Ira Flatow
speaker
1,345 appearances
25 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 3d ago
Ira Flatow’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Science Friday · Under proposed rule, science funding must pass political review · 24 Jun 2026
podcast
But a proposed rule change at OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, would bring a major shift, inserting a political review process to ensure the funds that are released match the priorities of the president.
Those rules are now in a public comment period.
In a recent editorial, Dr. Holden Thorpe, editor-in-chief of the Science Family of Journals, called the change another red alert for American science.
He's with me now.
Welcome to Science Friday.
Thanks, Ira.
Great to be here.
Let's talk about how big a change that is, please.
You know, when you said 1945 and how long ago this was, and I heard about this OMB idea, my mind went to the famous Lysenko case where the Soviet Union under Stalin, going back to 45, chose to politicize science and putting research under party control, judging ideas by whether they conform to party dogma instead of evidence, and they punished scientists who challenged the official line.
And this sounds frighteningly familiar to this OMB directive politicizing science.
Let's talk about the actual text of this OMB rule.
And it says the changes are related to, quote, transparency, accountability, and proper oversight for the federal grantmaking process.
That's a big word salad, meaning what?
Do you think this is going to prevent younger scientists from entering the field if, as you say, this whiplash goes back and forth and back and forth?
wondering about their careers?
Is there any kind of pushback that you see might be effective in mitigating what the OMB wants to do?
You know, that's the irony of this whole thing, is that when the White House took all this money out of funding of science and NSF, Congress rightfully said, you know, this is important stuff.
We should put that money back in, which they did.
And then OMB said, oh, yeah, well, we've got another method we can keep this money from going out.
And so now here we are again at looking for this pushback in the other direction.
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