Editor’s note: You can read more about Francis Collins and BioLogos in John West’s new book Stockholm Syndrome Christianity.

The last few years have not been kind to America’s scientific establishment. From COVID to climate change to the medical abuse of gender-confused children, scientific elites have squandered their moral authority by politicizing scientific pronouncements and fusing scientific research with their own ideological agendas.  

As a result, many Americans are now skeptical of claims made by elite scientists, and the Trump administration is proposing dramatic reforms to how science research is funded and evaluated by the federal government.

The reaction of the scientific establishment has been to circle the wagons and rally the troops. That was the point of the “Stand Up for Science” events held earlier this year. Those rallies weren’t so much about standing up for science as they were about insulating science from reforms and accountability.

Francis Collins, the former head of the NIH, headlined the rally in Washington, DC. Surrounded by signs with messages like “Trump Trashes Science” and “Diabolical Oligarch Grifting Efficiently,” Collins called “for strong public support” of science “at a time when serious threats of harm are happening.” 

“Science Is God” — Or Rather, “Good”

Now a group founded by Collins, the BioLogos Foundation, has answered his call by announcing a “Science Is Good” campaign. The apparent goal is to restore public trust in science, especially among Christians.

As I document in my book Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, BioLogos was started originally to convince evangelical Christians to embrace Darwinian evolution and delegitimize scientists like biochemist Michael Behe who think there is evidence of intelligent design in biology. The group later expanded its portfolio to include issues like COVID and climate change. 

In its new “Open Letter to People of Faith about Science,” BioLogos decries our “age of polarization and misinformation,” lamenting that we live in “a cultural moment marked by distrust of institutions, suspicion of expertise, and a sharp decline in public investment in scientific research.”

One would need to be blind to miss the political context of the BioLogos statement. Its letter warns ominously that “Federal cuts to life-saving programs and the vilification of scientists are not just political developments, but symptoms of a deeper crisis.”

A Pro-Forma Acknowledgment 

BioLogos is right that science is a good thing. When pursued honestly, humbly, and ethically, it has been one of the great engines of human advancement and flourishing. But here’s the rub: The growing crisis of confidence in science isn’t because people believe “science” is bad. It’s because they believe the current scientific elite is untrustworthy. BioLogos largely ignores the legitimate reasons many people have become skeptical of elite scientists. Other than a pro-forma acknowledgment that “Of course, science can be misused for profit or power,” its open letter shows little interest in dealing with the abuses that have fed the public’s lack of confidence in elite science, especially among people of faith.

Yet those abuses in recent decades have been legion. 

Consider how Darwinian evolution has been employed as a battering-ram against traditional beliefs about God by atheists and “theistic” evolutionists alike. Atheist scientists like Richard Dawkins loudly proclaimed that Darwinian evolution disproved the existence of God. They further insisted that questioning Darwinian evolution was “anti-science,” tantamount to questioning the sphericity of the Earth. “Theistic” evolution groups like BioLogos, meanwhile, also suggested that questioning Darwinism was anti-science. Unlike Dawkins, of course, they did not think that Darwinian evolution disproved God. Nevertheless, they did argue that Christians had to reshape their beliefs to make them consistent with the teachings of evolutionary biology. The end result was similar: Both atheistic and theistic supporters of evolution wrapped their metaphysical views in science while trying to shut down legitimate debate over their claims as “anti-science.”

Is it any wonder that many people of faith responded negatively?

No Debate Allowed

Or take the controversy over climate change. In the name of science, we have been told not only that our planet is warming because of humans, but that the warming will lead to catastrophe unless we abolish the use of fossil fuels. Claiming to speak for “science,” climate change alarmists bundle together a lot of distinct claims and then insist that “the science” is settled for all of them — no debate allowed. 

But even if the planet is warming, that doesn’t necessarily mean the warming will be catastrophic or even a net negative. That’s a separate question. So is determining the cause (or causes) of the warming. So is deciding what we can or should do about it, if anything. If reducing the temperature by one degree would eliminate 100 million jobs and throw 500 million people into starvation, which choice would be right? That is a question for society as whole to debate and decide, not just a handful of spokespersons for “science.” 

Unfortunately, if you raise questions like this, you are likely to be branded anti-science or worse — even if you have scientific evidence on your side. According to Francis Collins, if you dissent from the climate consensus, you likely have bad motives. Perhaps you “have a special interest in seeing continued use of fossil fuels,” or maybe you “wish to create as much disharmony within our population as possible,” or perhaps you are one of the “politicians who see climate change denial as good for votes and campaign donations.” Ironically, Collins’s own views on climate change aren’t very well grounded in science. 

The Real Threat

So is skepticism of climate change alarmism truly “anti-science”? Or is it an understandable reaction to the one-sided — and often unscientific — dogmatism of alarmists who try to suppress debate over their claims? Who is the real threat to science here? 

The COVID pandemic supplies another example of how scientific elites themselves spurred increased public skepticism of science. Remember how we were initially told that wearing masks to protect against COVID was unscientific and even harmful? A few weeks later, we were told precisely the opposite: Not wearing masks was now unscientific and would lead to catastrophe. Now that’s a great way to build public confidence in science!

Then the public heard repeated commands that “the science” required everyone to stay six feet apart, no matter what. Except it later turned out this “science” was illusory. In testimony to Congress last year, Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci both admitted that the distancing rule wasn’t based on any science they knew about. 

The rollout of the COVID vaccines created its own issues. Early on, Collins assured the public that mRNA from the vaccines wouldn’t stay in the body “beyond probably a few hours.”  That was false. A subsequent study showed that the mRNA could persist in a person’s lymph system some two months after vaccination.

Vaccine mandates provided another reason for increased public distrust. In April 2021, Collins emphatically promised the public that “There’s not going to be any mandating of vaccines from the U.S. government, I can assure you.” A few months later, he was praising the imposition of mandates as a “forceful, muscular approach” and demonizing those who didn’t want to take the vaccines as killers on the wrong side of history. 

From Bad to Worse

Was it wrong for thoughtful Americans to feel they had been lied to by the nation’s top scientist? It gets worse. We now know that leading scientists like Collins failed to acknowledge in public during COVID what they knew in private: There was no scientific justification for requiring those who already had COVID to get the COVID vax. 

So was increased skepticism by the public during COVID irrational and anti-science? Or was it a legitimate response to false statements, broken promises, and junk science promoted by leading science officials? 

Post-COVID, Francis Collins has advocated bestowing even more power on the public health bureaucracy, and he has recommended that the government do more to preempt dissenting views during the next pandemic. Are people irrational to be concerned about such proposals?

An Even Bigger Issue

Apart from COVID, there is an even bigger issue that many people are beginning to recognize: How federal funding for science research has been hijacked to promote a variety of left-wing causes, including abortion, DEI, the LGBTQIA agenda, and more. 

Under the leadership of Francis Collins, the NIH provided nearly $3 million in tax dollars to support the harvesting of baby parts from late-term aborted babies by the University of Pittsburgh in its “quest to become a ‘Tissue Hub’ for human fetal tissue ranging from 6 to 42 [!] weeks gestation.” The NIH likewise funded gruesome experiments utilizing aborted baby body parts to create “humanized mouse and rodent models with full-thickness human skin.” For the experiments, researchers sliced off skin from the scalp of the aborted babies and then grafted the fetal skin onto the mice. 

Under Collins, the NIH also funded researchers and hospitals that promoted puberty blockers and sex-destructive surgeries on minors. It also spent millions of dollars to test transgender treatments using mice.

Under Collins and Fauci, federal money ended up funding dangerous gain-of-function research on pathogens, which some think played a role in the start of the COVID pandemic. Thankfully, the Trump administration has now cracked down on such research.

Under Collins and Fauci, the NIH also operated a lab that performed horrific and unnecessary experiments on beagles. Mercifully, the Trump administration has shut it down. 

Are we required to endorse anything the government funds to be considered “pro-science”? That seems to be the implication of today’s uncritical boosters of the scientific establishment.

Many of the federal grants for “science” research being canceled by the Trump administration are grants made to advance ideological agendas opposed by the majority of voters in the last election. They include grants that promote DEI, climate change activism, and lots of NIH grants to advance the transgender agenda, including research projects such as “Defining the neovaginal microbiome after gender affirming vaginoplasty” and “Personalized 3D avatar tool development for measurement of body perception across gender identities.”

Free Money!

Canceling these grants is not an attack on science. It is an attempt to rescue taxpayer-funded science research from the ideologues. It’s also an effort to re-prioritize federal science funding in an age of massive budget deficits. Should every grant dropped by the Trump administration have been canceled? Probably not. Moreover, reasonable people can differ on what the funding priorities should be for taxpayer-funded science research. But decrying the curtailment of government grants without acknowledging the abuses that led to the current situation is not a serious position.

In addition to grants on questionable topics, there is the issue of whether taxpayer funds for science are being well spent. Universities currently charge the federal government an “overhead” fee anytime they accept federal research grants. Say the actual cost of your research is $1 million. If your university’s overhead rate is 25 percent, the university will get an extra payment of $250,000 just for accepting federal money. This additional payment is not tied to the direct costs of the grant. It goes to amorphous “indirect” costs that are easily inflated. It’s perfectly understandable why the scientific establishment is so protective of overhead rates. It’s the golden goose that provides massive subsidies to America’s most elite universities, many of which charge the federal government overhead rates of 54-70 percent — or more. Harvard’s top overhead rate for federal research grants is actually 89 percent! That means if your research at Harvard costs $1 million to conduct, Harvard will get an extra payment of nearly $900,000 to sweeten the deal. Who wouldn’t want that kind of free money?

By the way, the Trump administration is not proposing to eliminate overhead rates altogether. It is merely trying to reduce them to a standard 15 percent. This, again, is not an attack on science. It’s an effort to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely and efficiently.

Contrary to BioLogos, America’s scientific establishment doesn’t need a PR campaign to inspire trust. It needs accountability, transparency, and open debate. Fortunately, the new head of NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, seems committed to real reforms.

In the long run, that will do a lot more to inspire trust in science than any PR campaign.