Our federal science policy has inflicted a four-fold crisis on America. The worst of these crises is a crisis of liberty: our laws and regulations now encourage technocrats and radical activists embedded in government service to promote false research to justify illiberal regulatory policy. The other three crises are nearly as grave: our laws and regulations allow universities to overcharge the federal government in its grants; federal grant money imposes discriminatory and illiberal “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies on universities; and our laws permit universities to be culpably complaisant about scientific espionage conducted by China and other foreign powers. Our science policy destroys American liberty, wastes taxpayer money, imposes group identity discrimination, and endangers our national security.
American citizens and policymakers must meet these challenges by means of an urgent and comprehensive program to solve this four-fold crisis by comprehensive, coherent reform of American science policy. This ought to be done by federal legislation, both because some needed reforms require legislation and because all needed reforms should be hard-wired into federal policy. Executive orders can substitute for legislation to a certain extent, but it is far easier to reverse an executive order than it is to change a law.
We therefore have drafted the Model Science Policy Code. These ten individual pieces of model legislation are meant to inspire policymakers and the public to work for concerted reform of federal science policy. Their language and principles also might inspire executive orders, but we would prefer for these reforms to be statutes. The Code, if enacted in full, would do an extraordinary amount to realign federal science policy with liberty and the public welfare.
These ten bills articulate reforms that should be enacted simply because they are good policy. Of course federal law should require best existing practices to ensure reproducibility in science the government funds, or uses to inform policy. Of course universities should not be allowed to overcharge the government systematically. Of course federal science grants should not be used to impose identity-group discrimination and DEI ideology on universities. Of course the federal government should work to prevent foreign intellectual espionage in our universities. Yet we forward these bills now not just because they are good policy, but because they are necessary. American science policy has gone dreadfully wrong, and these bills are the minimum necessary to right its course.
Seven of our ten model bills reform different aspects of federal policy that weaponize the irreproducibility crisis to justify illiberal regulatory policy. Three of these bills reform regulatory policy: Reproducible Policy Act, Mathematical Modeling Reform Act, and Weight of Evidence Act. Another four reform grants policy: Reproducible Grants Act, Replication Studies Funding Act, Negative Research Act, and Research Integrity Act.
We devote so many individual bills to reversing our crisis of liberty partly because it matters so much. Technocrats and radical activists embedded in government service have weaponized the powers delegated to federal science regulatory agencies, as well as the authority accorded to putatively nonpartisan scientific experts, to advance their policy goals without transparency or accountability to elected policymakers or the public. Science policy is uniquely vulnerable to the ambitions of radical activists. The irreproducibility crisis of modern science, fueled above all by pervasive politicized groupthink and by scientists’ shift to conducting research by means of culpably negligent statistical procedures, produces masses of false positive research results. Activist bureaucrats actively commission these false positive research results in a host of scientific and social scientific disciplines to justify the mass production of illiberal, radical regulations throughout the federal science regulatory agencies. Scientific procedures ought to restrain arbitrary, ideological policymaking, but the corruptions of politicized groupthink and misused statistics instead facilitate it.
The federal government, moreover, is the largest single funder of scientific research in the world, and federal funds not only distort American regulatory policy but also subsidize the wholesale production of irreproducible research in American universities.
We also devote so many bills to reversing our crisis of liberty because the federal policy that weaponizes the irreproducibility crisis is extraordinarily complex and wide-ranging. Policymakers need at least seven separate bills, or an omnibus reform bill containing all seven of these bills, to provide a comprehensive solution to the federal contribution to irreproducibility crisis.
Three further bills reform the three other crises of federal science policy: Indirect Costs Act, Science Depoliticization Act, and Science National Interest Act. These three crises are each important, but each can be addressed by relatively simple legislation.
We expect policymakers would adjust the Model Science Policy Code when they did submit legislation informed by its principles. This is the case for all model legislation, but adjustment is particularly important for legislation that affects federal science policy. Our current system for funding science policy is extraordinarily complex, and extraordinarily important for American prosperity and security. The general principles embodied by our legislation surely will need to be modified in detail, to ensure that they impose no unintended adverse consequences. We welcome all such improvements—although we also warn policymakers not to let partisans disguised as experts to make this reform legislation ineffective by suggesting poison-pill modifications. We have in any case drafted most of the bills in the Model Science Policy Code to allow agency heads the ability to grant waivers to these regulations—so long as they catalog, describe, and explain each waiver granted, and provide a set and detailed procedure to allow private individuals and organizations to challenge each waiver granted.
We have not provided enforcement mechanisms in our bills. Policymakers might consider granting private rights of action to enforce these bills. They might also consider making the Department of Justice responsible for enforcement. We believe there should be some enforcement mechanism that is stronger than agency self-regulation, but we also believe that policymakers should decide upon the most appropriate enforcement mechanisms.
We particularly urge policymakers to be careful about applying this legislation to science research related to national security. While this category can be abused, as when “climate change” is redefined as a national security issue, we do not want our suggested reforms to be imposed willy-nilly on research that genuinely is important for America’s defense. Generally we think these reforms can and should be applied to military and other national security research—but policymakers should apply them carefully and prudently, and make sure that no aspect of their requirements inadvertently will harm America’s preparedness.
Reproducible Policy Act
The Federal government should not impose regulations based on research that is not publicly accessible, and that therefore is not reproducible. The Reproducible Policy Act 1) requires federal agencies to use only publicly accessible research which (in appropriate disciplines) meets Good Laboratory Practice Standards in the most important regulatory actions and scientific inventories; 2) requires federal agencies to use professional literature assessments to judge the quality of bodies of research informing these most important regulatory actions and scientific inventories; 3) requires federal agencies to fund reviews of existing regulatory actions and scientific inventories and rescind regulations that do not use only publicly accessible research; and 4) requires federal agencies to establish a quantitative measure of how often scientific research has been confirmed by replication studies and apply that quantitative measure into their scientific inventories and assessments of weight of evidence.
Mathematical Modeling Reform Act
The Federal government should not impose regulations based on mathematical modeling that is not publicly accessible, and that therefore is not reproducible. The Mathematical Modeling Reform Act requires federal public health agencies only to use or fund preregistered and publicly accessible mathematical models in all forecasts, policymaking, and interventions. It also requires federal agencies to establish an archive of all mathematical models used in forecasts, policymaking, and interventions, with complete documentation of the performance of each mathematical model.
Mathematical Modeling Reform Act
Weight of Evidence Act
Federal agencies should reform their procedures for determining “weight-of-evidence” judgments to prevent arbitrary and/or politicized decision-making. The Weight of Evidence Act requires federal agencies to establish transparent, explicit, consistent, and falsifiable “weight-of-evidence” judgments. It also requires federal agencies to include judgments of negative and null studies as well as of positive studies.
Reproducible Grants Act
Government policy should not be based upon research which is not publicly available; nor should federal grants fund research which is not publicly available. The Reproducible Grants Act restricts new federal grant funding to publicly accessible research. It also requires an individual grantee to convert his entire body of research into publicly accessible research, or to attest which portions of his body of research are not publicly accessible, and therefore are not reproducible. The bill further stipulates that no research attested by the researcher to be irreproducible research may be used to justify any future significant regulatory action or highly influential scientific assessment.
Replication Studies Funding Act
Federal grant programs should fund replication studies that provide the essential check that original research actually is correct in its conclusions. Our model bill dedicates ten percent of the funds for each research grant program to replication studies, especially to replication studies of government-funded research and to replication studies of research that justified or is proposed to justify a significant regulatory action or a highly influential scientific assessment. Our model bill also funds research that improves best practices of research replicability, including improving best practices of transparency in primary research to facilitate either conceptual replication with different data or actual replication with the same data.
Replication Studies Funding Act
Negative Research Act
Federal grant programs should ensure that publication bias has not systematically distorted the disciplines they fund. Our model bill reduces the government contribution to publication bias by requiring each granting program to catalogue and describe the proportions of positive research results to negative and null research results, and not to fund any research grant program, or scientific discipline, which reports more than 65% positive results during five consecutive years of funding.
Research Integrity Act
Federal agencies should take steps to provide practical assurance to policymakers and the public that all federal grants go to researchers who follow best practices of research integrity. Our model bill 1) requires federal agencies to publish research integrity guidelines; 2) limits grant funding to researchers whose institutions adopt research integrity practices; 3) prohibits funding of any researcher who has committed a serious research integrity violation; 4) dedicates an Office of Research Integrity to ensuring compliance; and 5) requires regular reports to the Executive and the Legislature detailing the federal agency’s work to ensure research integrity.
Indirect Costs Act
Federal agencies should not allow universities to divert money intended for scientific research to university administration and deform scientific research by subordinating free inquiry to the search for funding for academic administrators’ salaries. Our model bill caps indirect costs charges at a maximum of 10% of the direct costs of the program. It further stipulates that if a research institution charges any grantor an indirect cost rate less than 10% of the direct costs of the program, the federal agency may only fund a grant if that research institution charges the federal agency an indirect cost rate equal to the lowest indirect cost rate it charges any grantor.
Science Depoliticization Act
The federal government should remove all federal science agency support for DEI “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies. Our model bill 1) forbids federal science agencies from imposing DEI policies or identity-group discrimination on their own operations; 2) forbids them from funding researchers affiliated with institutions that impose DEI policies or identity-group discrimination; 3) establishes an Office of Equal Opportunity to enforce these requirements; and 4) requires regular reports to the Executive and Legislative branches on how the agencies have fulfilled these requirements.
Science National Interest Act
The federal government should change universities’ financial incentives so that they no longer allow foreign espionage and influence operations. Our model bill prohibits federal agencies from funding research at institutions that fail to disclose foreign gifts or who have received more than 5% of their expenditures from foreign gifts.