Opportunities to Comment on Science Policy
A few upcoming opportunities/deadlines:
DUE MAY 23, 2025:
There’s a proposed rule that would open the way to reclassify many federal employees as political, thus eliminating the usual civil service protections. Submit comments here.
Why does this matter for science policy? Here’s an example of employees who could be reclassified as political:
Substantive participation and discretionary authority in agency grantmaking, such as the substantive exercise of discretion in the drafting of funding opportunity announcements, evaluation of grant applications, or recommending or selecting grant recipients. Grantmaking is an important form of policymaking, so employees with a substantive discretionary role in how federal funding gets allocated may occupy policymaking positions.
In some cases (e.g., DOJ’s line of grants to support local policing programs), it does make sense to see grantmaking as a way of directly affecting policy.
In the case of scientific grantmaking, however, there should almost never (if ever) be any policymaking directly at issue. It therefore makes no sense to suggest reclassifying all the reviewers, program officers, advisory councils, and leadership at NIH to be political in nature (as well as their equivalents at other science funders).
In some cases, of course, scientific studies might have downstream implications on public policy. For example, a team of scientists might study the effects of microplastics on human health, and whatever they find (one way or the other) could inform future policy debates on how to address microplastics (if at all). But the original grantmaking decision to do an unbiased empirical study on microplastics is not itself a policymaking decision at all.
If we define “policy” so broadly as to include everything that could have downstream implications, then we might as well say that “2 + 2 = 4” is a policy statement, because it affects how we count military troops.
DUE MAY 29, 2025:
The National Science Foundation (assuming anyone still works there by May 29) has released a “Request for Information on the Development of a 2025 National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research and Development (R&D) Strategic Plan.”
They’re seeking ideas for how “the United States can secure its position as the unrivaled world leader in artificial intelligence by performing R&D to accelerate AI-driven innovation, enhance U.S. economic and national security, promote human flourishing, and maintain the United States' dominance in AI while focusing on the Federal government's unique role in AI research and development (R&D) over the next 3 to 5 years.”
Submit comments here.
DUE JUNE 13, 2025:
Senators Heinrich and Rounds are launching a bipartisan American Science Acceleration Project, with many signatory organizations in support (Good Science Project is one).
Via this RFI, they are seeking comments on issues such as:
How should the United States achieve the goal of accelerating the pace of scientific innovation? What roles should be played by Congress, the administration, industry, civil society, and academia?
What infrastructure needs to be built to make scientists more productive, and for each type of infrastructure you recommend, what should the funding model be for the construction and operation of that infrastructure?
How do we ensure appropriate design of new scientific workflow models that offload certain tasks to AI while keeping human scientists at the center of the discovery process?
In order to measure the success of ASAP, we need to have objective metrics that measure the speed of scientific innovation. What metrics already exist and what ones need to be created? What information should the federal government have to understand the health and productivity of our innovation ecosystem, and what tools processes, or institutions should be used to do so?
Grand challenge problems can help provide concrete direction for how to implement new innovations. What core innovations does America need that can help guide ASAP? If possible, please provide an objective quantifiable metric, such as decreasing the time it takes to get a new drug to market from 10 years to 1 year?
How can America build the world’s most powerful scientific data ecosystem to accelerate American science?
What does the U.S. need to do to ensure its researchers have access to enough computing resources to power new breakthroughs?
What should America do to take full advantage of AI capabilities to dramatically accelerate the pace of science in both the private sector and the public sector, and what innovations should we target in the foundations of AI itself?
How can we radically increase the scale, speed, and impact of scientific collaboration across disciplines, institutions, and sectors?
In order to cut the time from discovery to deployment by a factor of 10, what changes are needed in the process of scientific innovation, such as in the regulatory ecosystem, scientific funding models, education and workforce pipelines, and the resources that constitute the scientific supply chain?
Ideas should be emailed to ASAP@heinrich.senate.gov and ASAP@rounds.senate.gov.\
DUE JUNE 13, 2025:
The Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) Appropriations Subcommittee has issued instructions to submit witness testimony on NIH funding. Send any comments to lhhs@appro.senate.gov with the subject line “FY26 OWT.”
The 10 questions provided at the end of this article are very good. I love it when I see people thinking about these things, doing the research, and taking action.