That kind of open and non-politicized search process, Histed said in a follow-up interview, isn’t unique to NIH: It’s one widely used by scientific institutions around the world. And it has worked, he argued, to help make NIH a scientific juggernaut: “That process,” he said, “led to 80 years of staggering scientific success.”
Members of Congress have taken notice. In language attached to the current appropriations bill moving through Congress, lawmakers direct NIH “to maintain its longstanding practice of including external scientists and stakeholders” in the search process. (Agencies are supposed to follow these Congressional instructions, but they are not binding.) In late January, Diana DeGette, a Democratic representative from Colorado, sponsored a bill that, according to a press release, would “Protect NIH From Political Interference” by, among other steps, capping the number of political appointees at the agency.
Lauer, the former NIH grants chief, took a broader historical view of the changes. There has long been a tug-of-war, he said, between presidential administrations that seek more political control over an agency, and civil servants and other bureaucratic experts who may resist that perceived incursion. From the point of view of politicians and their staff, Lauer said, “what they’ll say—I understand where they’re coming from—what they’ll say is, is that more political control means that the agency is going to be responsive to the will of the electorate, that there’s a greater degree of transparency and public accountability.”
Those upsides can be significant, Lauer said, but there are also downsides, including more short-term thinking, unstable budgets, and the potential loss of expertise and competence.
Mark Richardson, a political scientist at Georgetown University, is an expert on politicization and the federal bureaucracy. In his work, he said, he has observed a correlation between how much political parties disagree over the role of a specific agency, and the degree to which presidential administrations seek to exert control there through appointees and other personnel choices. NIH has historically fallen alongside agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that are subject to broad alignment across the parties.
“I think what you’re seeing more with the Trump administration is kind of an expansion of political conflict to these types of agencies,” Richardson said.
This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.
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