On Friday, former NIH Director Francis Collins appeared at a “Stand Up for Science” political rally in Washington, DC. Collins strummed his guitar and led people in song as people blew soap bubbles in front of him. Behind him stood the Lincoln Memorial and people carrying signs like “Trump Trashes Science,” “He Musk Go,” and my favorite: “Diabolical Oligarch Grifting Efficiently” with a predictably menacing picture of Elon Musk.

People are already making fun of Collins on social media for his folksy performance, and Grok has even rated Collins’s singing “about 7 for cringe factor.” Cringe factor aside, the rally Collins headlined was in dead earnest, and it highlights the serious challenges we are facing if we want to restore credibility to government-funded science in America.

An Opposite Reality

Collins no doubt believes he is standing up for “science,” but the reality is the opposite: He is promoting the very things that have led to a crisis of confidence in science in this country. This becomes clear when one looks at the official “policy goals” of the group that organized the rally he headlined. Here are four of them:

1. “…a 20% increase in federal scientific funding over the next three years followed by annual increases indexed to inflation.” In other words, don’t reform, just spend. This demand comes at a time when our national debt is over $36 trillion dollars. Hint: If we keep spending like there is no tomorrow, there will be no tomorrow — not just for scientists, but for the rest of us.

2. “Removal of the 15% cap on indirect funding for NIH-funded grants and reinstatement of indirect funding policies as they existed prior to January 1, 2025.” FYI, those previous “indirect funding policies” allowed wealthy universities to charge taxpayers an overhead rate on federal grants of up to 70 %! Apparently Collins thinks this kind of price gouging should continue.

3. “Defend Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Science.” Of course, DEI policies don’t actually produce genuine diversity (a diversity of views in scientific debates). They promote illegal racial discrimination and the exclusion of those with dissenting viewpoints.

4. “Prohibit all forms of political censorship in scientific research, including restrictions on the topics of scientific research that are eligible for federal funding.” Notice the double-speak. Real censorship is when the government tries to bully or intimidate private parties from speaking their minds — like what Collins and others did during the COVID pandemic. It is not censorship for taxpayers to decline to give bureaucrats a blank check to fund whatever they want. But a blank check is what the Stand Up for Science activists are essentially demanding. Collins has lent his support to a campaign to forbid taxpayers and their elected officials from enacting any restrictions on “the topics of scientific research that are eligible for federal funding.”

What All This Means

Think about what that means in practice. Those who want to stop funding gain-of-function research — sorry, can’t do it! Those who want to stop taxpayer funds from being used to harvest body parts from late-term aborted babies for medical research — out of luck! Ditto for those who would rather not fund transgender research on rodents or promote puberty blockers and child mutilation for kids. You see, taxpayers have to fund any research topic scientists like Francis Collins demand. Otherwise, it is “censorship.”

For years, Francis Collins was protected from serious criticism by many leaders in the evangelical Christian community. Sadly, they enabled and defended him for more than a decade as he served the agenda of progressives and secularists at NIH. As I document in my new book, Collins championed embryonic stem cell research, the harvesting of baby parts from late term abortions for scientific research, the marginalization of Christian scientists who are skeptical of unguided Darwinian evolution, the embrace of the LGBTQIA+ movement, and most recently, the persecution of Christians who had conscience issues with COVID mandates.

At least Collins has made it harder to ignore his real agenda by appearing at this partisan political rally. It remains to be seen whether even now his evangelical defenders will hold him accountable.