As Biden focuses on science, psychologists look to shape administration’s agenda

The Biden administration is making promising steps toward prioritizing research that is important to the psychological community, but party control of the House and Senate could affect important research funding, according to advocates.

The new administration has announced four primary prioritiesopens in new window:

• COVID-19
• Economic Recovery
• Racial Equity
• Climate Change

“These priorities provide many opportunities for the American Psychological Association to share insights from psychological science that can inform future actions and policies,” said Katherine McGuire, APA’s chief advocacy officer. “For example, the focus on climate change will provide forums in which APA can share recommendations about the need for human-centered planning, information on mental health consequences, and insights from the recently created APA Task Force on Climate Change.”

Eric Lander, PhD, was nominated to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Lander is a genetics researcher and a key figure in the Human Genome Project. He is also the founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Alondra Nelson, PhD, president of the Social Science Research Council and a professor at Princeton University, was nominated to be deputy policy chief.

“APA and its allies have pushed for a greater representation of the social and behavioral sciences at OSTP,” McGuire said. “We welcome Dr. Nelson’s nomination as a scholar of science, technology, and social inequity.” 

In a move long advocated by APA and other scientific organizations, the OSTP director position has been raised to Cabinet level, which ensures a sharper focus on science as issues come before the federal government, McGuire said.

With the Democrats’ narrow margin of control in Congress, the need to work across party lines to enact legislation has only grown stronger. Thus, APA expects to see only moderate funding increases for science.

“APA and its scientific coalition partners are advocating for more research funding,” said McGuire. “But we’ve seen in the past that concerns about the federal deficit increase when Republicans are in the minority.” 

While the previous administration proposed large budget cuts to many science agencies over the last four years, Congress for the most part did not go along with those recommendations. There was bipartisan support for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with a budget that has increased 33% since 2016, from $32.3 billion to $42.9 billion. The National Science Foundation’s budget has grown more slowly, now $8.5 billion, up 14% since 2017.

Keep reading Psychological Science Agenda for more news and analysis on science personnel and policies in the new administration and Congress. 

For more information contact Pat Kobor.