When You Win, You Lose

Apparent wins can also contain losses only visible when looked at from the proper perspective, or which only manifest with the passage of time.

NIH and NSF Win in Court, Lose Their Nerve

Three judges have issued restraining orders on efforts to cut funding to the NIH and NSF. This seemed like at least a temporary victory, if not the first step on the path to a permanent reprieve from the chainsaw of DOGE.

However, the NIH has canceled scheduled grant reviews, essentially doing DOGE’s work for it by locking away funds that could have flowed.

Grant review meetings must be posted in the Federal Register at least 15 days before being held, but no notices have been published since the day after Trump was inaugurated, making the scrapped meetings seem like anticipatory capitulation by the NIH.

• Not everyone has capitulated. Some at the NIH are bucking DOGE’s silly requirement to list accomplishments or give up your job.
  • However, the chaos alone is enough to gum up the works.

Meanwhile, the NSF is being accused of “cowardice” by its own scientists as it independently went beyond staff reductions demanded by DOGE, cutting all of its contract specialists in various scientific fields. These cuts were not required, but were done out of “fairness,” as one NSF official put it. Another said they were just “following orders.”

Just as a reminder, the NSF was established in 1950:

To promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense; and for other purposes.

Reading the Act establishing the NSF and authorizing its functions should be enough to make it clear what an abdication of social and governmental responsibility this all represents — especially by the people inside the NSF who seem to be more interested in self-preservation than in their mission and purpose.

COPE Improves APC Transparency — But . . .

COPE released new guidance recently pertaining to author fees and waivers, all with a goal of increasing transparency. This is good news, and fits with my calls to disclose who is paying APCs.

For instance, who paid the APC for this new, high-profile OA paper about Microsoft published in Nature? It would be interesting to know.

But the guidance ends with this:

Journals, editors, and authors should be aware of the potential negative impact of financial incentives in undermining editorial objectivity, and in introducing submission and publication bias.

The blazingly obvious COI of APCs is explicitly acknowledge, but COPE accepts it — and suggests editors must remain in the dark via a firewall between them and their own editorial operations.

In the “before APCs times,” this kind of firewall would only be necessary around advertising sales and sponsorships.