The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) were chartered in 1863 to advise the nation on scientific and technical matters. That mission, at least in principle, sounds admirable. However, institutions should be judged not by their founding charters, but by their present conduct. And by that standard, it is increasingly difficult to justify the continued existence of the NAS in its current form.
What was once conceived as an independent advisory body has drifted into something else entirely, an entity that now operates at the intersection of science, policy, and advocacy, while still benefiting from substantial taxpayer funding.
Consider the recent controversy surrounding the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition. Produced in collaboration with the Federal Judiciary Center (FJC), the manual is intended to assist judges in navigating complex scientific issues. It explicitly states that it is meant to help judges “reach an informed and reasoned assessment” and is “not intended to instruct judges concerning what evidence should be admissible.”
That distinction is important. It is also increasingly difficult to take at face value.
The inclusion, and subsequent removal, of a climate science chapter speaks volumes. This was not a minor editorial adjustment. It was recognition, after outside pressure, that something had gone wrong. Unfortunately, rather than accepting the decision of the FJC to withdraw the wholly biased chapter, the NAS has taken it upon itself to defend the document and leave it up on its webpage, complete with the FJC’s logo, despite the FJC explicitly withdrawing its approval. When a federally funded scientific body contributes material designed for judges, and that material is later pulled due to concerns about bias, it raises a fundamental question: why was it there in the first place?
Judges are not climate scientists. They rely on expert testimony and reference materials to understand technical claims. That creates an inherent vulnerability. Whoever writes the “reference guide” is not merely informing the court; they are shaping the framework within which arguments are evaluated.
In other words, they are influencing outcomes.
The NAS would no doubt argue that they provide “independent, objective analysis.” Yet independence becomes questionable when an organization receives more than $100 million annually in federal contracts while producing work that intersects directly with regulatory and legal disputes. The structure may be nominally nongovernmental, but the incentives are aligned closely enough to warrant scrutiny. More importantly, the issue is not just funding. It is the nature of the output.
Climate science is a field with significant uncertainties, particularly in long-term projections, regional variability, and the interpretation of model outputs. Reasonable scientists disagree on key questions. Yet the NAS’s views on climate change tend to present a narrow range of perspectives, emphasizing consensus while minimizing uncertainty. The assessments by the NAS also support the outputs of climate model simulations, from models that are known to be flawed, over measured data on weather trends. This is indefensible as science, especially when presented to judges and the state of scientific “knowledge” about climate.
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Courts require clarity, but they also require balance. When a scientific body presents a curated narrative that leans in a particular direction, even subtly, it alters the evidentiary landscape. When that narrative is written, as this one was, by people actively engaged in climate lawsuits, arguing for a particular side, the danger is not just of the appearance of impropriety, but actual impropriety. Neither plaintiffs’ nor defendants’ attorneys and experts should be recognized in advance as the authorities on a topic before the court – feeding judges one side’s arguments as the facts that should be considered before the briefs are even filed and opening arguments made. NAS’s weight on the scale in the FJC science manual does not dictate a ruling, but it changes the starting assumptions and puts undue weight on the scales of justice.
Sadly, this reflects a broader trend in which scientific institutions have become increasingly entangled with public policy. The NAS, by its own description, aims to “inform public policy decisions.” That sounds benign, but in practice, it often means aligning scientific outputs with prevailing policy priorities and vice versa.
Once that alignment occurs, objectivity becomes difficult to maintain.
There is also a deeper structural problem. NAS’s authority rests largely on reputation. Their reports are treated as authoritative, not because they are infallible, but because, in large part, it is assumed to be impartial. When impartiality is lacking, the institution’s value as an objective presenter of truth fails.
The climate chapter episode is a symptom of a worsening disease. It reveals an organization that is no longer content to simply assess evidence but is willing to participate in shaping how that evidence is interpreted in legal and policy contexts. That is a different role than the one envisioned in 1863.
This is notably troubling because the NAS is not private, but rather is almost wholly a creature of government, sustained by public funds and granted a level of institutional authority that carries significant weight in government and the courts.
Is reform possible? In theory, the NAS could broaden their range of perspectives, openly acknowledge contested questions and uncertainty when it exists, and draw clearer boundaries between scientific assessment and policy advocacy.
But institutions rarely move in that direction on their own.
More commonly, the incentives run the other way. Funding follows relevance, and relevance increasingly means engagement with policy. Over time, that engagement becomes advocacy, whether acknowledged or not. The climate issue has simply made this dynamic more visible.
If the NAS cannot maintain a clear separation between scientific analysis and policy advocacy, particularly in areas with significant political, economic, and legal implications, then its continued role as a quasi-official advisor is unjustified. It becomes a hindrance to knowledge discovery and objective analysis as a basis for decisions – threatening to undermine both the wisdom of public policy decisions based upon NAS’s analyses, and the public faith that policies are truthfully informed and made for sound reasons.
Courts should weigh evidence presented by opposing parties, not rely on pre-packaged scientific narratives developed by federally funded bodies. Science should inform those arguments, but it should not arrive with institutional endorsement that tilts the scale before the case is even heard.
The simplest and most direct solution is to remove the problem at its source. Disband the NAS in its current form, end federal funding for its activities, and allow scientific debate to occur in the open, where competing views can be evaluated on their merits. This would not silence science. It would decentralize it.
Universities, independent researchers, private institutions, and professional societies would continue to produce work. Courts would still have access to expert testimony. What would change is the presence of a single, quasi-official voice carrying disproportionate weight in both policy and legal arenas. That change would be healthy.
Science only functions well when there is no central authority putting its stamp on the “official” version of the truth. The strength of science lies in its diversity of perspectives, its internal criticism, and its willingness to revise conclusions in light of new evidence.
The NAS had a purpose. Unfortunately, over time, as is so often the case, that purpose has shifted to one that arrogated more and more power to the institution. At this point, the question is perhaps less about how we can get the NAS back to its original mission, but whether it should be preserved at all.
That is the question now on the table.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., ([email protected]) is director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research organization based in Illinois.
Editor’s Note: Hollywood, academia, and liberal elites are out of touch with the average American.
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