6.9.2026 – lacks transparency

lacks transparency
accountability and
proper oversight

Adapted from the opinion piece, Science Should Not Be Subject to Loyalty Tests by Melissa L. Finucane, a professor of social and behavioral science at Stony Brook University where Dr. Finucan writes:

The Office of Management and Budget has called for a rule change that would impose restrictions on the kinds of research that can be funded and give political appointees the final authority to deny federal funding for research deemed inconsistent with presidential priorities.

Such a revision is necessary, the agency said, because there is a “lack of transparency, accountability and proper oversight” in the way federal funds are dispersed.

It IS 2026 correct?

I am in the United States of America correct?

The Office of Management and Budget has called for a rule change …

that would impose restrictions on the kinds of research that can be funded …

and give political appointees the final authority to deny federal funding …

for research deemed inconsistent with presidential priorities.

Way back when I was lucky enough to attend one the world’s great universities (just ask them).

I was also lucky enough on my first day as a student to be assigned to a Professor who had to look over my course choices and ‘advise me’ on my choices.

He looked over my proposed class list and in a somewhat heated way told me that I was indeed at one of the world’s great universities and that I had better take advantage of that and take a variety of classes in different fields so that I experience what the university had to offer.

Which is why I ended up taking freshman Astronomy as a Junior.

I mean I wasn’t stupid.

I wasn’t going to take some 400 level survey course on fast breeding nuclear reactors.

So there I was, with 300 freshman in a very steep lecture hall, learning how to identify the constellations.

The Professor was this guy right out of central casting for an Astronomy Professor.

He was of indiscriminate age, shaggy black hair, glasses, about 5 ft tall, flannel shirts and some old as dirt pants, hiking boots and something that may have been a calculator hanging from his belt.

He would stand there and lecture like he was talking to you rather than teaching you.

And he loved the stars and the science of the stars and science in general.

He loved science so much that at least once a week he would some point about science in the news and then add a comment about ‘so long as those church goers don’t get involved’ or even “which ought to get those Christian’s worked up.”

After a while I waited after one lecture until the hall ended up and I walked up to the Professor, introduced myself, told him how much I enjoy his class but I had to ask, what was driving this, as I would later learn to call it, suspect animus about Christians?

I identified myself as a fundamental evangelical Christian and said I certainly was concerned about anything I was learning in Ann Arbor, in fact, I said I found the challenges I came across as reaffirming for my faith and I could still accept all that I was learning.

He looked at me for a bit and decided I wasn’t a threat or trying to trap him and he explained that he was aware of too many situations where science was stopped by political decisions and he was dismayed (this was during the Reagan era) about the growing influence of the Moral Majority.

“Whole fields of study are not allowed in the Soviet Union and it could happen here,” I remember him saying.

We ended up chatting for about 20 minutes and ever after that when he came into the lecture hall he would catch my eye and nod but he continued with his comments.

I enjoyed the class a lot and learned how to navigate the heavens for one semester at least but I think of that encounter whenever I hear of situations where restrictions for learning for any reason are put in place.

This latest is just one of so many straws being piled on that poor camel.

Too word out to be angry I guess I am just sad.

Science controlled by presidential priorities (not wanting to imagine the priorities of that man currently in office).

It’s been tried before.

There was this one country where physics was considered a Jewish Science deemed inconsistent with governmental priorities and a lot of science was abandoned and left to others to explore.

Sometimes these things work out.