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The Powell memo, from 1971, contains advice to establish rightwing thinktanks, staffed by scholars friendly to the billionaire class. It also has a blueprint for the “Scientific Freedom” lecture series that Trump’s NIH head Jay Bhattacharya set up this year. These are longtime strategies. 1/

The Koch & Heritage/Project 2025 billionaire class is fully aware they can tie normal good-faith people up into knots by bear hugging “academic freedom” while quietly using their power and money to select speakers and academics that have pro-billionaire views. Check this text!

And this is right. What’s happening to science, like what’s happening to democracy, is corruption. Money and politicized government is being used to twist the pillars of our civic society. The COVID deniers who attacked Fauci were elevated by billionaires. Regular ppl see that as corruption.

(NIH and NSF seem small relative to the fall of the whole American republic and our freedoms, and concentration camps. Which they are. But they are collateral damage from a rampaging corrupt rightwing elite donor class.)

This too. And what is the future plan for science? My take: it will be built on a free and fair marketplace of ideas; distributed decision making where the sci community uses peer review to choose the best science—one piece of scientific integrity; public investment, and real freedom of speech.

The bones of that future are the bones of what NIH and NSF did so well for so long. Some changes will be needed, but the core structure of those agencies should be emulated, and augmented with changes for today’s culture, today’s innovation, fairness, and welcoming all kinds of people.