Follow-up about yesterday’s fretting about Congresspeople wanting to interfere with peer review at the National Science Foundation: President Obama was asked about this yesterday at an event celebrating the 150th anniversary of the National Academy of Sciences—and he looks to be on the right side:
Without directly referencing the new legislation [to re-work NSF peer review], President Obama spoke of maintaining the NSF’s control over social-science grants. “One of the things that I’ve tried to do over these last four years, and will continue to do over the next four years, is to make sure that we are promoting the integrity of our scientific process,” he said. “Not just in the physical and life sciences, but in psychology and anthropology and economics and political science, all of which are sciences,” he said.
Not that this is reason to breathe a sigh of relief and go about your business; as I said yesterday, I think we may see Republicans trying to make NSF into a punching bag a lot more frequently in the near future.
