The National Academies are politically corrupted

Michael Chamberlain, Washington Examiner

“American know-how,” “American ingenuity” — these were terms many of us grew up with to describe the innovation and advancement powered by United States leadership in science that has made life easier, healthier, and longer, and that continues to open new worlds to us.

With the challenges of AI, medical technologies, returning to the moon (and beyond), and powering a world whose energy needs are projected to expand exponentially, maintaining our leadership could certainly benefit from an organization that provides independent, objective advice to policymakers.

Well, we have one. Or at least we think we do.

The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine was congressionally chartered in 1863 to do just that. However, as with so many of our venerated institutions in recent years, it has dived head-first into many progressive policy priorities and fallen prey to other destructive influences.

Science is suffering from a reproducibility crisis, where identifying bogus, manipulated, and politicized research has become a cottage industry. This is due in no small part to torch-wielding activists burning down institutions that produce research that fails to support the “right” conclusions. Rather than fighting it, the National Academies have too often given fuel to the torch-wielders. NASEM’s tepid, caveated 2020 report on school reopening was a de facto invitation for teachers’ unions to throw their weight around, prolonging the damaging closures. As if that weren’t bad enough, the report included an epilogue on “the epidemic of systemic racism.” Predictably, the students NASEM professed to be most concerned about were most harmed by the closures the report helped prolong.

Last month Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency announced it was beginning the process to reverse the 2009 Clean Air Act Endangerment Finding, which granted the feds authority to regulate CO2. Since its inception, skeptics have worried that this policy was driven by progressive special interests. A recent dump of public records suggested the Obama-era officials’ finding was pre-determined — a no-no under the Administrative Procedures Act. This kicked off a very profitable period for researchers, consultants, and environmental NGOs who rushed to gorge at the trough of what they termed the climate crisis. NASEM, technically a non-profit foundation which has not only received significant government money to promote climate alarmism but has actively solicited private donations for that cause, decided it ain’t gonna take the EPA’s recent move lying down.

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