In Germany we are in a privileged situation regarding research funding – but is this strengh at risk once right-winged nationalist parties gain power? Can goverments change the reasearch agenda funded?
Another country – often seen as our role model – currently shows a worrying scenario. Fundamental changes are currently in place for the National Science Foundation (NSF). Here are some of the latest news from the journal Nature, although details and the magnitude of the regime shift are not yet known:
–> NSF moves to overhaul funding approach in line with … priorities.
–> Exclusive: NSF set to issue lowest number of new grants in four decades.
–> Funding uncertainty was a key factor for several of the researchers heading to Canada.
Hence, the NSF funding can remain formally committed to merit-based peer review while its overall portfolio becomes substantially more politically directed. The NSF is a federal authority, where the government can more directly determine research priorities.
In contrast, the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) – Germany’s central organisation for the self-governance of science – is legally a registered association under German civil law. It’s like an NGO, a non-governmental, non-profit organisation under private law. Its members include universities, non-university research institutions, scientific associations and academies. This is almost an institutional guarantee for scientfic freedom.
So can the German government tell the DFG what research to fund? NO! And article 5(3) of the Basic Law (our “constitution”) is a safeguard: “Art and science, research and teaching shall be free.”
The DFG is science-led and deliberately designed around scientific self-governance: (1) researchers review applications; (2) elected scientific review boards assess proposals, (3) scientific committees make the final funding decisions. And the DFG deliberately funds basic science, not merely applied science. Applied science is more in the focus of research funding by federal or state Ministeries, where they can define and set new priorites accoring to their political agenda. For example our DFG-funded Research Unit “Reassembly” has been funded and was evaliated for basic ecological science, not explicitly for its purpose to improve ecological restoration. (If both goals go hand-in-hand, fine. But this focus on “curiosity-driven” basic science is really worth defending!)
Let’s not take it for granted! We are facing an increased scepticism about science in our society, scepticism about the importance of free, basic science rather than science in the service of economic interests. And we are in a era of increasing support for right-winged, nationalist parties and politicians that are science deniers.
I have thus asked “my friendly pal” ChatGPT *) how vulnerably the DFG funding in Germany is to the current NSF scenario. It’s answer: “Germany is relatively well protected against a direct NSF-style political takeover of the DFG’s scientific funding decisions, but it is not immune to a gradual politicisation of research funding. The most important point is that the DFG’s independence rests on several overlapping protections, rather than on one statute. That makes a sudden ‘NSF-style’ transformation difficult—but it also means that political influence could be increased incrementally without formally abolishing scientific autonomy.”
What a federal or state government could do, however, according to a much more detailed dialogue with by ChatGPT, is to cut the budget of the DFG (ca. 2/3 is federal, 1/3 is state funded), and circumvent the DFG by other ways of research funding. “The danger would arise if the politically controlled programmes became so large that genuinely independent, curiosity-driven research was gradually squeezed out.”
There is a difference between direct political control (as in the case of NSF) and gradual political steering – the latter is a more likely scenario against which science in Germany is much less protected: “The government determines which areas receive substantially more resources, establishes new strategic programmes and changes the incentives facing researchers.” This may even gradually change recruitment policies by universities etc. – thus our own action towards science.
It is time to become aware of these risks, and start to stand up and more openly defend the value of free science before a severe drift by political steering takes place.
Nico
Disclaimer: The “Speaker’s column” reflects Nico’s personal opinion, and other members of the Research Unit should not be held responsible for its content.
*) I thought about this problem independently, particularly after discussions with colleages and reflecting the above menitioned changes in the NSF funding. But I wrote this column with a lot of support by ChatGPT, after prompting “Is the DFG as an association independent from government priorities?” and differences to the current changes in the NSF.