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SOPA creator’s latest bill proposes stripping peer-review from science funding
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/29/sopa-creators-latest-bill-proposes-stripping-peer-review-from-science-funding/A draft bill obtained by Scientific American, sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), would strip the peer-review requirement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant process, inserting a new set of funding criteria that is significantly less transparent and not inclusive of the opinions of independent experts.
Smith, sponsor of the highly controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that threatened to fundamentally change how the Internet works, has long been a critic of the NSF grant process. In furtherance of those views, Smith recently conducted a hearing supposedly meant to consider how the grant approval process might be improved, an early indication that such a bill was forthcoming.
Another indication came in February, when Smith published an editorial in Roll Call describing how his vision of science funding is based not upon the impacts new research may have on the scientific community, but whether that research will “create jobs.” He went on to boast about how much of the House science committee’s $39 billion in agency budgets gets dumped onto nuclear, fracking and “clean coal” projects.
Smith’s “High Quality Research Act,” scraps the NSF’s current peer-review process, which solicits the opinions of independent experts as to the “intellectual merit” and “broader impacts” of proposed research. In its stead, a new set of non-scientific standards for science funding are proposed.
Smith, sponsor of the highly controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that threatened to fundamentally change how the Internet works, has long been a critic of the NSF grant process. In furtherance of those views, Smith recently conducted a hearing supposedly meant to consider how the grant approval process might be improved, an early indication that such a bill was forthcoming.
Another indication came in February, when Smith published an editorial in Roll Call describing how his vision of science funding is based not upon the impacts new research may have on the scientific community, but whether that research will “create jobs.” He went on to boast about how much of the House science committee’s $39 billion in agency budgets gets dumped onto nuclear, fracking and “clean coal” projects.
Smith’s “High Quality Research Act,” scraps the NSF’s current peer-review process, which solicits the opinions of independent experts as to the “intellectual merit” and “broader impacts” of proposed research. In its stead, a new set of non-scientific standards for science funding are proposed.
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