The first weeks of the second Trump administration have brought unprecedented shock and awe to science. In response, the leaders of the scientific community must cease their hand-wringing and align behind two strong approaches to dealing with the chaos: protest and candor.
I write these words as an attorney representing whistleblowers of scientific fraud. Prior to law school, I was an investigative journalist focused on this same phenomenon. Today I represent scientists and technical experts independent of whether the falsified data they have uncovered support a political agenda. Twenty years of experience investigating, exposing and, when necessary, litigating cases of scientific fraud, has, however, led me to think in terms of a different kind of politics: the politics of nonconfirmatory data. Any research-based organization – a university, a healthcare provider, a laboratory or a corporation – faces a daily challenge from data gathered by scientists within that contradict the scientific hypotheses that are bringing in the money.
Shock and awe disruptions exacerbate this problem. Too often in cases of scientific fraud, I observe a pattern of facts in which one or more experimentalists or data analysts were under severe pressure to deliver a result, while suffering from job insecurity. This can originate with the short-term nature of early career positions, or with a laboratory or institution being in a state of rapid change. Scientists do not do well facing existential job threats, because the natural pace of science is incremental. Facing setbacks in their experiments or their analysis, scientists need time to think, not reasons to hustle.
Not only individual integrity, but professional and institutional stability, are necessary for most scientists to have a fully objective response when the data they have spent thousands of hours collecting imply that it is time to start over. Most also need a minimum level of job security to feel safe speaking up about failure to reproduce the results of others who are prominent in their fields of study.
Those who hold secure positions in scientific leadership must educate the public about this issue. Abrupt disruptions may deliver the advice a politician wants in the short term, but they will also fail to deliver the products the country wants, the medical treatments it needs and effective solutions to our problems. In the long term, the economy and technological progress will stall in a country where scientists are afraid to tell the truth about their data.
Yet this message is not enough. Leaders of the scientific community must also acknowledge missteps – both their own and of their peers. In my experience, many scientists who start out critical of the claims of others but who later identify as whistleblowers, even working with a lawyer such as myself, do so reluctantly only because authors, journals and scientific institutions have failed to respond to direct, well-evidenced allegations appropriately, or have made legal threats to silence them.
Over time, denying and downplaying fraud is not only keeping my shop in business, it is producing a reserve of ammunition for those who misguidedly seek to control scientific results for political purposes. Scientific leadership must begin rolling, proactive disclosures of unaddressed issues now. They must also commit to proactively disclose new issues as they arise and before they escalate into weapons that the enemies of science can deploy against it. A whistleblower or a critic with concerns should be seen by leadership as an opportunity to stand tall and demonstrate an ability to listen and engage, not an inconvenient voice to muzzle.
Eugenie Reich attended law school after a fifteen-year career as an investigative science journalist. She now has her own whistleblower law firm in Boston, Eugenie Reich Law LLC.
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The shock and awe (NSF freezing grant reviews) provides the stimulus for a
National Audit of the U.S. Scientific Output (NAUSSO).
Gaspard de Prony’s extremely accurate work producing the trigonometric and logarithmic tables for the French land registry, starting in 1791, provides a clear and proven template on which to organise this enterprise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspard_de_Prony
In reverse order, starting with the many at the bottom, not the few, “the third group”.
“The third group consisted of sixty to ninety human computers. These had no more than a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic and carried out the most laborious and repetitive part of the process. Many were out-of-work hairdressers, because, with the guillotining of the aristocracy, the hairdressing trade, which had tended the elaborate hairstyles of the elite, was in recession. Due to their lack of experience, they only had to calculate simple problems of addition and subtraction. In addition, this group did not operate under a factory-like model, instead opting to work from home, sending their results and receiving their new tasks from the planners in a non-centralized manner. These calculators could produce an average of around 700 calculations a day.”
Many, including myself would, qualify for the third group.
It seems that they did not go into the office then either.
An organisational template along the lines employed by Gaspard de Prony could be easily extended to image analysis.
Second and first groups explained below.
Surely, U.S. universities and U.S. research institutes could hire 60 to ninety human pairs of eyes (the third group), above them a second group of lesser scientists/mathematicians, seven or eight in number, as the “planners”, and at the helm, a first group, five or six high-ranking mathematicians/scientists with sophisticated analytical skills?
The universities with the deepest pockets (largest endowments) will need to dig into their pockets to pay for the National Audit of U.S. Scientific Output (NAUSSO) as it is highly unlikely that the present U.S. administrations will foot the bill. My anticipation is that if they don’t step in and pay for the National Audit federal grants to universities will cease. The federal grants are grants not entitlements after all. If the universities were to put their money where their mouth and fund a national clean up it might encourage the federal government to “chip in”, say 25%, that’s what Trump said about states taking over from FEMA when it came to natural disasters, that the federal government would “chip in 25%”. The problematic data in the national scientific output are, however, not a natural disaster, but an man-made disaster.
Data scientists were definitely afraid to tell the truth under Biden. The case of Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy is just one example.
It is time for “shock and awe”. DJT is putting the fear of accountability into the of the swamp that has lived richly off the public’s dime.
It is truly startling to know that there are people who feel this way. DJT isn’t looking for accountability. He’s been very clear: loyalty, to him, personally, is the only thing that matters. This was literally what was written in the firing letters sent to members of the Department of Justice – an institution who is supposed to be 100% independent of the executive, without question – his Acting Attorney General made it clear that anyone who was not “loyal” (literally used this word) to the President and his agenda was gone. That meant anyone who investigated him, even though they did so independently of the government of the day, as is their job, and investigated Biden’s own family as well, independently.
All power is being centralised to the executive. Deleting all digital assets that contain certain words, like “climate change”, is that accountability? Firing people that stand up for the constitutional separation of powers, like against Elon Musk, an unelected technocrat stealing all the data on USAID and American Social Security, and arbitrarily shutting down and having officials fired and locked out for trying to stand in his way and hold him accountable, is that accountability? Sounds to me like clear-cut censorship and bypassing all accountability, illegally I might add.
The US is in utter constitutional crisis. The Conservative Right has long stood strong for the American constitution and the separation of powers, and the need to honor and defend it. They cannot now bow their heads and say “well, technically he’s on our side, so…”
It’s not even an issue of one side of politics or another. Americans have a national crisis on their hands. Every defilement of the law of the land by these gangsters is a historic stain that will never wash out. History will not be kind. Americas allies will turn their backs. America will be isolated. China will milk this crisis for everything they can get from it. The western world will undergo a massive re-alignment. It’s already happening, the tariff trade wars mean that long after this is all over, the world will never be able to trust in the stability of American trade policy ever again. Sourcing and suppliers from the US will be replaced with anywhere and everywhere else.
If you want to know what happens to major economies under “Shock and Awe”, see Liz Truss’ Prime Ministership in the UK. Shortest Prime Ministerial Term in British History.
Don’t be fooled my friend, DJT cares nothing for anyone but himself. Know him by his fruits.
He very literally does everything contrary to their interests yet the fealty remains, like a beaten dog.
The DOJ is quite literally part of the executive branch. Perhaps you need to learn the basic facts before going on rants like this.
Accountability? Are you in a coma?
Denying the existence of known scientific facts is literally the opposite of being accountable.
This is a political power grab and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
Knowing that the DOJ is an executive branch agency, everything that comes after the assertion that the DOJ “is supposed to be 100% independent of the executive” is discredited before I even read it.
My threshold for “shock and awe” would be like someone trying to shoot you and barely missing. That someone who grew up hearing continuously about a literal/Nazi/fascist/racist from places like NPR, who are continuously in shock and awe over anything Jack Smith fed them. But I am glad the OP will stand up for science and whistleblowers. Here are some examples to carry henceforth in the current scientific administration.
1. Mammals, including homo sapiens, are sexually dimorphic. No more death threats around the Cass Review.
2. Starlink, rockets, electric vehicles! No more setting cybertrucks on fire in front of political opponent’s businesses.
3. Protect the Chinese lab whistleblower CIA contacts in Wuhan. Retract the Proximal Origins paper.
4. Nurture (that’s good NPR word) the new AI and Crypto Czar.
5. Continue to develop mRNA technology initially put to practical use during DJT’s first term.
One wants to torch cybertrucks because they are aesthetic violations. The other violations against research integrity have to be dealt with straightforwardly because if they are not, your research loses all credibility.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsuF8WoNXLw
At 20 seconds and afterwards
‘Why Are We Giving Money To Harvard When They Have A $50 Billion Endowment?’: Trump
Many in academia will not like that, but perhaps Trump has a point.
What are the endowments for? Just to compare them and boast?
If he has a problem with Harvard, he could re-negotiate Harvard’s indirects. Arbitrarily trying to cut *everyone’s* indirects is not an appropriate way to deal with concerns about Harvard, because the majority of US research money doesn’t go to Harvard. My public university would be wrecked by these cuts, and we’re relatively well funded as public universities go.
“If he has a problem with Harvard, he could re-negotiate Harvard’s indirects. ”
I think he might do that.
Why should the very rich receive the public dole?
$50 Billion, as Trump would say: “is a lot of money”.
If you are on welfare you are only allowed a limited amount of savings,
if your savings are above that threshold you cannot get welfare.
I understand that there start-ups might need help to get going, but Harvard and the likes start-ups?
“the majority of US research money doesn’t go to Harvard” a lot of it does though, likewise to Yale, Stanford, UPenn, Columbia (science-lite). Take a closer look and the quality isn’t what it is cracked up to be. They do feature on Retraction Watch and Pubpeer, they are not immune. Often appearing slow to act to correct problematic data.
Some say that might be time to “re-balance” the economy away from the “education sector”, although is that possible as many universities run factories (labs) not much different from industry? Another problem is that others have already filled the artisan bakery, and hipster barber niches. What is a university to do?
It looks like the reduction in indirect costs will be across the board, not confined to Harvard.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole lot went. The point is the save money, not restructure federal agencies when federal agencies are anathema.
If the Ukraine is given 3 weeks to sign an agreement how long do you think the NIH, which is not autonomous, has got?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c15zypvgxz5o.amp
“How academic leaders should respond to shock and awe”.
I was shocked and awed by the “compensation” the highest paid College Presidents rake in.
Have any of those College Presidents thought of addressing the shock and awe they cause in others?
https://www.ivycoach.com/the-ivy-coach-blog/the-rankings/highest-paid-college-presidents/
Really funny to see the downfall of USA by their own hands and own “””democracy”””.