Trump Administration Eliminates Science Advisory Panels, Raising Concerns

The Trump administration is working to fundamentally change how scientific research happens in the U.S. One of its strategies is eliminating or freezing dozens of panels of independent advisers to the government. NPR's Katia Riddle brings us this story about the impact this has had on federal agencies like NASA.

Federal advisory committees are a hallmark of American government. They bring together experts from a wide range of fields to help think through tough questions. How do we develop better cancer treatments? What should children be vaccinated against? How do we detect asteroids before they hit the Earth? One such expert is Kelly Holley-Bockelmann. Until recently, she was a professor of astrophysics at Vanderbilt University. She says volunteering for these federal advisory committees came with a lot of benefits.

"I really liked to learn about how NASA worked and how it chose its missions and what all was part of a mission portfolio and how a mission came to fruition."

Holley-Bockelmann was on the Astrophysics Advisory Committee. That was one of several NASA committees that were terminated soon after the start of the second Trump term. Before that, she spent years advising on issues relevant to astrophysics.

"Then when I finally understood how things worked, I felt like I could help to bring the community's concerns to light to NASA."

Since the committee ended, she's been worried about key NASA projects. For example, the LISA mission.

"It's this amazing gravitational wave telescope. It's actually as big as the sun, and it's designed to basically detect the gravitational waves from black holes merging."

Holley-Bockelmann says she and other committee members were concerned that NASA was not fulfilling its commitments to international partners on this mission. Had they been able to continue their work, they would have stressed that to the agency.

"There were a couple times where we offered expertise that was not listened to (laughter). But nonetheless, we felt it was really important to get it down on record."

Russ Paulsen is the CEO of Research America. That's a group that does advocacy around science policy. Paulsen says that eliminating these groups leaves a crucial deficit.

"What advisory committees can do is give a diversity of viewpoints and an independence of viewpoints that no one organization will ever have."

"We need to have choices and we need to have a diversity of opinions to get the best science done."

The White House said in a statement that committees that were ended were, quote, "redundant, unnecessary or ineffective." NASA called these eliminations a restructuring, saying they had merged several committees into one and writing that NASA, quote, "has remained committed to continuing to engage with the science community in a variety of ways," unquote. Juan Meza has been on a number of committees advising on issues of engineering and science.

"I mean, everybody who I've ever served with on these committees, they take their role very seriously."

Meza is a professor of applied mathematics at University of California, Merced. He says, often, that being on a committee means making recommendations to federal agencies that aren't popular or politically favorable. He recalls one such decision he was part of years ago advising against a significant investment in supercomputers that leadership at the Department of Energy wanted to make.

"It was not a well-received report, but again, the advisory committees are there to give independent expert advice."

"There was a lot of pressure. I'm being very careful since you're recording this."

(LAUGHTER)

"It was a challenging time, and it was not an easy decision to make."

Still, he says, the committee advised the DOE not to make the investment. Reluctantly, he says, leadership followed their advice. Meza stresses that had their jobs been on the line, they might have made a different decision.

"The fact that we were independent, I think, gave us a certain amount of leeway to say, no, no, no, no, no, this is - we've got to go with what we think is right."

In the absence of these committees, Meza fears, federal leaders will hear less from independent experts and more from people who tell them exactly what they want to hear. Katia Riddle, NPR News.