Over the past four months I’ve spoken to dozens of biomedical researchers either at NIH, other government grant-making agencies or at the various American research institutions which receive US government grants. Over that time I’ve developed at least a very rudimentary understanding of the nitty-gritty mechanics of the grant-making relationship between agencies and research institutions. What I’ve learned is a fascinating and critically important dynamic operating just beneath the White House’s whole war on biomedical research specifically and universities generally. The world of biomedical research actually has immense latent political power, albeit largely untapped. They have the much stronger hand politically and the White House’s position, in terms of public opinion, is comparatively weak.
The problem is that the world of biomedical research has close to no experience operating in a political context and especially in the context of mass politics. Much of the world of biomedical research operates through channels of review and funding connecting a few government grant-making institutions to the nationwide archipelago of research institutions and universities. Operating within those channels is so basic to the mores and experience of the research and university world they have in many cases kept trying to operate within them (rebooting them, checking them for unknown clogs) long after the White House has broken them and moved on. The White House has relied on the unfamiliarity, that sole reliance on working channels of funding and review which the universities and the federal government set up together going on a century ago. If it’s not the channels it’s the very non-mass politics professional organizations which, in ordinary times, would speak to the relevant members of Congress.
