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This is an unfortunate (and I suspect political) change that will be a net negative. Even if one believed that NSF should narrowly focus on 'important' / 'hot' topics (I don't), then this ignores so much the next generation might want to work on, e.g. climate change. 1/6 https://twitter.com/NSFGRFP/status/1286673473876766720
This also makes no sense given the breadth of what NSF pursues, and NSF's charter to support curiosity-driven and fundamental science. We will need future field biologists and experimentalists of all kinds, and we risk biasing away talented students away from these fields. 2/6
The hot topics of today began as obscure and unpopular areas that often survived due to small NSF grants. Tilting the balance in the #GRFP doubly hurts those working in nominally less popular topics by reducing the pool of funding and students interested in a topic. 3/6
As @mickeykats points out, it is also time to re-think @NSFGRFP's goals more broadly. But I fear this narrowing of NSF's approach here will make it mission-driven rather than curiosity-driven. 4/6 https://twitter.com/mickeykats/status/1287151870562242561
As Vannevar Bush put it in "Science the Endless Frontier": "Scientific progress on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown." 5/6
"Freedom of inquiry must be preserved under any plan for Government support of science.[...] Many of the most important discoveries have come as a result of experiments undertaken with very different purposes in mind." 6/6 https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/nsf50/vbush1945.htm
One final point: those studying the fundamental biology of coronaviruses were viewed as working in a relatively quiet, unpopular area, until about six months ago. What they uncovered over the decades is now invaluable. We need an agency that builds this broad base of knowledge.
