At face value, things look grim for science in the new US Congress, which starts work this week.

In its Pledge to America, the incoming Republican leadership of the House of Representatives has vowed to cut federal spending to the levels it stood at before President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus measures and the bank bailout. If applied across the board, researchers with bright ideas would find the door slammed in their faces. The National Science Foundation (NSF), for instance, would lose more than 11 per cent of its funding at a stroke.

Worse still, some Republican leaders are pillorying research projects as emblems of government waste. Especially chilling is the YouCut Citizen Review, in which the public is being asked to search NSF grants to highlight projects “that you don’t think are a good use of taxpayer dollars”.

The knee-jerk reaction is to decry the YouCut review as an act of philistinism by a party conducting a war on science, and to say that only qualified experts are able to judge whether research dollars are well spent. Yet reacting in this way, at this time, would be an act of arrogant folly.


Scientist = Democrat?

In an increasingly polarised society, those who are seen as partisan can expect payback when the balance of power shifts. For scientists, alarm bells should be ringing on this point. As Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University, writing in the online magazine Slate, put it recently: “Most scientists in this country are Democrats. That’s a problem.”

Thankfully, not-too-distant history shows that it is possible for scientists to find common cause with the Republican party. In 1994, Republicans led by Newt Gingrich seized control of Congress after campaigning on a Contract with America that contained much the same rhetoric about slashing federal spending as today’s Republican pledge. What followed were not cuts in federal research funding, but sustained increases.

How so? Business leaders, alarmed at a threat to US technological competitiveness, went to Capitol Hill to stress that they wanted more scientific research, not less. Gingrich liked what he heard, and has become a notable proponent of investing in research and science education. It was a case of engaging the Republican party on its own pro-business agenda.

Meet the Tea Party

Today’s is a harsher political and economic climate, and a carbon-copy strategy will not work. Many among the new Republican congressional intake are as suspicious of big business as they are of big government. Theirs is a “hearth and home” conservatism that champions “little guys” doing their best to live the American dream in hard times.

But the general strategy of engaging politicians on their own turf still applies – and today this means the case for science needs to be made from the grassroots. A Tea Party Republican won’t want to talk to a suited lobbyist from a large scientific society. But they might just be prepared to listen to scientists from their own district who are working long hours on modest pay to promote US prosperity, while fending off growing competition from China – if that’s how they portray themselves.

Speaking the language of fiscal accountability will be crucial, and here many scientists have a good story to tell. Encouragingly, the researcher whose “questionable” work was highlighted in launching the YouCut Citizen Review has shown the way. Luís Amaral of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, was targeted because of a paper analysing the performance of soccer players. However, this project was a spin-off from a NSF-funded study of ways to make scientific research more efficient. Amaral estimates that it consumed no more than a few hundred federal dollars, and he points out that it provided a great hook to get sports-mad teens interested in data analysis.

Most importantly, Amaral has corrected the record with humility, stating on his blog: “I am a strong believer in accountability. I strongly believe that scientists must balance their intellectual curiosity with the costs to society of embarking on a given research direction.”

Starbucks test

Are scientists elitist egghead liberals? Or are they paragons of fiscal responsibility who are struggling to promote national prosperity? If researchers sit back and rely on old-style lobbyists and the Democrats who still control the Senate to fight their corner, don’t be surprised if the former narrative becomes Republican orthodoxy.

If scientists find the second narrative more appealing, they must ensure their member of Congress gets to hear it. Mary Woolley, president of the advocacy group Research!America, puts it this way: do scientists pass the Starbucks test? When she speaks to groups of researchers, she asks them if they would recognise their member of Congress if they were waiting in the same line for coffee. Most say yes. Then she asks: would they recognise you? Most hands go down.

Woolley’s point is that members of Congress know the top lawyers in their districts, the leading small business owners, and so on. And they see them as key players in the constituency they’ve been elected to serve. In this Congress, more than ever, scientists will need to ensure that they are part of this picture, too.

There is no guarantee of success from this strategy – but to continue to castigate Republicans from the sidelines as inherently “anti-science” holds nothing but a promise of pain.