According to science.org, the Department of Energy is eliminating its six specialized advisory committees that have guided the Office of Science for decades. The Office of Science, which manages a $8.24 billion budget and operates 10 national laboratories, will now rely on a single Office of Science Advisory Committee. The change was announced on September 30 and affects programs covering advanced computing, basic energy sciences, biological research, fusion, high energy physics, and nuclear physics. Researchers like Bruce Hungate and Laura Greene expressed alarm, calling the committees “consequential service work” and saying the consolidation “scares me.” The move comes after none of the committees have met since President Trump’s second term began in January.
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Science voices silenced
Here’s the thing about those old committees – they weren’t just rubber stamps. Each had about 25 members and provided deep, field-specific expertise that shaped major research directions. They spent years developing long-range plans, like the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel’s recent three-year community brainstorming effort. And the advice flowed both ways – in 2013, the Office of Science director actually used the Basic Energy Sciences committee to tell researchers their x-ray source plan was too timid and needed reworking.
William Madia, who directed two national labs, put it bluntly: “It was a very, very good venue for advancing ideas.” Good reviews could accelerate projects through both DOE and Congress, while bad ideas would “crash and burn” in those meetings. Basically, these committees were where the scientific community could speak directly to the people running the programs.
Political shift
So why the change now? Some researchers suspect this is part of a broader strategy to reduce the influence of career federal employees. Robert Rosner, former director of Argonne National Laboratory, notes that the old system funneled advice directly to the “feds” running research programs. “Right then and there, you have a problem from the point of view of this administration, which is you’re going to be relying on people who you may not trust.”
Now the new committee will advise politically appointed leaders like Undersecretary Darío Gil directly. The DOE’s announcement says Gil will appoint members from “academia, industry, and national laboratories,” but researchers are worried about what that actually means in practice.
What gets lost
You can’t replace six specialized committees with deep expertise across different fields with one general committee and expect the same quality of advice. Laura Greene puts it simply: “You will definitely lose depth.” Patrick Huber raises an even more concerning possibility: “If you just get a bunch of tech billionaires on it who want to offload their R&D onto the government, you know…” He doesn’t finish the thought, but the implication is clear.
Heidi Schellman notes that the real work often happened in subpanels that could meet privately to hash out complex plans. That structure might survive, but the consolidated committee would still lack the broad expertise of the old system. And let’s be honest – when you’re dealing with everything from particle physics to environmental research, can one committee really grasp the nuances of all these fields?
Not completely doomed
There is some cautious optimism. Patricia Dehmer, who served as the office’s deputy director from 2007 to 2016, says “All is not lost. This can work.” The crucial point is that there’s still a formal mechanism for community input. The new structure could potentially give scientists more direct access to top DOE leadership when making big decisions about facilities and projects.
But here’s the reality: we’re talking about the largest funder of physical sciences in the United States making a fundamental change to how it gets scientific advice during a government shutdown, with key leadership positions unfilled. The White House hasn’t even nominated a director for the Office of Science yet. This feels like one of those changes that might look reasonable on paper but could have consequences we’ll be dealing with for years. When you’re managing $8 billion in research funding, don’t you want the best possible advice?
