Federal Funding of Academic Science Research Needs Reform

American universities are in decline. But the oft-cited culprits — administrative bloat, the evisceration of the humanities, and “cancel culture” — are not the most serious problems. It is the academic sciences that pose the gravest threat. Far from being the last bastions of cool rationality and objectivity on campuses, the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields are neck-deep in the miasma. Worse, the sciences have been the principal enablers of the campus’s cultural rot.

The problem is money, federal money to be precise, that began streaming into campuses with the federalization of the academic sciences after Second World War. Federal government largesse has been a mixed blessing, because there is more at work than support of scientific research. There is an additional stream of money that has, for years, been surreptitiously funding the activities of the culprits cited above. In the process, federal money has corrupted both academic science and scientists. No longer is science an intellectual adventure at the frontiers of knowledge: It is now the servant of political agendas set by others.

JT

About the Author

J. Scott Turner

J. Scott Turner is Emeritus Professor of Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

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American universities are in decline. But the oft-cited culprits — administrative bloat, the evisceration of the humanities, and “cancel culture” — are not the most serious problems. It is the academic sciences that pose the gravest threat. Far from being the last bastions of cool rationality and objectivity on campuses, the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields are neck-deep in the miasma. Worse, the sciences have been the principal enablers of the campus’s cultural rot.

The problem is money, federal money to be precise, that began streaming into campuses with the federalization of the academic sciences after Second World War. Federal government largesse has been a mixed blessing, because there is more at work than support of scientific research. There is an additional stream of money that has, for years, been surreptitiously funding the activities of the culprits cited above. In the process, federal money has corrupted both academic science and scientists. No longer is science an intellectual adventure at the frontiers of knowledge: It is now the servant of political agendas set by others.