The US Science System Needs Reform, Not Arbitrary Funding Cuts

Over the past several years, the federal government has taken unprecedented steps to reduce support for federally funded research while simultaneously making it more difficult for scientists to conduct their work. By May 2025, the Trump administration had canceled more than $1.5 billion in research grants affecting colleges and universities across the country. More recently, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed giving political appointees at federal science agencies greater authority over which research proposals receive funding, departing from the long-standing practice of relying primarily on expert peer review. Fortunately, a recent Senate Republican appropriations bill would temporarily halt the proposal.

Such arbitrary funding cuts and changes to the U.S. science system will ultimately harm the nation's economy and global competitiveness. The United States is already experiencing declining innovation productivity, and these policies are likely to weaken scientific output further. Indeed, a recently released report from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) acknowledges that the U.S. research enterprise has become less productive. The report also outlines meaningful reforms that could revitalize the science system and improve innovation outcomes. Rather than arbitrarily cutting research funding, policymakers should pursue these reforms to make the U.S. science enterprise more productive, strengthen America's competitiveness, and support long-term economic growth.

The United States already faces a serious innovation productivity challenge. The OSTP report argues that despite decades of rising biomedical research funding, the pace of major scientific breakthroughs has slowed while researchers increasingly spend their time navigating administrative requirements instead of conducting research. According to the report, scientists today often devote nearly half of their working hours to paperwork and compliance activities rather than research itself.

A growing body of academic research supports this diagnosis. In an influential 2020 paper, economists found that research productivity has been declining in the United States. Their analysis concluded that research productivity falls by roughly half every 13 years. Put differently, maintaining the same rate of economic growth now requires roughly twice as much research effort every 13 years simply because generating new ideas has become increasingly difficult.

Other studies reach similar conclusions. Research shows fewer patents generated per research dollar, falling returns to pharmaceutical R&D investment, and broader trends indicating that scientific discoveries are becoming harder to produce. These findings do not suggest that research spending is unimportant. Rather, they demonstrate that the United States must become much better at converting research investments into breakthrough discoveries.

Unfortunately, arbitrary funding cuts and increased political involvement in grantmaking move policy in the exact opposite direction. Reducing research funding means fewer scientists pursuing difficult problems, fewer graduate students entering research careers, and fewer opportunities for breakthrough discoveries. Likewise, replacing scientific peer review with greater political discretion creates the risk that funding decisions will be driven by short-term political priorities rather than scientific merit. Neither approach addresses the underlying causes of declining research productivity.

Fortunately, the OSTP report offers a much more constructive roadmap for reform. Instead of simply spending less, policymakers should modernize the institutions that support American science so researchers can produce more discoveries for each research dollar. While the report contains many additional recommendations, the following reforms represent important first steps toward reversing the decline in U.S. innovation productivity and restoring the nation's scientific leadership.

The OSTP report recommends several reforms to improve the productivity of the U.S. science enterprise, including the following:

• Refocus on individual scientists by reducing administrative burdens, expanding portable graduate fellowships, supporting early-career independence, and providing longer-term funding for exceptional researchers.
• Diversify funding mechanisms beyond traditional consensus-based peer review by experimenting with approaches such as "golden tickets," fast grants, prize competitions, advanced market commitments, and regranting models.
• Create new institutional models and curiosity-driven research institutes, such as X-Labs and Advanced Research Projects Agencies (ARPAs), capable of tackling ambitious, interdisciplinary scientific challenges.
• Reduce bureaucratic burdens by streamlining grant applications, shortening review cycles, eliminating duplicative reporting requirements, and redirecting administrative spending toward scientific research.
• Institutionalize continuous improvement by establishing metascience units within federal science agencies to rigorously evaluate funding mechanisms and improve how research portfolios are managed.

If the United States wants to remain the world's leading innovation economy, especially as China catches up in advanced industries, policymakers should reject arbitrary funding cuts and instead pursue reforms that make American science more productive. Investing in a more efficient research enterprise will do far more to strengthen long-run economic growth and technological competitiveness.