Opinion: I’ve spent 40 years in research. I have never seen a threat to science like the new grantmaking rule

Childhood leukemia, a likely death sentence when I was a medical student, is now survivable for most children. Cancer immunotherapy is extending life for many who would have died a decade ago. New technology is letting us repair genetic diseases at their source. The same American scientific research enterprise that produced these breakthroughs also gave us GPS, the modern semiconductor, and the early architecture of the internet.

All of it came out of an American research enterprise that the federal government is now proposing to fundamentally rewire for no good reason.

In my more than 40 years in higher education and research, I have watched the American approach to research weather budget fights, ideological storms, and presidential transitions. Working across administrations, I have seen firsthand how American science survives changes in politics because of the guardrails Congress and the executive branch have historically left in place.

I have never seen a threat to those guardrails like the one now sitting on the table at the Office of Management and Budget.

A new proposed rule , a revision of the so-called Uniform Guidance, would change how federally funded research is reviewed, awarded, and overseen across every agency in the federal government. If finalized as written, it would insert a political lens on top of a process that, for 80 years, has been run by scientists evaluating the work of other scientists.

The sweeping proposal seeks to replace long-standing guidance to agencies about how grants should be managed with binding regulations requiring that every research grant “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.” It would codify this administration’s priorities into rules intended to tether future administrations to those priorities.

Scientific judgment and political preference serve different purposes. Mixing them does not improve research. It undermines the very thing that has made American discovery work, which is the freedom of scientists to follow the evidence wherever it leads, without permission from Republicans or Democrats in Washington. The scientist-led peer review of research ideas from other scientists, paired with robust funding, is why American science remains the envy of the world.

In practice, a cancer researcher has an idea about how a particular protein behaves in tumor cells. She writes a proposal. That proposal is read, scored, and debated by other researchers, people who have spent their careers in science and can recognize a promising idea. Currently, no one in Washington decides whether her question is politically convenient. No one gets to wave a project through or kill it because of the partisan-driven fight of the day. Cures and treatments should not have to clear a political review.

This system mapped the human genome, laid the foundations of artificial intelligence, and produced the lithium-ion battery. It gave us the targeted therapies that transformed aggressive breast cancers into treatable diseases, and the medicines that let children born with cystic fibrosis live into adulthood. It is the system that contributed to Operation Warp Speed, a defining scientific achievement during President Trump’s first administration.

Furthermore, it is an economic powerhouse. According to the annual analysis from United for Medical Research , every dollar of NIH funding returns $2.57 in new economic activity. Over the past decade, that has added up to $822 billion in economic activity and an average of nearly 370,000 jobs a year. Crucially, it draws the best minds in the world to American laboratories, where many of them stay, build companies, train the next generation, and contribute to the American economy.

A political litmus test on federally funded research is dangerous. An administration’s scientific goals should drive advances in treatments and responses to new threats, not drive fear into every scientist that promising ideas will be ignored or halted midstream because they don’t match a political talking point. Reevaluating every research grant with a political lens each time a new party is in power could end America’s scientific progress and leadership.

Meanwhile, our competitors are marching on. China now leads R&D funding in several fields, and the European Union actively courts American scientists with promises of stability. Politicizing our research review process sends the exact signal our rivals hope for and brings severe economic, geopolitical, and national security ramifications.

Presidents and members of Congress of both parties have understood for decades that American science is too valuable to be turned into a political football. The proposed revisions walk away from that understanding.

The American research enterprise can certainly be improved. Grant reviews can be faster, and public trust must be rebuilt. But none of that requires dismantling what makes us succeed.

Everyone with a stake in American discovery — scientists, uni…