Christian Hubicki

So they already kind of have a good relationship with them.

They've delivered to them before.

So they're probably more likely to get the money.

And there's strengths and weaknesses to that.

It could end up being sort of just reinforcing one lab, getting the point of view, getting a lot of money all the time.

So it's not ideal, but sort of like it's a little less than the peer review side of the spectrum.

They'll get informed by peer review.

But here you have actual political interests, right?

So not only are you going to be sucking up to very particular people in kind of the worst sort of way, if you're deemphasizing peer review, you can flat out put in wrong data, wrong conclusions, wrong preliminary results, right?

to just pass muster of the political appointees.

And if they don't care about the peer reviewers, that's really bad.

And on top of that, I mean, peer review within NSF is very much anonymous.

Like you were not even supposed to say like when we were on a panel.

I mean, I think it's okay for me to say I was on panels

at some point, but they don't want you to say anything because they want to protect your anonymity, both from other researchers, but also from Congress.

So if you approved a grant that they don't like, they don't come back after you.

Well, what's that going to be like now in the peer review process where you have a political appointee approving the grant?

Let's say someone puts out a proposal with really dubious data, some crazy fringe theory, and a scientist on the panel speaks up like, this is nonsense, this is garbage.

Well, the political appointee is going to be aware of that, and they could exact some kind of political revenge on them by terminating their other grants, right?

So it even quells the peer review itself to what degree is there.