Seen on social media lately, attributed to former American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
The scientific research base of the United States of America is the research university. We made that decision 80 years ago. We don.t have a Plan B.
The first time I searched for this, the only place it showed up was on social media posts. It made me rather skeptical of its reality. But I found it from a Fox and Friends clip here.
Yesterday, I took a lot of time that I didn’t really have to watch Marcia McNutt’s presentation to the National Academies. I know there was a panel discussion afterwards, but didn’t watch it because McNutt’s talk was so frustrating.
And all I can say is, “Thank you, Heather Wilson.”
Wilson, president of the University of Texas El Paso, was the only panelist – of five! – who even came close to addressing the unfolding self-inflicted extinction event that is unfolding on American science.
She was the only one who talked about the president’s budget request to the American Congress, which proposed slashing science by amounts not seen in decades.
She was the only one who talked about getting grants terminated. (“That’s not ‘woke science,’ that’s genetics” she said at one point, gathering applause.)
She said science’s moral authority derives from its pursuit of truth,
I sent her a “Thank you” email for saying what she did.
The other panelists? Like McNutt, they were so concerned about showing a silver lining that they could not admit there was a cloud.
Or, to use a better known metaphor, “Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”
It is wild to listen to people talk about “needing to inspire kids in K-12 to take science and math” (biology is usually the most popular major of undergraduate students), how “scientists need to communicate with the public better” (no supporting data or acknowledgement of the fractured information ecosystem run by algorithms and gatekeepers), and, worst of all from former adviser to the current president, Kelvin Droegemeier:
We don’t want folks to walk out of here thinking, “Oh my god, it’s all doom and gloom.” Doom and gloom is the best opportunity to do really exciting, forward-thinking things.
That came . Such a flippant “Go make lemonade” dismissal of how much harm is being done by that president now.
Photo from here.
Marcia McNutt gave a “State of science” speech to the National Academies of Science yesterday.
In a time when researchers are feeling shock, uncertainty, and volcanic anger at the actions taken against them, McNutt failed spectacularly to address the harm that is being done to US science now.
McNuss started with a couple of quotes that she said shows that everyone wants the US to be a world leader in science. The lived experiences of too many scientists say otherwise. Marcia, I hate to break it to you, but there are a lot of people in the current federal government who change their tune depending on who they are talking to.
She goes back to 2007 report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, to make it seem as though the current problems are just a continuation of what has been happening for years. This is sanewashing. 2025 is not an extension of the 2007 to 2024 trendline.
McNutt proposes seven action items.
#1: Her first item is to “build on a culture of innovation.” (19 minutes into the talk). She says, “We need a radical new US innovation enterprise.”
She worries that peer review is “too conservative” and reviewers look for reasons not to fund, hinting they do so to improve their own chances of grant success. Her solution is to look for better peer preview to select “truly innovative” proposals.; a.k.a., “Just get better at picking winners.” This has never worked. You know how to fund more innovative proposals? Fund more proposals, period.
#2: Create a national research strategy. The current disruption, she says, gives us a chance for change! Find the silver lining in that storm cloud! Your diagnosis of life-threatening disease is a great chance for a makeover!
Researchers are in existential crisis and being told to look on the bright side. Talk about salt in the wound.
She argues that the US has no national strategy for research. She assumes the current government wants one. In one of her more pointed criticisms, she says she doesn’t think people should pay for disaster warnings; it should be a federal responsibility. This is something that I think many people would agree with, but Project 2025 called for privatizing the national weather service anyway.
#3: Better K-12 education. She says this is a high priority for Americans. But popular does not translate into political action. Otherwise, there would have been a lot more “common sense gun regulations” than consistently enjoy high support in public polling.
McNutt this is a state responsibility and there is not much the federal government can do. She partly blames this on Department of Education for a lack of leadership. This seems like a bit of a DARVO tactic to appease Republicans, many of whom have wanted that department abolished for years.
McNutt also buys into the “school choice” rhetoric, cloaking this as a chance to do controlled experiments in education. Interestingly, she admits her daughters go to religious schools “only after I interviewed the science departments.”
And then, oh no, she has a slide of “Better directions” in education that lists “Explore AI as tutoring aid for students who need help” and “Provide AI as teacher's assistant. Apparently she hasn’t read the article about how badly teachers are getting screwed over by rampant use of chatbots. ” I saw a great presentation from Khan Academy" which is a company with a product to sell. Yeah, I heard the same from Bill Gates about Khan Academy in a TED Talk in 2011.
McNutt wants to know why students cannot get six figure salaries with a bachelor’s degree and a couple of years of extra training. It’s because businesses don’t value them. McNutt does not see the connection between “We don't have enough people” and “Why don’t scientists get paid more?” McNutt seems too enamoured of industry to suggest that they could solve their own problems.
McNutt describes the National Defense Education Act that was a response to Sputnik, and says, “We are facing another Sputnik moment.” Marcia, the call is coming from inside the house. This isn’t a Cold War moment where the country is uniting against an external foe. This is a federal government that does not value the things that scientists value and is determined to shrink science.
Then she argues that one of the problems with academia is that there are too many grad students and postdocs and we should use AI to get rid of them. See above comments on how businesses could solve this by creating entry level science positions with six figure salaries.
Edit, 5 June 2025: Chemjobber writes about the slide shown,
I’m sorry to be so graphic, but if I kidnapped the children of 20 full professors and said “You get your kid back if you give me a definition of ‘molecular engineering’”, I would get 40 different definitions.
That someone at the National Academies think these projections are credible is concerning.
Chemjobber also has comments about how “unmet workforce need” is calculated and why it seems suspicious.
#5 is deregulation. I bet this made the conservatives in the audience happy. McNutt says that researchers lose 44% of time is lost to paperwork. I.m willing to be a lot of that time lost to paperwork is grant proposals, which could be fixed by more funding. And she suggests again that AI will relieve researchers of the burden of paperwork. (AI seems to be her go to answer for all of science’s problems.)
#6 is international collaborations, which McNutt calls an “unforced error.” “The trend recently is to do just to opposite.” Look, I get that she doesn’t want to call Republican politicians right wing nationalists, but surely she could call this more than a “trend.” The way people are being treated and detained is more than a “trend.”
#7 is the one that annoys me the most. McNutt wants scientists to “Rebuild trust with the public.” Last year, Pew Research showed that 74% of Americans have positive perceptions of scientists. McNutt even shows a slide of it! “The public” is not the problem here. She correctly says trust in science is not uniform across the political spectrum. She can’t even bring herself to say “Republicans” here.
McNutt points out that very few people were alive when polio was a big problem, as an example of things that people take for granted. But a lot of people were alive when covid killed over a million people in the US and a vaccine was developed in less than a year and widely deployed in less than two. Why doesn’t she say that? I suspect she doesn’t want to say that because she knows that the federal government’s position is that covid wasn’t a big deal and that vaccines are bad.
She ends by saying she wants to make science a bipartisan issue again. She has no recommendations for what that will take. (Maybe she thinks that too can be solved with AI.) There's no way she would say it out loud because that would require here to criticize, and criticize one party more than the other.
McNutt is trying to being facts to what is an ideological fight. She touts the economic benefits of science, which have never been disputed. The economic benefits of allowing scientists to immigrate is not going to persuade people who held up “Mass deportation” signs at the Republican convention last year.
I almost wish I hadn’t watched this talk. It alternates between “What?” and “Please no,” and sometimes hits both at the same time. McNutt values not upsetting anyone more than accurately describing what is happening mere blocks from the National Academies headquarters.
Scientists deserve better leadership.
Update, 5 June 2025: John Timmer reaches similar conclusions about the astonishing lack of urgency in McNutt’s speech.
I also want to point out that McNutt’s speech is in line with her Science editorial right after the last American election.
Update the second, 5 June 2025: Dr. Kiki was nice enough to draw my attention to the news that the National Academies are facing a terrible balance sheet and are laying people off. Moreover, McNutt had faced internal criticism of her timidness:
McNutt faces challenges that go beyond finances, including complaints that NASEM leaders are timid at a time that calls for outspokenness in defense of science. “I [have] tried to convince, unsuccessfully, Marcia McNutt … to take a public stand,” Schekman says, “and I have received no encouragement and some considerable resistance” from her. (McNutt did not respond when asked to comment on his statement.)
Okay, stop. Saying “science isn’t political” will not keep science safe from political attacks
The State of the Science Address 2025
Public trust in scientists and views on their role in policymaking
US science is being wrecked, and its leadership is fighting the last war
National Academies, staggering from Trump cuts, on brink of dramatic downsizing
Two projects I’ve been meaning to mention.
I was involved in the early stages of creating DORA’s new implementation guide. One small contribution that I made was ensuring that there was a small section that talked about including graduate students and postdocs when considering research assessment reform.
This guide is timely and badly needed. Many American research universities are going to have to change what they think a successful research career looks like.
And an update to one of my passion projects, my collection of academic hoaxes.
This update contains two new pet-themed hoaxes: a dog impersonating a scientist and a cat impersonating a scientist. The first of these occurred after the first version of this document, and I missed it. This is indicative of how difficult it is to keep on top of these events.
Also, a slight update about how Google’s search result is now displaying material from hoax papers as though they were real.
I am slightly amazed that what I thought would be a project that would close or at least slow down is still updated so regularly.
It’s being reported that:
(E)ight selective colleges, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and Vanderbilt University announced they will accept these “civility transcripts” among the factors they weigh in college-admissions decisions.
Sigh.
On the one hand, I appreciate this sentiment:
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best. (Heinlein 1978)
My problem with words like “civility,” “politeness,” and
“professionalism” is that they are coded. If it’s hard to counter someone who accuses you of “incivility” because it can mean many different things. Some can use it just as a way of saying, “You shouldn’t make that point at all.”
So in addition to being vague, civility and its relatives can easily be used just to enforce the status quo.
“Do it in the right way.” Yeah. This is the same language used to try to neutralize protests. The “right way” gets so prescribed that it effectively prevents expression.
On the other hand, there are some things one should not be civil about.
MR. NANCY: Shit, you all don’t know you black yet. You think you just people. Let me be the first to tell you that you are all black. The moment these Dutch motherfuckers set foot here and decided they white, and you get to be black, and that’s the nice name they call you. Let me paint a picture of what’s waiting for you on the shore. You arrive in America, land of opportunity, milk and honey, and guess what? You all get to be slaves! Split up, sold off and worked to death! The lucky ones get Sunday off to sleep and fuck and make more slaves, and all for what? For cotton? Indigo? For a fucking purple shirt? The only good news is the tobacco your grandkids are gonna farm for free is gonna give a shitload of these white motherfuckers cancer. And I ain’t even started yet. A hundred years later, you’re fucked! A hundred years after that, fucked! A hundred years after you get free, you still getting fucked outta jobs and shot at by police! You see what I’m saying?
[sees the rage on a slave’s face]
MR. NANCY: This guy gets it. I like him. He’s gettin’ angry. Angry is good. Angry gets shit done. (Green & Fuller 2017)
Anger is a legitimate form of human expression.
I do not like the idea of “civility transcripts.” At all. I am disappointed in the universities are going to consider them.
Heinlein RA, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (1978). G.P. Putnam’s Sons: New York.
Green M, Fuller B, 2017, “The Secret of Spoons,” American Gods.Colleges will give a leg up to students who demonstrate civility
After years of sloganeering, it’s interesting to see two trials of paid peer review coming on the heels of one another. The latest test of paying peer reviewers was run by the journal Biology Open (where I have published) using about 20 manuscripts. (Update: Biology Open has now published this study.)
Reviewers got paid somewhere around US$259-285 for doing a peer review that had to come back promptly. As in, within a week. And they did, with no apparent lapse in quality.
This looks promising, but some issues that are not caught in a small trial could emerge if payment becomes institutionalized.
Got to get back to prepping for class.
Update, 26 March 2025: The pseudonymous Overly Honest Editor on Bluesky writes (light edits):
I’m seeing £44k for 20 papers after discounting pay for refs. That is £2200 per paper, not far off from many mid-range journals APCs. Which to me translates to the usual: yes, we could pay peer reviewers, if people are willing to cash out 30% extra. And people aren’t willing.
This is making one of two assumption. Either that (A) publishers are nonprofits, or; (B) the profits of publishers must be protected and cannot be reduced.
Gorelick DA, Clark A. 2025. Fast & Fair peer review: a pilot study demonstrating feasibility of rapid, high-quality peer review in a biology journal. bioRxiv: 2025.03.18.644032.
“Pay reviewers” has become a social media slogan that could be a welcome change to academic publishing if potential pitfalls are avoided. But because we are researchers, we need to do the experiment. A recent paper by Cotton and colleagues (2025) is the first I have seen to test what paying peer reviewers might accomplish. (There was a prior test by Chetty and colleagues in 2014.)
The journal Critical Care Medicine offered reviewers an incentive of $250 on alternate weeks.
Does offering to pay peer reviewers get more reviews? The authors measure this in three ways.
By the way, for those 32% of reviewers who got a review done within two weeks for no pay, I appreciate you. Not all heroes wear capes.
Is peer review quality affected? Not noticeably. The results note that about a third of the reviews that were received did not got a quality assessment. By reading between the lines, it appears that the handling associate editors were only “encouraged” to grade the reviews, and a chunk of the editors just did not rate the reviews.
There is a difference by offering payment, but is it worth it? Trevor Branch noted:
(T)hese results (8% higher rate of completing review, 1 day earlier on average) don't exactly motivate journals to pay reviewers.
Cotton and colleagues notes that the costs add up.
(F)or a journal with 1,000 reviewed submissions per year, three paid reviewers per article, and payments of $250 per reviewer, such a payment mechanism could cost $750,000 annually.
Even if you ramped it down to two reviewers, which is common for many basic science journals, it’s not clear that the cost-benefit ratio of paying peer reviewers is worth it for journals.
This study can’t address many of the other possible problems that will undoubtedly emerge. For example, what will authors say if they found if their article is rejected on the basis of what they think is a shoddy review that the journal paid for? What is an appropriate amount of incentive?
I recognize that for many, paying for peer review is about moral fairness, not financial prudence.
On a related note, Stat News has an update on the lawsuit launched against scientific publishers last year. The publishers are asking for a dismissal for similar reasons that I outlined last year.
Legal experts told STAT that while there’s little question unpaid peer review has helped enrich publishers, it may be difficult to prove the practices cited in the lawsuit were the product of an anticompetitive agreement.
Much of the article, however, is as much about about the service model of peer review as the lawsuit itself. The service model of peer review is under strain, but I don’t think the article articulates the reasons why very well.
First and foremost, the assessment schemes of most research institutions are weighed far too heavily towards output.
Second, the globalization of science means that the community of peers is more diffuse. Peer review works best, I think, when many people know each other.
Third, there are likely still imbalances in who is asked to review papers (e.g., established researchers from established institutions in countries with colonial histories are asked more often than researchers everywhere else).
Chetty R, Saez E, Sándor L. 2014. What policies increase prosocial behavior? An experiment with referees at the journal of public economics. Journal of Economic Perspectives 28:169–188. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.28.3.169
Cotton CS, Alam A, Tosta S, Buchman TG, Maslove DM. Effect of monetary incentives on peer review acceptance and completion: A quasi-randomized interventional trial. Critical Care Medicine: in press. http://doi.org/10.1097/CCM.0000000000006637
