SOPA author Lamar Smith wants congressional guidelines to replace peer review for…

SOPA author Lamar Smith wants congressional guidelines to replace peer review for federal science research
Texas congressman Lamar Smith, SOPA author and new chair of the US House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, wants to overhaul how the National Science Foundation funds research projects. According to Science, Smith's draft bill (called the "High Quality Research Act") would require that the director of the NSF certify prior to any funding award that the proposed project is "groundbreaking," of "the finest quality," does not duplicate any other federally-funded research, and will "advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and … secure the national defense." It also requires that the National Science Board (including the president's council of science advisors) issue a report making recommendations on how these criteria could be applied to all other federal science funding.

"IT'S A DANGEROUS THING FOR CONGRESS, OR ANYBODY ELSE, TO BE TRYING TO SPECIFY IN DETAIL WHAT TYPES OF FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH NSF SHOULD BE FUNDING."

This language may seem reasonable enough—it echoes the 1950 law that founded the NSF—but Science's Jeffrey Mervis writes that the bill "in effect, would replace peer review at the National Science Foundation." Currently, NSF research grants are approved by peer scientists judging proposals on just two criteria: their intellectual merit and their broader impact on the science community, as well as in the world at large.

Smith's proposal would alter the mission of the NSF, the principal funding source for pure scientific research in the US, by making each project fulfill the agency's aggregate goals. It opens up any project (and the director who approved it) to political scrutiny on that basis. Finally, the prohibition against duplicating current research makes the NSF pick winners and losers, rather than allowing multiple researchers to work toward the same goals with different degrees of success.

To see how these changes would affect federal science research, consider what's already happened during Smith's tenure as committee chair. Under a rider to a spending bill passed this year, the NSF is already prohibited from funding political science research unless it promotes economic development or national security. At hearings on the National Science budget two weeks ago, Smith questioned the acting NSF director and presidential science advisors about the merit of specific research projects, arguing that the NSF should require that funded research "benefit Americans." In response to a later question, presidential science advisor John Holdren countered that "it's a dangerous thing for Congress, or anybody else, to be trying to specify in detail what types of fundamental research NSF should be funding."
http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/29/4282270/house-chair-wants-congress-guidelines-replace-peer-review-science-research

Special interests control Congress, Congress controls funding of governmental priorities and expenditures.  Shall we give corporations and special interests even more direct power to squash valid science, or fund junk science in the interest of their economic gain?

The Controversy of Genetically Modified Food
What Is Driving the Concern over Crop Genetic Engineering?
"Probably the most cited examples is Arpad Pusztai's study in the Lancet noting GM potatoes expressing a protein thickener from the snowdrop flower had negatively affected the rat gastrointestinal tract. Just prior to publication in 1999, Dr. Pusztai appeared on a British TV show briefly describing the results and expressing concern that citizens are being used as guinea pigs. Dr. Pusztai's TV appearance created a firestorm of controversy about GM food."

"However, though often touted as an advocate against GM food, the significance of Dr. Putztai's study is a much more modest. The potato in the study was not developed for human consumption. It was a test model designed specifically to be poisonous to insects and the study itself was somewhat flawed. However, Dr. Putztai's experiment did show that genetically engineered modifications have the potential to be dangerous. His main concern, as stated in the 2008 interview with the Guardian, was primarily to push for more testing of genetically engineered food, not make a blanket statement about the hazardous of GM food. His issue was to elevate the science above the political and economic drivers pushing GM technology."

Read that last sentence again.  Already there are ample political and economic drivers pushing genetically modified food.  Under a new NSF directive forcing funding to go towards "prosperity", would the required follow-on studies to confirm adverse effects remain unfunded because they go against that new NSF charter?  Shall we put our heads in the sand and avoid the truth simply it's bad for someone's business?  In fact, under such a new NSF charter, cancer and other health problems are good for business: healthy people don't spend money on healthcare, so perhaps all cancer research will go unfunded.

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