Legitimacy for Sale

5 things to know about the National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a prestigious American organization. Its related academies of engineering and medicine are combined under the umbrella of NASEM, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.

The legitimacy of these groups as official and trustworthy advisory entity relies on independence from external influence. This is highlighted by the mission statement and values of the NASEM.

NASEM’s prestige rests on its claim to independence and trustworthiness

However, recent issues of conflicts of interest arising from philanthropic funding of NASEM activities challenges understandings of the institution’s independence.

Is the NAS/ NASEM of today best understood as a prestigious consulting agency that sells its brand to legitimize the preferred ideas and methodologies of whoever is footing the bill?

I hope not.

Here are 5 things everyone should now when pondering the question.

1. NAS is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization

Congress established the charter of the National Academy of Sciences under President Lincoln in 1863 during the American Civil War. Though Lincoln had been inspired by the much older scientific academies in Europe, the NAS charter created a distinct twist of providing science advice to government as the dominant purpose:

the Academy shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art

Over time, presidents expanded the sorts of things NAS does.¹ Today, NASEM produces more than 200 reports per year across a wide range of topical issues related to science, engineering, and medicine.

Despite its establishment by Congress and the president’s ability to weigh in on it functions, NAS is a stand alone 501(c)(3) non-profit that operates as a private membership organization.

2. Private support of NAS has grown in recent years

At the time of its charter, Congress provided that funding for NAS reporting would come from appropriations. In 1884, Congress empowered NAS to receive support from private entities for whatever the donors asked of it:

to receive bequests and donations and hold the same in trust, to be applied by the said Academy in aid of scientific investigations and according to the will of the donors

Through an EO, President George HW Bush added that advice to the Government could also be funded by private entities:

the actual expenses of investigations, examinations, experiments and reports by the Academy for the executive branch of Government shall be paid to the Academy through one of more of the following: private gifts and bequests…

Today, NAS has revenue of about $325 million and its President collects a salary of about $1 million.

Private financial support of NAS activities has grown substantially in recent years.

In the first several years of the time series below, NAS received about 30% of its sponsorship from private interests. By 2023, philanthropic donations grew to 40% as private interests inched towards matching federal sponsorship dollar for dollar.²

Philanthropic funding is substantial enough that NASEM’s Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR) created in 1984, was renamed in September 2024 as the Government-University-Industry-Philanthropy Research Roundtable (GUIPRR).

Proximity to philanthropies also invites conflicts of interest as these entities have policy agendas, which often are agendas that support the business interests of its founder and board members.³

3. NAS may be struggling to manage conflicts of interest

The problem with researcher and institutional conflicts of interest is the potential for bias in research activities, reporting, research framing, and the like. Moreover, COI- particularly when not disclosed upfront- undermines public trust in science.

Abolishing all COI is virtually impossible and sometimes even undesirable. But some are less troubling than others and it should all be disclosed and managed.

Bias is created in many ways that does not necessarily include falsifying research or even any sort of outright researcher misconduct.

For instance, a body of research on a topic can be biased by funding interests that “seed” the literature by supporting research and assessments using information and methods favorable to their interests. This can result in an extreme situation where an entire body of literature is defined by its relationship to an industry or cause.

Writing about the context of litigation generated research, Boden and Ozonoff (2008) explain,

…in many cases, the vast majority of- or all-research on a product’s hazards may be conducted under the sponsorship of its manufacturers or by researchers with industry ties.

Conflicts of interests are seriously problematic in these contexts because the acceptability of certain methods and viewpoints are defined by one’s stake in the game.

Here are two recent examples of COI at NAS/NASEM:

a. Opiates, Pain, and the Sackler Family

With the passage of the affordable care act in 2010, Congress directed the National Academy of Medicine⁴ to convene a conference to “to increase the recognition of pain as a significant public health problem in the United States.” The resulting 2011 report argued that 100 million Americans suffered from pain and that this was a major problem.

By 2016, researchers questioned the integrity of the pain report given conflicts of interest held by committee members. In 2023, a New York Times⁵ story about NASEM institutional conflicts of interest created by the years of receiving millions from the Sackler family while it produced reports about pain.

According to one bioethicist interviewed for the story,

Accepting millions of dollars from the Sackler family while advising the federal government on pain policy “would be considered a conflict of interest under almost any conflict-of-interest policy I’ve ever seen.”

In April 2024, NAS announced it was seeking the courts to intervene so it could rid itself of the Sackler name which had become a Scarlett Letter on existing funds.

b. Extreme weather events and Climate change attribution

Also in 2016, and with an update started last year, NAS took on assessments of extreme weather event attribution to climate change. The dominant methodology is inherently tied to litigation, climate change advocacy, and the climate risk analytics industry.

• Funders of the 2016 report included: David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the Litterman Family Foundation

• Funders of the report in current development include: Bezos Earth Fund and Robert Litterman

In 2022, Bezos Earth Fund granted $10 million to Climate Central, World Weather Attribution (WWA), and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. The first two organizations established a popular extreme weather attribution methodology and are its frontline marketers. Two members of Climate Central had played a role in overseeing development of the 2016 report. Robert Litterman is a current board member at Climate Central.

Litterman has business interests in carbon markets and Bezos Earth Fund gave $11 million to organizations establishing carbon trading standards.

Members to the current NAS committee include:

• A researcher with the WWA and also advising on climate litigation

• A researcher with the Yale Program on Climate change Communication

• A researcher with an advocacy group that advises on climate litigation

• A scientists that works with the reinsurance industry

These are industry and political interests no different from the COI that arises from Sackler family money.

5. NAS houses advocacy programs funded by political interests

NAS claims to independence are challenged by programs supported by private interests that orient all of NASEM arounds select policy priorities. In 2023, NASEM establised the Climate Crossroads initiative to “catalyze actions to meet the unprecedented challenges and opportunities of climate change.”

As part of its annual reporting, NASEM describes how Climate Crossroads leverages pubic trust as a promise for access to decision making during its fundraising campaigns :

Building on the National Academies’ unique position at the intersection of science and decision-making, the Climate Crossroads will chart new pathways to powerful, lasting impact as we transition to a lower carbon and climate-adaptive future. In 2022, over $10M was raised including $3.7M by the NAM. Four donors made major gifts to the Academies for the first time.

Funding for this advocacy effort taking place under the NAS brand includes the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and San Francisco Foundation.

Well, now. One just might start to wonder about problems of capture.

Over on X, communications scholar Matthew Nisbet points out that NASEM sold naming rights to one of its prizes to the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Foundation.

Meanwhile, recent research finds that philanthropic organizations tend to fund the same researchers. ‘He’s a friend of ours,’ so to speak.

1. In 1916, an in-house effort created the National Research Council as a practical means of carrying out the responsibilities of the NAS, to bring together expertise beyond exclusive NAS membership, and to harness the NAS to assist in the the, then, looming WWI. With an executive order, President Wilson made the NRC official and oriented the organization’s work- and by extension the broader technical research community- towards resolving military and industrial problems. In 1993, President George HW Bush added to its objectives “environmental problems in connection with public health and the economy.” There was an Eisenhower EO between Wilson and Bush.

2. Data from the annual treasurer reports

3. The 1980s and 1990s were awash with research COI controversies in medical related research and toxicology. The problem was rooted in the growth of the medical industry and legislative changes that encouraged researchers and universities to work more closely with industry. This rapid change in the research context was not readily matched with accountability measures. At least in the medical field, this changed over time and though the situation is far from perfect improved researcher disclosure practices strengthened professional ethic norms of conduct while enabling meta-analyses of existing research to critically assess funding biases.

The same situation is playing out again with the rise in philanthropic funding, researcher relationships with NGOs, and financial industry relationships that have developed with researchers in climate sciences.

4. At the time it was the Institute of Medicine

5. This is a bit ironic considering that a NYTimes reporter served on the committee of the 2011 report.