Sociologist Warns of ‘Fundamental Change’ in How U.S. Science Is Governed

A University of Virginia sociologist is urging lawmakers to look beyond research funding and address what she calls a deeper shift in how U.S. science is governed.

In a recent article published in the journal Nature, Natalie B. Aviles, an assistant professor of sociology in the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, examines changes at federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and their broader implications.

Aviles, who studies how scientists participate in policymaking, said the U.S. research system has long relied on what she describes as a “very democratic and distributed system” for deciding how taxpayer dollars are spent.

At NIH, “We have civil servants who are trained as scientists, and they answer to a very democratic and distributed system of delegating the authority to say what science we should invest taxpayer money in,” she said. 

That system, she said, depends on an important division of responsibility: Congress sets priorities, while scientists on advisory panels help NIH civil servants determine which projects receive funding. But Aviles and her co-author Mark Histed, adjunct professor of neural computation in the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program at the University of Maryland, College Park, argue that model is now shifting toward greater centralized control, and that political appointees have gained increasing authority over scientific priorities, diminishing the role of civil‑service experts and the scientific community.

“This is the result of a fundamental change in the way that the current administration thinks about how we should govern science,” she said. 

The democratic nature of the system is in jeopardy, and the risks, Aviles said, extend well beyond research outcomes.

“Scientifically, one of the major risks is that we are not going to be guided by the science when we make our investments,” she said. “But … we are losing the democratic heart of scientific decision-making in our policy.” 

Aviles said the changes also raise broader constitutional concerns, including the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch.

“This is actually a big challenge to the separation of powers,” she said. 

To address those risks, the authors call on Congress to reassert its authority — through appropriations, legislation and protections for scientific advisory systems — to ensure research decisions remain grounded in expertise and not political interests and to protect the nation’s position as a global leader in discovery and innovation.

More broadly, Aviles hopes the conversation includes both the impacts of funding and where lawmakers stand on the nation’s most fundamental values.

“When we do science policy, we’re doing democracy at the same time,” she said.