The negative consequences of cutting government science

  

Over the past year, we’ve seen several countries firing government scientists and reducing investment in research. In the quest for budgetary savings, the Australian research agency, CSIRO, cut hundreds of positions. Advancing a philosophical commitment to small government in the USA, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut staff and funding in a chaotic and haphazard manner, as well as ideologically driven cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Research Office, resulting in a 30% reduction in research staff. In Canada, the federal government is actively reducing the number of scientists in Environment and Climate Change Canada agency, laying off up to 840 people. 

 

Let me start of by say that I would describe my political philosophy and a social pragmatist. While I believe that societies should provide equal benefits to all of its citizens, I recognize that the modern political and governance systems we’ve built come with severe resource constraints. I think that under such constraints evaluating government agencies for efficiency and effectiveness against their key goals and desired outcomes can help focus missions and ensure they deliver on their mandates. This is what five or ten-year reviews are for. The results of simply cutting budgets and laying off staff are: 1) likely to reduce the ability to achieve agencies’ goals; 2) endanger evidence-based policy making; and 3) inflict unnecessary harm on the people being laid off.

 

 

I asked AI for an image of government science, and this is what it gave me. I suspect that this is what some anti-government conspiracy theorists also envision.

Can government agencies be too big?

The answer is yes, without strong guardrails and focus on mission, agencies can get large and inefficient. The First Law of Organizational Inertia is that if resources are available, organizations will grow. Organizations grow through three main processes: 

 

1)        Drift: where without strong management and oversight, any organization will start to adopt new mandates and priorities, which move away from core missions. This happens as powerful and influential individuals within organizations steer resources to personal priorities.

2)        Organizational feudalism: where individuals amass organizational power through growing their bureaucratic fiefs, and making new priorities and processes that become central to the bureaucratic operation of the organization, but fail to advance the core mission (for how this can hinder the success of university researchers and teachers, read here).

3)        Mandate growth: obviously government organizations grow because of societal need or government mandate. For example, as new compounds emitted by human activities are classified as pollutants, government scientists are needed to monitor and develop mitigation strategies.

 

Government agencies grow and this growth can be functional (meeting regulatory or societal needs) or it could be expansionist (growing for growths sake without improving mission delivery). These models of growth can be distinguished from one another, whether growth has been balanced between those who deliver the mission (e.g., researchers in a science agency) and those who administer the organization, versus massive growth in bureaucratic staff without growth in mission-oriented staff, and accompanied by a reduction in efficiency. As you can probably tell, I am not opposed to organizational reviews that evaluate efficiency and effectiveness in delivering core missions, and to reallocate resources to ensure this efficiency and effectiveness. Moreover, if cuts are required, the first and primary focus should be on bureaucratic and administrative structure.

 

Government science cuts do harm

Simply cutting research staff in government agencies, whether motivated by financial or philosophical reasons, will have negative consequences. These cuts reduce the capacity of governments to obtain facts and understanding that can be instrumental for developing policy and management strategies, and for addressing crises. To be able to dismiss the potential negative consequences of research cuts, there are only two possible positions one can take. The first is that academic and private research has the capacity to provide necessary information, and so that government research is largely redundant. The second is that data and facts are of little value for government policies.

 

Government science is unique

Academic researchers, like me, have the unique privilege to pursue topics and questions that interest them. These research topics are usually informed by some combination of personal interest and curiosity, the state of knowledge within a particular field, availability of funds, and a desire to make the world better. Academic research doesn’t have strong constraints on how theoretical or practical research is, and both can be impactful. Researchers working in the private sector usually have clear deliverables and short timelines. They are constrained by a company’s research and development schedule and the need to add value to a product or service.

 

Government science contains elements of both academic and industry science in that government scientists usually have more latitude and time than industry researchers, but are more constrained by deliverables and practical outcomes than academics. Academics are often motivated by fame and glory, and industry scientists by profitability. Government science is uniquely focused on providing data and information to inform the public, governments and the decisions they make. Neither academia nor industry provide sufficient motivation to fill this role unless the government is willing to pay.

 

The important contribution of government scientists is to test and monitor. They test impacts, say of potential pollutants, outcomes, like restoration success, and scenarios. They also monitor systems and evaluate against government guidelines. As Christine Bishop, retired Canadian research scientist, points out, only government scientists are tasked with monitoring the accumulation, movement and fate of environmental contaminants through food webs. No one else does this in a comprehensive and standardized way, and this information is absolutely needed for management and enforcement. Further, we cannot rely on industry to monitor itself, especially when it comes to evaluating the potential long-term health and environmental risks of new products. If our governments have created environmental and industry regulations, but no one is monitoring, can these policies be effective?

 

Maybe governments don’t need information?

Perhaps governments don’t need all this information. If governments don’t care or use this information, then why collect it? As the EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, makes clear, the massive cuts to his agency are all about saving money and to reign in an out-of-control leftist agenda. Setting aside the fact that Mr. Zeldin has no qualifications to evaluate the science the EPA does (which is not uncommon for government leaders to not understand the details of what their agencies actually do, but this lack of qualification seems especially true for the current US administration, from health to education to environment), these are not sufficient or defensible reasons to cut research, and can only be done with the bravado of ignorance. The current US government, or any government slashing research, might feel confident in ideology as a premise for policy, but the unfortunate reality is that ideology doesn’t solve problems. Evidence-based solutions solve problems. Future governments will face crises and will not have sufficient data and understanding to prevent, mitigate, or recover from these crises. The slashing governments seldom face the consequences of their cuts, but society does over the long-term.

 

So what then?

Sometimes financial constraints require austerity (there is a larger conversation about the financial systems we’ve invented and whether they need to be re-invented in a way that actually benefits all people). If this is the case, there are ways to do this that protect agency missions and the generation of information needed for enforcement and policy. Government research serves an invaluable role in governance and cutting it in haphazard ways will have long-term negative consequences for nature and people.

---

Are evidence-based policies and pro-science governmental agendas dependent on happiness?

 There are a lot of problems in the world—from the effects of climate change, emerging zoonotic diseases, strife and war, and more. But we also need to recognize that humanity has never had it so good. Today, most of us expect access to food, medicine, and education. We expect to live to old age, and we expect our children to outlive us—expectations that only emerged in the last century. For most of human history, people expected famine, and half of all children to die before the age of five.

We are not very good at comparing our lives with those of past generations, but we are very good at comparing ourselves to wealthier people or to dreams of lavish living. Happier countries are those where people trust one another, feel fortunate, and genuinely want others to succeed. My sense (with many assumptions and caveats) is that happier societies tend to be governed by more rational, less ideological governments—ones that place greater value on science and evidence-based policymaking.

In the U.S., it seems fair to say that the Republican Party has grown more hostile to science, favoring ideology over evidence on issues like climate change and vaccines. This is a broad generalization, but evidence suggests that Democratic administrations more often support and consult science. I say this, not as partisan advocacy—I am generally anti-party politics*. My goal here is to explore how happiness connects to political outcomes.

Measuring happiness and politics

Happiness is not easy to measure. Here, I use a happiness ranking of US states based on 30 different metrics, including life expectancy, commute times, economic well-being, and leisure. I then turned this ranking into an index where happier states had higher scores**, and compared that to each state’s political leaning.

To determine political control, I looked at six elected offices: the 2024 presidential vote, governor, state senate, state house, both U.S. Senate seats, and the U.S. House delegation. If one party held five or six of these, I classified the state as either Republican or Democratic. If neither party held at least five, I classified it as “mixed.”

The results were clear. States that voted more often for Democrats were happier on average (slope = 0.867, F1,48 = 7.57, p = 0.008). When grouped by party control, Republican-led states were less happy (F2,47 = 3.11, p = 0.05). These findings suggest that happier states tend to elect a government more inclined to value evidence and science.

Correlation, not causation

This is not likely a causal relationship. Instead, in places with lower literacy, weaker schools, fewer economic opportunities, and less job satisfaction, people are more drawn to simple and emotional political narratives. These often take the form of an “us versus them” story, where the “us” are righteous and the “them” are blamed for hardship and unfair control of the political system. This may explain why Republican voters tend to be less trustful of democracy.

It is important to highlight the caveat that these indices do not actually measure “happiness”, which is a complex thing to quantify. These indices are composites built from socio-economic indicators, but there is strong evidence that these conditions shape how people feel about their place in society, their sense of fairness, and whether they believe they are receiving the rewards they deserve.

Why happiness matters for evidence-based policy

If we want governments to ground decisions in evidence rather than ideology, we need to ensure that voters are happy. That requires investment in education, which drives innovation and economic growth, along with infrastructure, health care, and a high quality of life.

Raising the standard of living in places like Alabama and Mississippi should be a priority, regardless of political outcomes. People there deserve the same world-class education and health care as those in New York or California. But as a side effect, happier citizens are also more likely to support rational leaders who value science—and that leads to better outcomes for everyone.

 

*Political parties by their very nature, in both their objectives and methods, will try to subvert democracy and bias it in their favour. I want to see a world without parties – see first footnote in https://evol-eco.blogspot.com/2020/12/politics-and-biodiversity-crisis-call.html#edn1.

**absolute(max.happiness rank-state.happiness rank) + 1

Are we winning the science communication war?

Since the time that I was a young graduate student, there have been constant calls for ecologists to communicate more with the public and policy makers (Norton 1998, Ludwig et al. 2001). The impetus for these calls is easy to understand –we are facing serious threats to the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem health, and ecologists have the knowledge and facts that are needed to shape public policy. To some, it is unconscionable that ecologists have not done more advocacy, while others see a need to better educate ecologists in communication strategies. While the reluctance for some ecologists to engage in public communication could be due to a lack of skills that training could overcome, the majority likely has had a deeper unease. Like all academics, ecologists have many demands on their time, but are evaluated by research output. Adding another priority to their already long list of priorities can seem overwhelming. More fundamentally, many ecologists are in the business of expanding our understanding of the world. They see themselves as objective scientists adding to global knowledge. To these ‘objectivists’, getting involved in policy debates, or becoming advocates, undermines their objectivity.

Regardless of these concerns, a number of ecologists have decided that public communication is an important part of their responsibilities. Ecologists now routinely sit on the boards of different organizations, give public lectures, write books and articles for the public, work more on applied problems, and testify before governmental committees. Part of this shift comes from organizations, such as the Nature Conservancy, which have become large, sophisticated entities with communication departments. But, the working academic ecologist likely talks with more journalists and public groups than in the past.

The question remains: has this increased emphasis on communication yielded any changes in public perception or policy decisions. As someone who has spent time in elementary school classrooms teaching kids about pollinators and conservation, the level of environmental awareness in both the educators and children surprises me. More telling are surprising calls for policy shifts from governmental organizations. Here in Canada, morale has been low because of a federal government that has not prioritized science or conservation. However signals from international bodies and the US seem to be promising for the ability of science to positively influence science.

Two such policy calls are extremely telling. Firstly, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which includes the governments of Mexico, Canada, and the USA, which normally deals with economic initiatives and disagreements, announced that they will form a committee to explore measures to protect monarch butterflies. They will consider instituting toxin-free zones, where the spraying of chemicals will be prohibited, as well as the construction of a milkweed corridor from Canada to Mexico. NAFTA made this announcement because of declining monarch numbers and calls from scientists for a coordinated strategy.

The second example is the call from 11 US senators to combat the spread of Asian carp. Asian carp have invaded a number of major rivers in the US, and have their spread has been of major concern to scientists. The 11 senators have taken this scientific concern seriously, requesting federal money and that the Army Corps of Engineers devise a way to stop the Asian carp spread.

There seems to be promising anecdotal evidence that issues of scientific concern are influencing policy decisions. This signals a potential shift; maybe scientists are winning the public perception and policy war. But the war is by no means over. There are still major issues (e.g., climate change) that require more substantial policy action. Scientists, especially those who are effective and engaged, need to continue to communicate with public and policy audiences. Every scientifically informed policy decision should be seen as a signal of the willingness of audiences to listening to scientists and that communicating science can work.

References

Ludwig D., Mangel M. & Haddad B. (2001). ECOLOGY, CONSERVATION, AND PUBLIC POLICY. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 32, 481-517.

Norton, B. G. 1998. IMPROVING ECOLOGICAL COMMUNICATION: THE ROLE OF ECOLOGISTS IN ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY FORMATION. Ecological Applications 8:350–364

Protecting biodiversity one task at a time: have your say

The fact that the Earth is in the midst of a biodiversity crisis has been repeatedly acknowledged by world governments. The greatest pronouncement was is 2002 with the '2010 Biodiversity Target' where many of the largest economies signed a pledge to halt biodiversity loss by 2010. Yet it is now 2010 and species are continuing to go extinct and habitats are continuing to be destroyed or degraded. But it shouldn't be a surprise that non-binding governmental proclamations fail to produce substantial results. Yet the reality is that we need to do something, inaction only worsens the legacy of biological deficit for future generations.

Maybe the best way forward is not more international governmental summits, but rather focusing on small scale, achievable short term goal. Guillaume Chapron started the Biodiversity 100 campaign, hosted by the Guardian (see story here), which seeks out public and professional input into the 100 immediate and achievable projects or ideas that will help protect biodiversity. The idea is to be able to go to governments and international agencies with this list and get them to make specific pledges to carry out these tasks.

There is till time to participate! If you have an idea of an action to protect biodiversity, fill out the web form. There are already a plethora of great suggestions, from protecting specific habitats to stemming population growth. This list is important because it includes the voices of the international public citizenry and that of scientists. More than that though, there will be a concrete list of tasks (ranging from very local to very global) that citizen groups can use to sustain pressure on governments.