In the not too distant past, Congress decided that it wanted more direct oversight over science granting. Canada seems to be jumping on the same bandwagon, so maybe it's something in the water. Scientists were outraged, and there has been much written about how bad an idea this is. But most of the objections have centered on the expertise of legislators—or rather a lack thereof—while the problems actually run a lot deeper than that.

Political oversight: It’s not all bad

I don't happen to agree that political oversight should be absent from science. Taxpayers pay for science, so they should, through the political process, have some say in funding priorities. This idea can be seen in action in Europe, where science funding has been made largely subservient to societal needs. Funding priorities are set through a consultative and consensus-driven process that combines relevant industries, scientists, and relevant government institutes. Their recommendations are taken to the politicians, who either release the money or make recommendations for changes based on other considerations.

For instance, in energy research, fusion is often specifically excluded because fusion researchers draw on money through ITER, which is government funded. Essentially, everybody (except maybe the fusion researchers) wants to make sure that fusion research doesn't get two slices of the pie.

But when it comes to deciding which scientists get funded to perform what research, the process involves scientists and, when appropriate, people from industry. The politicians set broad priorities, various groups reach a consensus on how best to fulfill those priorities, and then the money is (hopefully) distributed based on merit.

I have my beefs with some specifics, but in general, I think this is a compromise that allows scientists to function relatively well with enough top-down direction to remind them where the money comes from and why they got it.

Direct oversight by politicians is a recipe for disaster, but not necessarily in the way you might think it would be.

The grand sell

We've all met that person. Jill could sell ice to eskimos, and Bob would put a used car salesman to shame. These people know every trick in the book for taking a sway-backed old nag and convincing you that it's a future Kentucky Derby winner. And some of these people are scientists. They can take the most mundane of experimental results and convince us that they are earth-shatteringly important.

In the present setup, these people have to sell their stuff to other experts, and that means there has to be some substance somewhere. Although they get to publish the occasional substance-less glittery bauble, the majority of their work has to be solid, and they get the money for the solid stuff rather than the glitter.

If you're going to let these people loose on an unsuspecting politician, you might as well give them a blank check and call it a day.

Now let's add to that the inability of many members of Congress to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. Even with the best intentions in the world, people do get taken in. People and institutions that are usually excluded from science funding will suddenly have a pretty good chance of getting a healthy chunk of public money to waste. Imagine legions of homeopaths endlessly diluting the public purse in their attempt to prove that less money buys more stuff. Or faith healers getting public money to mutter over sick people and produce dog livers by slight of hand.

Grudge matches

The other side of the coin is a crop of politicians whose agenda seems to be summed up by assuming that everyone else is driven by an agenda. They are right-wingers who think evolution and climate change are evils. They are left-wingers who think that genetic modification is evil or that corporations are out to get us. They are also, unfortunately, in Congress.

You might think that this wouldn't matter too much, because the majority of the members of Congress are not so weird. But the sane ones are also the ones who aren't driven to be on science and technology committees. Nor are they so committed to science that they would be willing to fight for it. In short, the lunatics will dominate the asylum.

On the face of it, this could well mean the end of research on evolution, genetic modification, climate change, or indeed anything with a slightly political bent. True, not every lunatic in Congress is going to oppose research on climate change, but the rest probably aren't up for the fight needed to ensure that it occurs.

Then there are the politicians who are driven by an agenda for something: complementary medicine or intelligent design, for two examples. Giving money to pseudoscience is a bad thing, but the government has been convinced before and has wasted a lot of money. With direct oversight, the door opens again and more money can be siphoned from useful purposes.

Some people are simply obsessed with a topic, which can make matters worse. NASA should have triple the funding! Our entire health research budget should be devoted to prostate cancer! Electric Cars! These people distort the distribution of money and starve entire branches of science because they aren't aligned to their personal interests. If this were consistent, it might only be damaging. But every few years, the makeup of the committee will change, and the obsessions will change. It will be like riding a financial roller coaster. This doesn't seem like a good thing.

Summing up

Overall, political oversight is a good thing. But the kind of micromanagement that seems to be popular right now probably opens the door to greater abuses of the system than are currently now. This is not the intention, of course. The intention is to kill off areas of science that produce findings that don't match the ideology of the person who proposed the scheme. In doing so, though, this will kill off other large swathes of science as every ideologue in Congress goes after their pet target. This all sounds remarkably familiar... but not in a democracy.