and indeed there is work showing that the program itself has allowed scholars to show there is a decline in publication biases. The program suggests that an extra layer of evaluation may not be necessary and could be highly inefficient. I thus have concerns about §200.205(b)-(d).