[Updated (4/24/2014, 7:02 p.m.) with a response from Representative Smith to the NSF statement.]
The governing board of the National Science Foundation spoke out on Thursday against a Congressional proposal to limit its grant-writing authority, saying the changes would needlessly hinder scientific research.
The National Science Board, in a rare public response to a piece of pending legislation, said in a written statement that it saw no need for a plan to give Congress division-by-division authority over its budget allocations. In rejecting the idea, the board also promised stepped-up internal oversight of transparency and accountability processes at the NSF.
The dispute concerns a bill, known as the First Act, that would set policy rules and authorize two years of budget levels for the NSF and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The House science committee is expected to vote soon on a version of the bill, after a subcommittee approved it last month.
“Some of its provisions and tone suggest that Congress intends to impose constraints that would compromise NSF’s ability to fulfill its statutory purpose,” said the statement, which was issued by the NSF board’s 23 members, mostly university scientists and administrators.
The National Institutes of Health, which is overseen in Congress by different committees, already is given division-specific budgetary allocations, often prompting complaints from NIH officials who feel hamstrung in their ability to pursue scientific priorities.
The NSF fears a similar situation, said the board, which is led by Dan E. Arvizu, director of the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The system “would significantly impede NSF’s flexibility to deploy its funds to support the best ideas,” the board said.
Justifying Research
The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has been especially critical of NSF-financed research in the social sciences, moving in recent years to cut allocations in that general discipline and to impose rules requiring projects to show a definable economic or national interest.
The chairman of the science committee, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, remained adamant, saying the NSF’s “last-minute” promises on Thursday of improved transparency and accountability were “too little, too late.”
“The internal policy would continue to allow the NSF to evade responsibility for their decisions to fund questionable grants,” Representative Smith said in a written response to the NSF board’s statement. “The NSF wants to be the only federal agency to get a blank check signed by taxpayers, without having to justify how the money is spent.”
Mr. Smith repeated parts of a list of NSF-backed projects he considered “questionable” uses of public money, including $487,049 to study the ancient Icelandic textile industry, $425,000 on how local Asian-Indian politicians can improve their performance, $233,141 on Maya architecture and the salt industry, and $199,088 on why Turkish women wear veils.
The NSF, asked to justify some of those expenditures, said information gained from the Icelandic work could help societies adapt to major changes, the Asian-Indian research could help illuminate the effects of educating a relatively uninformed population, the Maya project would provide insights into trading networks, and the study of Turkish women could help national security by providing a better understanding of Islam.
In a new statement late Thursday, Mr. Smith said he had asked the NSF for such explanations a year ago, without result, and he accused the agency of now providing “the media with more information about grants than they provide to Congress.”
“The NSF is grasping at straws and making up justifications for grants after the fact,” he said. “These new justifications tout what can only be described as indirect benefits, at best.”
In a statement last month, the Association of American Universities made clear it also had major problems with the First Act, in both the inadequate budget levels it would authorize for the NSF over all and the specific threat of deep cuts for work in the social sciences.
The AAU, which represents 62 top research universities, also faulted the bill for seeking to unnecessarily expand penalties for scientific misconduct and rules to avoid duplicative research; for proposing new lifetime limits on researcher support and new limits on the NSF’s use of outside staff members; and for reversing moves to expand public access to the results of publicly financed research.
The decision by the NSF board to publicly enter the fray is highly unusual, according to participants on both sides of the debate. “That should suggest to Congress how deeply concerned the scientific community is about key elements of the First Act,” said an AAU spokesman, Barry Toiv.
