The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has proposed a rule that would fundamentally restructure how the federal government funds science, and critics say the historical precedent is a warning from the Soviet Union’s darkest scientific era.
Under the proposed rule, political appointees would gain authority to decide how federal research dollars are distributed, who can receive them, and what findings can be communicated. The rule would cut funding for international scientific collaboration, block research deemed “not in the national interest,” with health disparities, mRNA vaccines, and studies questioning biological sex as a strict binary cited as examples, and allow OMB to rescind previously approved research funds retroactively. The rule also affects non-science grants for mental health, housing, education, veterans, and Tribal nations.
Federal funding currently supports approximately 40% of basic science research in the United States. More than 98,000 public comments have been submitted as the comment period closes July 13.
The article, written by Tina Hesman Saey for Science News, draws explicit parallels to the Trofim Lysenko era in the Soviet Union (1930s–1950s), when a politically backed agronomist with what historian Lee Dugatkin calls “a mail order degree” replaced Mendelian genetics with Lamarckian inheritance under Stalin’s patronage.
The Lysenko precedent
Lysenko was an agronomist whose quick-fix promises, soaking seeds in freezing water to boost crop yields, appealed to Stalin’s need for rapid agricultural results. When his methods failed, millions starved. Meanwhile, Mendelian genetics was branded “a whore of capitalism.” Geneticists were forced to renounce their views, lose their jobs, or face imprisonment. Nearly a dozen were executed or died in prison.
The Soviet Union lost its scientific leadership, missed out on the discovery of the structure of DNA, the development of hybrid corn, and the birth of molecular biology. Post-Soviet states still do not lead in molecular biology nearly a century later.
“Untrained, non-expert people are making decisions they have absolutely no credibility in,” said Dugatkin, an evolutionary biologist and historian of science at the University of Louisville.
Parallels drawn by scientists
Former NIH official Elizabeth Ginexi directly connected the two eras: “Lysenko replaced legitimate science with a politically acceptable alternative, enforced by the state, and destroyed the careers of scientists who practiced disfavored methods.”
A June 2026 editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine stated: “A similar threat now hangs over U.S. science.”
Michael Gordin, a historian of science at Princeton, warned about the broken training pipeline, smart undergraduates not entering graduate school, graduate students not finishing, postdocs not staying. “You can’t just remove a five-year period and then hope to restart it again.”
Nobel laureate Katalin Karikó, who grew up in Soviet-aligned Hungary, noted that the U.S. is already losing leadership to China in the field she helped pioneer: “Patients don’t care where their medicine comes from.”
What has already changed
The article documents concrete consequences: NIH has canceled at least 110 funding announcements between January 2025 and May 2026. The CDC has been substantially restructured. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. personally asked CDC to halt flu vaccine spending. NIH staff were told to remove references to “biodefense” and “pandemic preparedness” from their communications.
The Stand Up for Science Foundation called the OMB proposal “a sweeping threat to federal grantmaking and the responsible stewardship of American taxpayer dollars.”
Historian Georgy Levit offered a measured distinction: in the U.S.S.R., one person’s beliefs drove science and opposition was powerless. In the U.S., he said, “powers are fighting,” implying some resilience, but also deep division.
The comment period closes July 13. OMB will then decide whether to keep, revise, or scrap the rule.
Disclosure: Based on reporting from Science News. No peer-reviewed study underlies this policy news article.
Sources:
1. Saey, T.H. “Here’s what happens when you put politicians in charge of science.” Science News. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/omb-politicians-lysenko-science-history