This kind of open and non-political search process, Histed said in a follow-up interview, is not unique to NIH: It is a process widely used by scientific institutions around the world. And he argued that it served to help make NIH a scientific juggernaut: “That process,” he said, “led to 80 years of astonishing scientific success.”
Congress members have taken notice. In language attached to the current appropriations bill moving through Congress, lawmakers direct NIH to “maintain its longstanding practice of involving external scientists and stakeholders” in the discovery process. (Agencies must follow these congressional directives, but they are not binding.) In late January, Representative Diana DeGette, a Democratic representative from Colorado, sponsored a bill that would “protect NIH from political interference” by, among other steps, limiting the number of political appointees at the agency, according to a press release.
laur, east The NIH grant chief took a broad historical view of the changes. There is a long-running tug-of-war between presidential administrations, which want greater political control over an agency, and civil servants and other bureaucratic experts, who might resist that perceived intrusion, he said. From the perspective of politicians and their staff, Lauer said, “What they would say – I understand where they’re coming from – what they would say, is that more political control means the agency will be responsive to the will of the voters, there is a greater level of transparency and public accountability.”
Those advantages can be significant, Lauer said, but there are also downsides, including more short-term thinking, unstable budgets and the potential loss of expertise and capacity.
Mark Richardson, a political scientist at Georgetown University, is an expert on politicization and the federal bureaucracy. In his work, he said, he has seen a correlation between how much political parties disagree over the role of a specific agency, and the extent to which a presidential administration seeks to exert control there through appointments and other personnel choices. NIH has historically fallen in line with agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that are subject to broader alignment across parties.
“I think what you’re seeing more with the Trump administration is an expansion of the political struggle for these types of agencies,” Richardson said.
This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.
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