The war on ‘woke science’ comes for space research

The Trump administration is waging a culture war on science, and the latest salvo is in the form of a dry, bureaucratic proposal from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that could threaten the future of US science as we know it.

The proposal would give political appointees unprecedented control over grant funding, the method through which scientists receive federal money to perform groundbreaking space research such as the search for evidence of organic compounds on Mars or the discovery of some of the earliest galaxies in the universe.

A typical proposed rule from the OMB garners less than 100 public comments. This rule has netted over 54,000 comments, the large majority of which appear to be negative, including a responsefrom respected nonprofit The Planetary Society, which has criticized everything from the proposal’s rules around publication to its move away from peer review to its...

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