Bill Targets ' Silly ' Science

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has introduced legislation to reform the review process for federal research grants. S. 1973, the BASIC Research Act would overhaul the grant award process to end supposedly wasteful government spending. Notably, the bill would also require all grant applications to be available to the public and would prohibit subgrants unless the recipient is disclosed on a publicly accessible website. The bill would require grant review panels to include a taxpayer advocate as well as an expert “in a field unrelated to the field of research under which the grant proposal was submitted” who is “not professionally affiliated with any academic or research institution.” A new watchdog office would be created to replace the Office of the Inspector General of the National Science Foundation. The new office would “review Federal grant projects to determine if the research will deliver value to the taxpayers by randomly selecting Federal grants for review after awards are made but prior to distribution of funds.” The legislation would also codify current federal requirements regarding open access. All results of federally supported research would have to be available to the public within 12 months of publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Senator Paul’s bill was considered during a recent hearing by the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management. “From my point of view, we do have a prob...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news