Scientific Integrity

Floor Speech

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Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Tonko for holding this Special Order hour on preserving scientific integrity.

Mr. Speaker, I am a scientist. For 25 years before entering Congress, I worked at Fermi National Accelerator Labs, smashing protons and antiprotons together to make particles that have not been around since the Big Bang.

If you are a scientist and you stand up and deliberately say something that you know is not true or if you publish something fraudulent, it is a career-ending move. You will lose your position. Nobody will publish your papers. You are done. It should be that way, frankly, in politics.

The reason that we scientists take truthfulness so seriously is that we are always operating on the frontiers of what is scientifically known. We are always operating with statistically incomplete datasets, with partially confirmed hypotheses, and defining the next experiments to perform to get to the next level of scientific truth.

So we scientists simply cannot tolerate the additional uncertainty of whether or not the person that we are listening to is deliberately lying or even hiding parts of what they know to be the scientific truth.

That is why it is so corrosive and demeaning when the Trump administration orders scientists to suppress their best understanding of the scientific truth, forcing scientists to choose between either their scientific integrity or potentially their jobs.

As the Trump administration has already made it clear that they will continue to undermine science and dismiss evidence-based policies, this discussion could not come at a more important time.

Unfortunately, the situation is not new. During the first Trump administration, as chair of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee's Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, one of the first hearings that I held was on the damage done to our Nation's scientific enterprise by the President's policies.

The statistics were concerning. There were significant losses in key STEM positions at the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, NOAA, including a 20 percent reduction in the Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy, something that Republicans claim to support.

Far too often, a scientist's expertise was simply ignored or their motives were questioned or their work was dismissed or censored.

Unsurprisingly, this resulted in the hemorrhaging of career scientists of all different backgrounds from our Federal workforce and from the university programs that they supported. Often, these talented scientists left for better offers in the private sector.

The departure of so much scientific talent and institutional knowledge from the government and from our universities represents a permanent, competitive disadvantage for the United States.

The responsibility, once again, falls on lawmakers like myself and my colleagues to protect the funding and the scientific freedom of speech that drives scientific advancement. It is our duty to ensure that regardless of the political climate, science remains at the forefront of our Nation's progress and innovation. Even as Trump continues his onslaught of executive orders that neglect scientific fact, I know that many of my sensible colleagues on the other side of the aisle would not want to see the U.S. fall behind in this era of rapid technological innovation.

That is precisely what we risk if we do not continue to fund and support the scientists at our Federal agencies and the scientific programs that they support around the country.

At the same time, we must also make sure that we support scientists of all different backgrounds, including those who come to the U.S. for their education and want to stay and contribute their skills to our economy.

During my two decades at Fermi National Accelerator Lab, some of the brightest and most accomplished scientists and engineers that I had the privilege to work with came from foreign countries. In one circumstance that still makes me angry, we lost one of our best and brightest through LGBT intolerance in our immigration policies.

I know firsthand that Trump's dangerous rhetoric against diversity in our Federal workforce threatens the very foundation of what fuels U.S. innovation. Both Democrats and Republicans actually recognize this truth.

My Keep STEM Talent Act, which would effectively staple a green card to a graduate degree for international STEM students who study at a U.S. university, received bipartisan support with multiple Republican cosponsors.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my sensible colleagues on the other side of the aisle to support efforts like this and increase the resiliency of our Federal workforce and help defend our Nation's competitive edge in the face of these growing threats.

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