New Zealand’s science agency ceased funding all “social science” and humanities projects, focusing only on “core scientific research that helps lift our economic growth and contributes to science with a purpose.”
The move could serve as a model for the Trump administration’s reform of the National Institutes of Health. One of government’s oddities is that smart researchers studying things like cancer prevention genuinely toil for low wages at the NIH, even as the agency funds sociology studies with no conceivable tangible output.
NIH scientists have complained that their grants to travel to conferences have been cut off under the Trump administration, without highlighting that much of their budget has been sucked up by dubious studies that have nothing to do with hard sciences like biology and physics, and instead focus on topics like “Cuentos de la Vida: Exploring Cultural Heritage through Storytelling” ($326,661).
Judith Collins, New Zealand’s Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology, announced in December that government-funded science should have practical applications that could grow the economy, saying, “It is important that we support new ideas which lead to developing new technologies and products, boosting economic growth, and enhancing New Zealand’s quality of life.”
Last week, Collins announced “the largest reset of the New Zealand science system in more than 30 years with reforms which will boost the economy and benefit the sector.” She said the county’s seven national research institutes would be transformed to focus on “bio-economy, earth sciences, and health and forensic sciences,” as well as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and synthetic biology.
“The reforms will maximize the value of the $1.2 billion in government funding that goes into the science sector each year, creating a more dynamic science, innovation and technology system that can respond to priorities and keep pace with technological advances,” she said.
The science agency will produce valuable IP and products that will lead to lucrative careers for scientists in the private sector, she said. A Prime Minister’s council will ensure “the taxpayer funding that goes to the sector is spent in the best way possible to grow the economy, because innovation and technology are the future.”
Social science, or “soft science,” includes fields such as psychology and sociology, and often involves exploring left-wing opinions while casting it as a study via the insertion of dubious numbers. The field was disgraced by the so-called “replication crisis,” which found that when other scholars reconstructed the studies, they got different results — meaning that they did not find any real law of nature at all, may have falsified their data, and that quality control in the field is extremely low.
Trump has banned diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from the federal government, including in NIH grants, and many soft-science “research” projects involve DEI. But even those that don’t often have seemingly little utility and function largely as a jobs program for left-wing academics. It would be quicker and more economical to simply stop America’s science agency from funding projects that aren’t real science.
Studies have found that social scientists are overwhelmingly liberal, to a far greater degree than biologists, engineers, and health scientists. NIH studies in the soft sciences often read more like left-wing policy papers, such as “Policy as a Structural Barrier and Facilitator of Latinx Youth Mental Health,” which cost $118,196. After getting taxpayers to fund the studies, left-wing groups then cite them to advance policy, because they disguise opinion as supposedly authoritative “science.”
Anyone who looks at NIH’s grants database will readily see soft science papers, such as:
- “Good Bowls: Empowering Communities to Achieve Good Food Access and Health Equity” ($162,272)
- Mobile Internet-based Application to Promote Positive Parenting: Parent-Net ($224,222)
- Using Twitter to Enhance the Social Support of Hispanic and Black Dementia Caregivers ($559,233)
- Using Immersive Virtual Reality and Media Literacy to Enhance Adolescents’ Coping Skills in the Face of Traumatic Online Experiences ($1,073,590)
- How Scientists Remember a Major Discovery: History and Memory of DNA structure ($50,000)
- Assessing the effects of hurricane Maria on Opioid Agonist Treatment access among PWID in rural Puerto Rico ($259,263)
- Effects of Social Context, Culture and Minority Status on Depression and Anxiety ($613,724)
- Partner Violence: Roles of Work, Job Stress & Drinking ($347,403)
- The Morality of Caregiving for Demented Older Women ($67,727)
This is part of a Daily Wire series exploring major government programs that could be reformed under the Trump administration.
Related: Why Can Food Stamps Buy Junk Food? How DOGE Could Save Billions And MAHA
