▶ 0:12:37The Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recess of the subcommittee at any time. Welcome to today's hearing entitled the state of scientific publishing assessing trends, emerging issues, and policy considerations. I recognize myself for 5 minutes for an opening statement. Good morning, and thank you for attending today.
▶ 0:13:04We are addressing a challenge that sits at the heart of the American scientific leadership, a challenge that demands honesty and scrutiny of the systems we rely on to produce and validate Science advances through trust. Everything we do rests on the assumption that underlying work is real, rigorous, and honestly reported. I know the importance of this firsthand.
▶ 0:13:31From my time in medical school to practicing in the emergency room, my career has been based on published research and its credibility and its peer review process. Our actions are based on trust. Be it when a policymaker acts on published evidence or when a federal agency directs billions, if not trillions, of dollars in funding to specific research. That foundation is as under threat. And it is the job of this committee to understand why.
▶ 0:14:00The scientific publishing ecosystem has changed dramatically. What was once a straightforward process of peer review and dissemination has become a complex, commercialized marketplace with misaligned incentives and bad actors willing to exploit them. Now, consider the scale of this problem. Estimates suggest over 400,000 published studies worldwide that may originate from so-called paper mills.
▶ 0:14:30Operations that produce fabricated and manipulated manuscripts for a fee. In 2023 alone, Wiley, a prominent American publisher, retracted over 8,000 fraudulent papers from a single This is not an anomaly. It's a symptom. The incentive structure driving this are well understood, but under-addressed. Academic careers are built on publication counts.
▶ 0:15:00Institutions compete on research output. The result is a publish or perish culture that rewards quantity over quality and creates a ready market for shortcuts. When speed and quantity displace rigor or reproducibility, it is not just individual researchers who are harmed. It is the integrity of the science Federal taxpayer dollars support the research that feeds this system.
▶ 0:15:31If fraudulent publications are being cited in grant applications that shape the direction of federal policy, American taxpayer payers will end up subsidizing corruption of the very science that they are paying to advance. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party has built an academic incentive structure that has generated an paper mill.
▶ 0:15:55Chinese universities have reportedly paid authors substantial cash rewards for publications in prestigious A survey of medical residents at hospitals in Southwest China found that nearly half half admitted, not just the people who admit, to buying papers, selling papers, or hiring ghostwriters to meet publication requirements. Critically, this fabricated research does not stay in China.
▶ 0:16:24It enters Western journals, shapes citations, and contaminates the global scientific literature on which researchers depend on. The rise of artificial intelligence intensifies all of this.
▶ 0:16:38AI lowers the cost of technical barriers to generate plausible-looking scientific content at scale, even if it's The same tools that can accelerate legitimate research can be weaponized to fabricate data, manufacture manufacture citations, and flood the publication pipeline with content that appears credible, but is not, and is often referenced in other papers.
▶ 0:17:04As these compatibilities grow and these capabilities grow, the gap between what's what looks like science and what actually science is will widen. Unless institutions, publishers, and federal agencies act deliberately to close that gap.
▶ 0:17:22Open access mandates, which can which this committee has engaged with extensively, add another layer of The movement to make federally funded research freely available is a worthy but the article processing charge model used to make this financially feasible creates its own distortions.
▶ 0:17:44This model incentivizes publishers to prioritize quantity over quality, disadvantaging smaller institutions and predatory journals that collect fees while providing no meaningful peer The agencies under this committee's have begun responding.
▶ 0:18:04Following letters sent by this committee early this year, agencies are developing awards conditions that can lead to suspension or termination of funding when integrity requirements are not met. That is a positive development, and we want to understand how those efforts are But this agency action has limits, and structural pressures faced by this industry require a more comprehensive response.
▶ 0:18:30This committee's responsibility to ensure that federal investments are and that research enterprise mandate maintains this credibility is required to function, and that American institutions are not disadvantaged by the competitors that treat scientific integrity as optional. That is the purpose of today's hearing. Our witnesses can help us understand both the depth and the problem of what meaningful solutions look like.
▶ 0:18:58To further support our understanding and discussion on this topic, I ask unanimous consent to include in this hearing record letters from the American Association of the Advancement of Science, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, Wiley, Springer Nature, and the American Phytopathological Society without objection. So ordered. Thank you, and I look forward to a serious and substantive discussion.
▶ 0:19:25I now recognize ranking member, representative from Ohio, for opening Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning to everyone here, and welcome to our witnesses here today. Uh this hearing scope is ambitious, to say the least. Published research connects the public to scientific discovery, and without publication, the impact of researchers' findings would be lost.
▶ 0:19:49Publication of research in a prestigious journal comes with understood and understood stamp of approval and experts and non-experts alike respect this. Journals set ethical and qualitative standards for the research that is fit to be published and therefore they are platform upon which science-based decision-making is From the personal all the way up to public policy impacting the lives of all Americans.
▶ 0:20:15So we have this sprawling hearing this morning arguably any issue that touches science with large impacts the state of publishing. Publishers are extremely aware of the crucial role they play and frankly many of them charge handsomely for it. This issue should be taken seriously. Instead, we have the president's budget issued two weeks ago which places a government-wide prohibition on using federal dollars for so-called prohibitively high publishing and subscription fees.
▶ 0:20:41This is an issue in need of a scalpel and this decree is a sledgehammer. Cutting federal funds for publishing costs is only going to put a further strain on our universities and researchers who are already under attack from this administration.
▶ 0:20:55The same budget also requests a $2.7 billion cut to higher education programs and billions dollars more in research funding. Research institutions foot the bill for these publication costs meaning the true impact on scientific publishing is likely even more catastrophic. Ultimately pulling the rug from underneath the publishing industry carelessly will be a disaster for research integrity.
▶ 0:21:21Publishing fees contribute to high-quality peer review to ensure that research published is in reputable journals is held to a high scientific and ethical standard. It is disturbing though not surprising that this administration is being so flippant about research integrity when high-quality research also often undermines its anti-science goals. The amount of junk science that this administration has used to base its public policy should put a shudder down everyone's spine.
▶ 0:21:50To be clear, I acknowledge that this is a nuanced issue and I support the experimentation with different business models to expand public access. However, I'm also skeptical of whether the fees journals are charging researchers and libraries alike are fair at all.
▶ 0:22:09Ohio has been a leader in negotiating with publishers to expand access to journals through OhioLink, a state-mandated funded effort that pools the purchasing power of universities to get Ohioans the best deal. This model saves more than a billion dollars, that is billion with a B, in journal costs every year.
▶ 0:22:29Through OhioLink and similar transformative agreements collect Kent State has saved more than a million dollars in article publishing fees and the University of Akron has saved $600,000 since fiscal year 22. Especially as AI slap continues to pose a threat to research integrity across the board, publishers certainly play a critical role in protecting research integrity, but transparency around these fees is warranted.
▶ 0:22:57I think it's important to zoom out on the many issues listed in this hearing scope. The administration throws around the words gold standard science as a distraction as they cancel millions and millions of dollars worth of research that has passed rigorous merit review processes.
▶ 0:23:13They eliminate scientific functions such as the EPA's Office of Research and Development and move a fraction of the scientists on the office of the administrator where they can be more tightly controlled by political operatives who want to silence research that is inconvenience for its deregulatory agenda. Words including accessible, disparity, and underrepresented are plugged into keyword searches to deny proposals for grant funding ensuring that already marginalized researchers and understudied populations remain
▶ 0:23:45So while this hearing on paper strives to address serious issues, I bristle at against the implication that the solution to these enormous problems is primarily found in assessing the state of the publishing industry. We would be far better served by more focused conversation on the evolving business model of the publishing industry given the changes required to adapt to public access policies.
▶ 0:24:09Then we could have a dozen oversight hearings on the other issues the other issues in this hearing scope about the myriad of ways in which this administration is systemically obliterating the high standards to which American scientific enterprise has held itself for decades. I look forward to hearing the expert testimony and to treating this issue with the nuance and perspective it deserves. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I yield back. Thank you, ranking member Sykes.
▶ 0:24:38I now recognize ranking member of the full committee for a statement. Thank you, Chairman McCormick and ranking member Sykes for holding this hearing and good morning to our panel of witnesses. As some of you know, scientific publishing and in particular open access is a topic I've cared about and studied for a long time. I've been a co-sponsor of the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research or Faster Act since it was first introduced in 2013.
▶ 0:25:08Prior to that in 2010, I co-sponsored the Federal Research Public Access Act. Now both of these bills had the goal of accelerating free public access to the results of taxpayer-funded research. Congress unfortunately failed to act on these bills. On the other hand, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Obama took a big leap forward in federal policy when Dr.
▶ 0:25:34John Holdren's 2013 memo called on agencies to implement a maximum 12-month embargo on all federally funded research papers and in her 2022 memo Dr. Nelson as acting OSTP director under the last president carried the ball even further toward the finish line.
▶ 0:25:56Now we can and should have a healthy debate about how we get to the goal of immediate and free access to the results of federally funded research and I hope we don't disagree about that goal itself. I will remind anyone in the room who needs to hear this, this research was paid for by the public. The intellectual value is created by the scientists and students doing the research and the peer reviewers are other scientists who donate their time.
▶ 0:26:24To be clear, I also believe that publishers have long played a valuable role in the scientific communication ecosystem. In the 20th century, it could be argued they played an irreplaceable role, but this isn't 1925 or even 1995 anymore and we have to be open to new frameworks for communication and new business models.
▶ 0:26:45To the credit of many in the publishing community of their own accord or perhaps pushed along by open access advocates, a lot has changed already. In particular, I recognize the multiple ways in which scholarly societies add value to the scientific ecosystem from conferences, mentoring, and professional development for students and early career scientists to public outreach.
▶ 0:27:11Unfortunately, there are publishers who are doing a disservice to US taxpayers, US scientists, and even to other publishers who are trying to do the right thing. These publishers are rapidly losing the overpriced subscriptions they've long depended on for their massive profits. They are exploiting new ways to monetize the full research cycle even information about scientists intended to be private.
▶ 0:27:37For example, a few years ago Elsevier bought an academic technology company called Interfolio so that they can repackage and sell information about federally funded science and scientists back to federal agencies. And for all we know, given the absence of any transparency or guardrails, they may be selling the same proprietary information to others including to China.
▶ 0:28:02I recognize that building new business models in the age of the internet and now AI isn't easy for 100-plus-year-old nonprofit organizations and I'm ready and willing to partner with nonprofit scholarly societies struggling to find their footing in this new world, but we can't stand idly by as a select few for-profit companies continue to exploit US taxpayers, US scientists, and potentially put at risk US economic and national
▶ 0:28:32security to line their own This is as the ranking member has said, an incredibly nuanced issue. Thoughtful advocates for open access have valuable recommendations for how open access can address the many challenges identified in this hearing scope.
▶ 0:28:50To that end, I would like to ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter from that is very thoughtful about the issues and the nuances that we face, Mr. Mr. Chairman. Without objection. This hearing is wide-ranging in scope, all fascinating and important topics.
▶ 0:29:12I hope in addition to the breadth, we can go a deep on at least some of these important topics because our our science enterprise depends on getting this right. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you, ranking member Lofgren. I now recognize ranking member Sorry, I recognize the chairman of the full committee for a statement. Thank you very much, Mr.
▶ 0:29:39Chairman, for holding this this hearing on this very important topic. Science is one of America's greatest engines of innovation, economic growth, and national security. The driving force of that engine is our ecosystem of scientific publishing made up of journals, academic institutions, federal agencies, and researchers themselves.
▶ 0:30:03This ecosystem is undergoing a rapid transformation due to evolving funding models, artificial intelligence, and increasingly competitive academic incentives. While some of these changes benefit the production and dissemination of science, others threaten productivity, innovation, and public trust. Earlier this year, this committee sent letters to federal science agencies expressing concerns about the growth of paper mills and predatory journals.
▶ 0:30:34These entities exploit the pressure to publish or perish, which can flood the system with low-quality and even fraudulent research. When bad science gets published, it wastes taxpayers' money, misleads policy makers, and can even put public health at grave risk. But our agencies are not the only ones who must protect the scientific publishing ecosystem.
▶ 0:30:59Academic culture and institutions, and the publishers of scientific journals also play major, significant roles. One issue is that the publisher perish culture prioritizes quantity over quality, creating opportunities for predatory journals and paper mills to profit while eroding scientific Peer review, peer review, the cornerstone of scientific quality, is also under stress.
▶ 0:31:27Standards are inconsistent, transparency is limited, and conflicts of interest often go The result is research that may pass peer review but fails reproducibility tests or misguides subsequent studies. Reproducibility and data transparency must also remain critical. Research findings are meaningful only if independent teams can verify them. And yet, data sets are often inaccessible.
▶ 0:31:59Replication studies are undervalued, and open access policies are inconsistently enforced. A system that rewards transparency, reproducibility, and responsible data sharing strengthens public trust and ensures that science serves the American people. Additionally, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning can be powerful tools for discovery, but they also introduce profound risks.
▶ 0:32:29AI can accelerate research, analyze data, and detect errors, but it can also be misused to generate fraudulent papers or manipulate research results. Without clear oversight, these technologies can amplify the very problems that we're trying to solve. And that's why we have invited our witnesses today to discuss how the publishing industry is addressing these issues and to identify best practices in the publication of scientific research.
▶ 0:33:00This hearing is about risk mitigation and building trust in both the scientific community and the publishers who serve it. Some best practices relate to retractions and corrections. This has been an area of increasing scrutiny.
▶ 0:33:16We are pleased to have Retraction Watch with us today to discuss how retractions are a necessary part of the scientific process, as well as the damage that can occur when they are delayed, ignored, or not publicized. Science must serve the public interest, not just the publishing industry or academic career advancement.
▶ 0:33:39By taking these steps, we can preserve the integrity of American science, strengthen trust in research, and ensure that taxpayer dollars are being invested I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today. Want to thank you all for being here, and I hope today's discussion will be the first step toward policies that begin to reinforce rigorous, transparent, and trustworthy science. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
▶ 0:34:09Let me introduce our witnesses now. Our first witness today is Mr. Carl Maxwell, senior vice president for public policy for the Association of American Publishers. Thank you for being here. Our next witness is Ms. Kate Travis, managing editor for Retraction Watch. And our final is Dr. Jason Owen-Smith, executive director, Institute for Research on Innovation and Science, University of Michigan. I now recognize Mr.
▶ 0:34:39Maxwell for 5 minutes to present his testimony. Chairman McCormick, ranking member Sykes, and members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to testify. My name is Carl Maxwell, and I'm here representing the nation's leading scientific and medical publishers. The Association of American Publishers appreciates the committee's leadership and continued attention to the policies that shape the integrity, accessibility, and long-term strength of US research.
▶ 0:35:04AAP represents over 80 professional and scientific publishers, including dozens of domestic scholarly societies and university presses. AAP members employ or directly contribute to over 200,000 US jobs and publish the world's leading research findings. 13 years ago, my mother testified before this committee on addiction research on behalf of UT Austin. She believed in the peer review and publication process as the gold standard for delivering best-in-class science and was intensely proud of her work as an epidemiologist and author.
▶ 0:35:33I hope I will do her legacy proud today. Publishers take pride in their role in publishing peer-reviewed articles and managing the scientific record to ensure best and most accurate research. To have this responsibility is an enormous But communicating results is not the end point of discovery. Rather, it's a stopover in an ever-repeating circle of questioning, research, and reporting. No article is a definitive answer to a question, but a point of data added to the record for future generations.
▶ 0:36:02Every day, hypotheses are proposed, experimented, and reported. Some results become foundational, others retracted and discarded. In science, mistakes are a natural part of the process. In fact, mistakes are a feature, not a bug. It is only by learning from our errors that we move collective knowledge forward. But it all helps inform the journey of science. AAP believes the best method for ensuring quality in communicating science is through a vibrant, competitive, and diverse marketplace with the maximum author choice.
▶ 0:36:31Some brief facts about the professional scholarly publishing community. Over 5 million articles are published every year. STEM publishing is remarkably diverse. Nearly 50% of all articles are published outside the top five publishers. Commercial publishers operate in an unforgiving information marketplace responsible to shareholders. No STEM commercial publisher had annual publishing revenues greater than $4 billion. By comparison, last year Google's parent company, Alphabet, enjoyed revenue of over $110 billion in just one quarter.
▶ 0:36:59Most nonprofit scientific societies rely on publishing revenue to fund operations, fellowships, conferences, and professional Businesses and clinicians across America use this high-quality read content to speed up scientific discovery, whether it's finding new sources of energy, exploring outer space, or finding the next cure for a patient. Scholarly communication now finds itself at a crossroads. Research funding growth has led to an explosion of articles.
▶ 0:37:27AI creates both incredible opportunities and challenges, and nations such as China and India continue to rise as competitors and collaborators. Paper mills and predatory journals show signs of organized criminal networks. Curating and publishing scientific literature is expensive and requires substantial upfront costs and technology and integrity checks. Publishers invest their own money in the publication of each article.
▶ 0:37:51Federal agencies now require grant-funded authors to give free copies of the article to the public, removing subscriptions as the primary business model, policy known as immediate open access. To provide free public access to articles while also ensuring article integrity, publishers are developing new business models. Looking forward, policy makers must weigh important and sometimes competing priorities.
▶ 0:38:11Promoting a system that accelerates discovery and enables emerging uses such as artificial intelligence, ensures ensuring timely and affordable public access to research results, and managing taxpayer costs and administrative burdens on researchers. At the same time, any sustainable system must safeguard rigor, quality, and trust in the scientific record. The risk, if these considerations are not carefully balanced, is a system where speed and access crowd out verification, leaving credible evidence-based research struggling to stand apart from unvetted or misleading claims.
▶ 0:38:42It's important we get this right, because if parts of the publishing ecosystem fail, the downstream impacts will move beyond US publishing and affect US innovation capacity and the quality of science treatments upon which all Americans depend. I look forward to a robust dialogue with my fellow panelists and the committee on the future of publication. Thank you. Thank you. I now recognize Ms. Travis for 5 minutes to present her testimony. Chairman McCormick, ranking member Sykes, and other distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting my testimony today.
▶ 0:39:12I'm Kate Travis, managing editor of Retraction Watch, a news outlet that has been covering retractions, corrections, and other events in scholarly publishing since 2010. Our parent organization is the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Scientific Integrity. For well over a decade, we've been sounding the alarm. We and others have been sounding the alarm about the publisher perish system. It creates pressures that can lead to questionable research practices.
▶ 0:39:37Its reliance on overly simplistic metrics enables mechanisms used to game the system, like citation cartels and corrupted peer review processes. Publish or perish is what allows is what has allowed businesses like paper mills and predatory journals to flourish, and more recently is leading to an explosion of AI-generated papers flooding journals.
▶ 0:39:58We report on these topics, all relevant to today's hearing, through the lens of A retraction occurs when a journal decides an article can no longer be relied upon because of unintended mistakes or misconduct. While retractions can be evidence of misconduct, the fact that they exist doesn't mean science is failing. It means the scientific literature is being cleaned up.
▶ 0:40:19Retractions mark as unreliable papers generated by AI, articles created for a business transaction rather than genuine research, and of course papers containing honest error and those with evidence of misconduct.
▶ 0:40:33Retractions don't stop articles from getting cited, as we and others have shown, but the hope is to mark unreliable science before it wastes Retraction rates have risen from about 0.02% of articles in the early 2000s to about 0.2% today, in large part because of greater Those numbers come from our Retraction Watch database, a publicly available and widely used resource with details on more than 64,000 retractions.
▶ 0:41:00The database shows that retractions have been rising over the last decade, with over 5,000 papers retracted in 2025. Last year, the US accounted for about 6% of retractions, India about 18.5% and China about 42%. When we look to see what percentage of a nation's articles end up retracted, the global average is about 0.1%.
▶ 0:41:22The US and the UK are well below that at about 0.04%, and China is well above that at about 0.3%, with Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Pakistan as high or higher. Transparency is key to finding problems, and this is an area where science could use your help. Too often, the people checking claims are unable to access data sets, even those produced using public dollars.
▶ 0:41:46And likewise, those of us reporting on misconduct are unable to obtain materials related to related to investigations by the publicly funded watchdogs like the NSF SOIG or the US Office of Research Integrity or the Office for Human Research Protections. At HHS, the ORI released just two mis- finding just two misconduct findings last year, a drop from an average of 10 to 12. The NSF has lost key personnel charged with research investigations.
▶ 0:42:13We need more investigations and more transparency around them. The US government has helped police scientific integrity in powerful ways, setting an international standard. The Justice Department has joined key Tom suits under the False Claims Act to prosecute cases of scientific fraud. To the extent whistleblowers are protected and rewarded, they are also empowered to stop bad actors. The Justice Department has also occasionally filed criminal indictments against scientists in cases where scientists have squandered public funds through fraud.
▶ 0:42:43An editorial in Science last week suggested establishing a national database of misconduct investigations to inform universities considering considering research researcher candidates found guilty of misconduct The intersection of science and capitalism has afforded additional avenues for the government to prosecute offenses against the scientific process. In 2019, the FTC obtained a $50 million judgment against the OMICS International Publishing Group for engaging in predatory practices. This kind of action could be taken more often.
▶ 0:43:13We note that the SEC could exercise a degree of oversight over scholarly publishers whose companies are publicly traded. Focusing on publishers' bottom lines remains arguably an underutilized way to get their But most urgently, as your invitation hinted, science needs a reform of the publish or perish system, which perversely encourages and even rewards mischief and misbehavior.
▶ 0:43:37By relying on overly simplistic numerical metrics to tell us who is doing the best science, we dangerously conflate quantity with quality, output with innovation, and publication numbers with reliable knowledge. To help the committee with this important work, we've provided additional details as references in my written testimony. Thank you again for the honor of presenting to you. Thank you. I now recognize Dr.
▶ 0:44:01Owen Smith for 5 minutes to present his Chairman McCormick, ranking members Lofgren and Science, distinguished committee members, thank you for inviting me to speak with I'm Jason Owen Smith. I run a research data repository at the University of Michigan, where I've spent my career using data about research to understand how discovery works and to try to find ways to improve it. You have my written testimony.
▶ 0:44:31It's buttoned-down academic, and it feels like it's about half footnotes. My my kids would say it's very on-brand. I'd be delighted to answer any questions you have, but I'd like to spend my 5 minutes today to tell you why the state of scholarly publishing is absolutely maddening to someone like me. And what I think can be done about it.
▶ 0:44:58One of America's greatest superpowers is our capacity for discovery. That's fueled by publicly funded R&D. Publishing is a setting where American taxpayers fund research, and American researchers do the work. But a few private, mostly foreign-owned companies end up with almost total control of both the results and data about how those results are used.
▶ 0:45:26The publishers profit handsomely from both those things. We seem poised to double down on that model, and the stakes are higher than Here's what I mean. Big for-profit publishers aren't primarily in the publishing business They're sophisticated data analytics companies that use tools built around the scientific literature they publish to collect data on what researchers read, write,
▶ 0:45:56cite, submit, search, share, collaborate on, Then they sell products built from that data to governments, funders, companies, and research organizations, our collaborators and our competitors all around the world. They're moving aggressively to expand their data about research and Let me make that concrete.
▶ 0:46:26Elsevier, the world's largest scientific publisher, which is based in the Netherlands, bought a tool called Interfolio in 2022. Hundreds of universities used Interfolio to manage academic hiring, annual reviews, tenure, and promotion.
▶ 0:46:42Interfolio links unpublished documents like faculty research statements, grant proposals, working papers, even reference letters, the most sensitive kinds of pre-commercial, pre-competitive information there are in science, to private university HR data about researchers, and they use it for academic evaluation. Like thousands of other researchers, I use Interfolio all the time, which means Elsevier is likely tracking me.
▶ 0:47:10I'm an expert in exactly these kinds of data, and I can't tell you what Elsevier knows about me and my work, how they use it, or who can see it, which disturbs me a little. What I can tell you is that their privacy policy, which is online on their webpage, a credit to them, says they may use data they collect to create or improve products, and they may share it with certain partners.
▶ 0:47:35A list of possible data sharing partners they link to on that website includes two Reed Elsevier IT offices in the People's Republic of China. If I proposed a data sharing arrangement with those parameters, sensitive private data, some of it likely involving critical technologies with collaborators in a CHIPS and Science Act designated country of concern, the compliance conversations that would follow with both my federal funders and my university
▶ 0:48:05would be let's call them intense. Maybe those discussions happened at Elsevier. I genuinely don't know, but I think someone with oversight authority over science and technology probably should. The good news is we don't have to keep doing things the way we always have.
▶ 0:48:29Proven US-based, publicly accountable platforms for handling and responsibly working with data like these already exist. They could be developed and combined. President Trump's restoring gold standard science EO points in this direction, so does his launching the Genesis Mission EO, as does bipartisan open data policy going back years.
▶ 0:48:52What my written testimony recommends and what I'm asking you to for today is two things: a regulatory framework that treats data about federally funded research as a strategic national asset, and support for the accountable public infrastructure that can use that data responsibly in the public interest.
▶ 0:49:11This committee has an opportunity to advance gold standard science and forward ambitious initiatives like the Genesis Mission, while protecting the security of America's public research ecosystem and the privacy of the talented scientists who power it. Please consider taking these steps to make data about research a first-class strategic asset for the American people instead of another maddening missed opportunity. Thank you.
▶ 0:49:42I thank the witnesses for their testimony now recognize member Webster for 5 minutes of Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it. Mr. Travers, US research grants are in some cases been awarded to individuals relying on falsified uh originating from CCP paper mills.
▶ 0:50:09These paper mills may have redirected research dollars away from uh in my area, I mean, Max Planck, the Florida Institute and um Moffitt Cancer Center, Lake Nona's Life Science Incubator, and Shands.
▶ 0:50:28So, what what changes in the grant application and review process would make it harder for fraudulent or CCP-affiliated research to serve as the for American federal funding? Thank you for the question. Um I uh I think the the best asset we have there is are the systems in place to identify misconduct.
▶ 0:50:59And that's uh that can be uh the US Office of Research Integrity, it can be NSF's OIG. Um those uh those two offices in particular, their funding has been um well, I don't know anything about their I don't want to speak to their funding, but their staffing has been low and their their um they don't necessarily have the resources to to investigate uh and to take a closer look at the research that is being used
▶ 0:51:29for these um uh in in those grant applications, but I supporting the systems in place to identify misconduct is perhaps the best change that could be made there. Thank you. Uh Mr. Maxwell, quantum research is a pretty uh involves a lot of complex mathematics and simulations and other things. Um and it's hard for anybody to evaluate.
▶ 0:52:00So, is there a Does that make the field more vulnerable to fabricated research slipping into our I was told there would be no math. Um
▶ 0:52:21Uh you know, I I think that one of one of our one of AAP members is is IEEE, which is one of the leading publishers of artificial intelligence and computing research. I think it really kind of comes down to the journal and, you know, the integrity protections they put into place. You know, I I can't personally speak to quantum computing, you know, as a you know, on behalf of AAP. I know this committee spent a lot of time investigating that issue.
▶ 0:52:47Um I'm not sure it's any more fraught with with with problematic publishing than any other particular field. Very much. Okay, Dr.
▶ 0:53:00Owen-Smith, uh what steps is the University of Michigan taking to um mitigate the concerns uh lacking peer review, the conflict uh conflicts of interest, publish or perish uh incentives, and so forth, uh and scientific misconduct? What kind of safeguards are there? Thank you for the question.
▶ 0:53:31I'm not in a position to speak for the University of Michigan as an I can tell you um some of the ways that scholars like myself um work on issues like this with our students and with our professional associations.
▶ 0:53:54Many of those have to do with data sharing, with um particularly with ensuring that the underlying code for data analyses are available in sources like GitHub and other repositories to be used to replicate data.
▶ 0:54:21The key issue, however, is to understand and be able to systematically make sense of and find best practices for the research process, um which is what data about research of the sort that we've been discussing can systematically be used for, um both to find instances that are signals, leading indicators, of
▶ 0:54:51when incentives are misaligned, or when there may be bad at play, and to identify the signals of when good practices are being followed. Thank you very much. You're right. The gentleman's time has expired. I now recognize ranking member Sessions for 5 minutes of questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
▶ 0:55:16I am in in preparation for this hearing a little struck um perhaps by the hypocrisy of this particular hearing, uh especially considering that the administration currently is doing it seems as everything that they can to undermine scientific integrity, promoting junk science, and undermining the very people who have led us to scientific bounds.
▶ 0:55:43I mean, I could go into the president's budget even further, and this committee as we were just celebrating the Artemis 2 launch, and meanwhile, there is a significant cut in the NASA budget, all in the same week.
▶ 0:55:57And so, thinking about how we are scientific publication, which is the foundation and bedrock of these advancements, I'm I'm looking for where the solution is rather than just more attempts to undermine the science.
▶ 0:56:16And so, for example, the federal prohibition on the subscription fees doesn't seem like something that most open access advocates would support because it risks the entire peer review system and scientific scientific and ethical standards at high-quality journals and force. And so, Mr. Maxwell, and then I'll go to you, Dr.
▶ 0:56:38Owen-Smith, if you have any comment on these declarations in the president's budget and what it does to the publishing community and the scientific basis of knowledge that we have come to rely upon for the advancements and American exceptionalism.
▶ 0:56:58Um I think a you know, a ban on paying subscription fees, I think there are there are going to be and I suspect in this hearing we'll have reasonable conversations about about publishing and the cost of publishing and associated with that, but banning particularly federally funded scientists and in particular federally employed scientists from access to current scientific results seems to be sort of self-defeating to me.
▶ 0:57:23I I'm not sure what good it does to tell a NASA scientist or an Oak Ridge scientist, you know, go find it on a public repository, you know, you can't have a login to Science magazine or Nature magazine or something along those lines. There's a second aspect of that, which is the ban on publication charges, which is something that NIH is in the process of looking at right now, but you know, federal researchers are required to give the agencies a copy of the post peer-review article.
▶ 0:57:50And and again, we can have conversations about how that gets paid for, but if in the end the author pays a fee to publish and then has to give that article to the agency and is not able to pay for that publication out of the grant, it's like a political science 101 definition of an unfunded mandate. And so,
▶ 0:58:09to interrupt, you only have 2 more minutes left, and I want get hear from Dr. Owen-Smith. Thank you. I apologize. Thank you for the question. I think your as you said, the important difference between a sledgehammer and a scalpel. There many important distinctions here that need to be understood with good We don't have the capacity to develop that evidence right now.
▶ 0:58:38One of the key things I think that is important in this policy is the distinction between the subscription fees and the publication charges. I think one of the things that could make something like this very useful would be not to ban subscription fees, but to require transparency about how they're set.
▶ 0:58:58Thank you very much for that, and I and I'm I know that we rely on a capitalistic society, and profits are important, um but also in scientific integrity is important as well. So, we'll we'll keep that under advisement. I want to talk about integrity a bit more.
▶ 0:59:13You know, we we've been dealing with this AI slop, and uh AI has generated hallucination citations, which um and these are just, you know, made-up examples, and so, the uh Make America Health Again Commission reported um from the a report from the administration side at seven papers that did not even exist at all. And so I'm thinking about this in in both of the hats that I have. I'm a lawyer.
▶ 0:59:39I am also a person who is a research assistant as I work towards my masters in public health degree and knowing how important citations are in both of those worlds, can you can live and die. I mean in law school they basically tell you if you mess up a citation, your your career is over. And I've heard of several lawyers filing briefings with bad citations as well.
▶ 1:00:06I know that there is an answer to this and you all are the experts and you're really going to have to figure out how to do it in 5 seconds or less. So, whoever wants to take it. Maybe written comments for the record? Is that a fair answer since we're out of I think that is a fair answer. I one thing I was thinking of and if you can give me a couple seconds, Mr. Chair, is thinking of legal papers when something is bad law, there are updated citations.
▶ 1:00:35And the research documents show you that as you're looking through it, we call it Shepardizing and such. So, perhaps there's something like that, Ms. Travis, that could be something a part of the work that you do. Thank you. I yield back. The gentle lady's time is expired. I now recognize Representative Biggs for 5 minutes of Thank you, Mr. Chair.
▶ 1:00:56you know, when you pay for a product uh from a research perspective, it undermines the discovery of truth and that really is the purpose of scientific research to discover what the truth is. Uh academic researchers in the United States have become a sort of high priesthood telling the public what is true and what is not true.
▶ 1:01:20And uh they rely heavily on public dollars in order to fund that scientific research. the the publishing apparatus as a safeguard for determining what research is valid and should be presented to the public and what research is not valid, it's it's a very important gatekeeper uh for the public to ensure that the money that they're spending through their tax dollars is being spent accurately, it's being
▶ 1:01:50spent wisely, and it's not being spent to produce a predetermined outcome. We're seeing that a growing number of studies uh have that that have that have flown that have that have been a result of academic research are now being seen as un-reproducible. And this flies in the face of the entire purpose of the scientific method.
▶ 1:02:11Uh science should be reproducible and you're hearing now calls from some researchers who say, "Well, you know, maybe we should be able to publish papers that can't be reproduced." That seems ridiculous to me. And I'm curious uh are publishing standards and peer review so eroded that journals can uh cannot validate or will not validate results prior to publication that we have to determine that something is not reproducible after an article or research has been published
▶ 1:02:41by a journal and I'll open this up to anyone who'd like to comment. Just speaking on behalf of the publication process, you know, the the peer review process, you know, sends out and checks, you know, is is is is it a check on the quality integrity of the article itself. Whether they're going to be reproducibilities or studies or not has to sort of follow on after the publication of the article. You know, the we've we're going to be talking about a lot of incentive structures today.
▶ 1:03:10There's not a lot of incentive within the academic world to do reproducibility studies. It's kind of a dead end like academic career unless you can find the funding to support it. And so, I think if reproducibility is something that we're really really interested in, candidly, there has to be opportunities for young researchers as they work their way up through the academic system to say, "Hey, I'm going to do reproducibility studies on this this recent publication and track it down." Can just to follow on on that a little bit and something you
▶ 1:03:40said earlier, I think, you know, it is important to remember that, as you said as well, a single research paper is a single data point in a in a in a larger picture and any single scientific paper is just a chapter in a larger story of a research process. And, you know, I I think you said, you know, we want to make mistakes in science. We want to we want to try things and we want to fail and we want to figure out what what what the to to help us get to to the right answers.
▶ 1:04:08And so, in terms of determining whether a story is whether a a scientific paper is reproducible before publishing isn't quite practical, but ways that you can help ensure that are things like open access, open data sets, and even open peer review to understand how what critiques have been made on that research ahead of time.
▶ 1:04:30And one way that you might think about creative ways to do this is if there are ways to track when papers become particularly using data on scientific process, for instance, it is possible to set up relatively cheap competitions as a means to replicate things as they become more important or to test out extinct extensions.
▶ 1:04:58That is a way that has been shown in some fields. Computer science does it very well, for instance, to drive replication and extension of particular findings as they become important parts of the chapter of the story of science that Ms. Travis is describing.
▶ 1:05:15I appreciate that that input and I think that's very helpful as as it informs the committee with respect to interventions that could be made by Congress to make sure that the that the results of research that are being published are uh truthful, reproducible. I love the idea about having having some economic incentives in in place to make sure that there is funding for reproducibility of results.
▶ 1:05:43I think it would go a long way to making sure that what's coming out of the research community is trustworthy for the American public and I see that I'm out of time with that. I yield back. The gentleman yields. Now, I recognize ranking member Lofgren for 5 minutes of Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um Dr. Owen-Smith, your testimony was really pretty eye-opening in terms of the data.
▶ 1:06:13Uh obviously, open access is a benefit to the American people. Uh I think it's also one that is threatening to publishers' bottom line. and it's actually interesting to hear that the publishers are evolving their business model to package and monetize data about science being conducted, not just the research results.
▶ 1:06:39I'm wondering, can you give us an idea about what the data security risks mean for our country in terms of foreign corporations or countries being able to access, number one, and number two, do you have some ideas on what Congress could specifically do to protect against this? Thank you for the question.
▶ 1:07:09Um I think they're exceptionally The short answer to your first question is no. spent some time trying to determine one publisher, Elsevier, what the general contents of their data would be from public sources and I was unable to.
▶ 1:07:34Okay. Um I think is a good thing. I run a public data repository that works with sensitive data about science. Our data dictionaries, file and field guides are available on my website.
▶ 1:07:59In terms of the second question, I do not know, I do know that from my written testimony, looking at public documents about the financials of some of these they are selling products based on these data across sectors and around the These are not limited to
▶ 1:08:30So, we can let our imagination be our guide. Indeed. And uh it is important also to note that we are buying these resources and using them to make and to make decisions and we don't necessarily know how the data were constructed. You know, this has long been something that has bothered me.
▶ 1:08:51I mean, without the data acquisition, you have a situation where the federal government helps the scientists do their research, then um they have to publish that research because their advancement, uh tenure, and everything else depends on, you know, the publication of their research.
▶ 1:09:13Um [clears throat] Elsevier gives a small amount of money to the uh nonprofit societies, encouraging them to then become advocates of this system. Uh and then volunteers actually, the scientists who are the peers, they don't get paid to do it. I mean, they're And then it's published, and they sell back to the people who did the work the results of the work.
▶ 1:09:40Elsevier, the public reporting is that their adjusted operating profit for the last year that was reported was $1.17 right? This is a Belgian corporation, and I'm just wondering, and I thought for a long time, how do you break the Because you know, because the scientists need to have the the the publications for their tenure, but it's a corrupt system, and it needs
▶ 1:10:10to be broken. I mean, I'm even thinking, rather than do the peer review before before the data is released, maybe what you need to require is that all the data be released, and then the peer review occurs, because that would help prevent fraud, it would help prevent And actually, it might break the cycle in some ways. I think we need to completely rethink how this is done.
▶ 1:10:35I don't think there's a disagreement that's a partisan one in terms of wanting a science that is sound, that is not corrupt, that is is replicable. All of that should be something we all agree on, and I think we do. How we get there, I think we need to completely think outside the box, and how we break this cycle that is really limiting the advance of of science, and really deeply unfair to the American taxpayers.
▶ 1:11:06And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. The gentlelady yields, and I recognize the chairman, Dr. Babin for 5-minute questions. Just in time. Thank you very much. Ms.
▶ 1:11:22Travis, last year Retraction Watch covered the case of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where researchers used images and data that were misrepresented and are duplicated in support of grant applications to NIH. Several high-level affiliates were named as possible perpetrators.
▶ 1:11:44Considering that this fraud was only caught after a whistleblower brought it to to their attention, what level of the publishing ecosystem, including federal agencies, is most responsible, or should bear the responsibility for catching such misconduct? And how frequently does Retraction Watch identify cases where US federal grant funding was used to support research that was later retracted due to fraud or fabrication.
▶ 1:12:11If you can't remember those I'll be glad to ask the second one Uh well, I can answer the second one pretty quickly, which is we don't have numbers on that data. I mean, the main the main way that we or or a main way that we that we learn of misconduct happening in federal grant applications is through official reports through official investigation reports from universities and from and
▶ 1:12:41from bodies like the ORI and OIG. Okay. So, that's that's when we learn. So, there's I don't have statistics on on that particular thing. To your first question about in particular about the Dana-Farber case and who who is held responsible in there, that particular called out the principal investigators of researchers as being respon- as being um responsible or as overseeing labs where misconduct even though they personally weren't
▶ 1:13:11weren't responsible. And we see this a lot in investigation reports that even if you are not personally responsible for for misconduct, the people in your lab, you're responsible for the people in your lab, and you're responsible for the people You're responsible for the work that they produce. Okay. Um but the but the bigger answer is that it's actually that research integrity is everyone's every everyone's Yes, ma'am. Absolutely. Thank you for that. Uh Mr.
▶ 1:13:39Maxwell, predatory journals often mimic the appearance of legitimate publications, making it difficult for researchers to distinguish between them. What is the the industry doing to protect its brand and to help researchers identify credible venues, and is that effort adequately funded? There's a number of And I'm happy to get you to follow up with your staff with specific examples from each individual publisher.
▶ 1:14:05Industry-wide, the STM Integrity Hub is doing is sort of the the kind of the the overarching effort we make to sort of provide integrity support and help researchers identify predatory journals from, you know, real journals. I think, you know, within AAP members, there's not really an issue of predatory journals so much because they are quality, high-standard journals themselves.
▶ 1:14:30I think there's a lot of investment that has to go into this issue to ensure the quality, and I think where you often see I I think for researchers that get duped in in to giving in in giving their their publications to predatory journals is when they're looking for a low-cost solution for publication. Okay. once again, Ms.
▶ 1:14:52Travis, are there journals or publishers that Retraction Watch considers to have meaningfully improved their integrity practices, and what did they do differently? Are there any journals or publishers you can identify that have practices or policies that are harmful to research integrity? Let's let's go ahead and out them.
▶ 1:15:12Uh I'm going to focus on your first question, which is for what for ones that publishers that have improved. It's a tricky question because we talk to we talk to a lot of publishers all the time for the stories that we produce. I would call out one in particular, which is the Institute of Physics IOP Publishing, which has has decided to donate the funds of the author charges that it takes in on papers that it later retracts.
▶ 1:15:38It has decided to donate those fees to a charity that supports subscriptions in low- and middle-income countries. So, that's a particular good. But in terms of other publishers, there are other publishers who are working to improve their their research integrity teams. I think we hear that, and we but then we also at the same time see publications that shouldn't have been published in the first place, and that's what those integrity teams should be should be preventing. Yes, ma'am. And Mr. Maxwell, last question.
▶ 1:16:07Publish or perish incentive structures are influenced by universities, not the federal government. To what extent can Congress actually influence those institutional norms, and what leverage does federal funding provide? If I can have maybe 20 seconds to answer, that's an excellent question, I really appreciate you asking it. It is unfortunate that impact factor has become one of the the determinant issues in determining quality. I think that there are wide range of issues to do much a broader research assessment.
▶ 1:16:37Um and and I think that there are ways that the agencies can influence how they award grants and how they score grants that can help award researchers who are taking a more holistic approach to research, and and not just looking narrowly at journal impact factor. Got I'm out of time, so I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much. The chairman yields. I now recognize member Bonamici for 5 minutes of
▶ 1:17:02Well, thank thank you to the chair and ranking member, and thank you so much to the witnesses for this this conversation. I think I want to start by acknowledging what I hope everyone agrees within this room is that the importance of federal investment in scientific research. And Dr. Owen-Smith, you talked about it as a strategic asset, and we have to keep that in mind. And the open public access has been a critical part of that, and critical part of US leadership. We should be welcoming scrutiny. We should be prompting good questions.
▶ 1:17:33And obviously, from the conversation, the testimony, what we know, we have a problem to solve. But I want to make sure, and I hope all of us do want to make sure that the way we solve it is actually solving it, and not exacerbating it. Right now, the president's budget request is imposing these severe limits on covering publishing and research access costs with federal grant money. Independent federal research offices have been dismantled, and sometimes subject to political review, compromising scientific integrity.
▶ 1:18:02And now, this is a time of duress. We have more data available, but less resources and and ways to to address these problems. So, I wanted to note that the executive order, the gold standard executive order, mentions concern about public trust in science. And and I I share that concern about declining public trust in science, but this administration is contributing to it, not solving it.
▶ 1:18:28In fact, the Union of Concerned Scientists identified unique attacks on science between January of 2025 and March of 2026. And using the label, just simply labeling something as gold standard science, is not going to restore public trust. In fact, under the executive order, it can be political appointees, rather than scientific experts, making decisions, and those decisions might be based on outcomes over evidence.
▶ 1:18:56So, that's extremely concerning, and I want to ask you, Ms. Travis, what guardrails should Congress create to protect the integrity of science from political interference and misconduct? What guardrails would work in this I think as I said it before, thank you for the question.
▶ 1:19:17I think as I I before, having the office having established offices that are tasked with ensuring the integrity of research done on taxpayers using taxpayers money is important.
▶ 1:19:36And and I think I talked about some of the other mechanisms of the government has in terms of in terms of making sure that the publishing industry is within is within the bounds of of legislation. But I I Yeah, I would say having having those offices that are tasked with with the integrity of of research is important.
▶ 1:20:06I appreciate that, but it's it's who's making the decision in the office that's critical. Mr. Maxwell, the president's budget for fiscal year 2027 would prohibit prohibit federal funds from being used for publishing or subscription fees. And I And I just want to follow up on the earlier questions about this. How would that policy change affect researchers and agencies that are trying to access the best available science?
▶ 1:20:27Sure, I appreciate your follow-up question on As I mentioned, you know, for researchers at federal facilities, it effectively cuts them off on their subscriptions, assuming it it is implemented. And their access to online immediate publisher and all the publisher resources that come with it, which is often more than just the article. Publishers themselves develop a whole range of research products that go along with that.
▶ 1:20:48Um Along with that, it also means any grantee essentially has to pay out of pocket to publish if they were if if a publishing fee is associated with the publication that they wouldn't be
▶ 1:20:58is that that they're going to pay out of pocket? Um it is actually fairly realistic. It's not unusual to have publisher to have researchers have to pay out of pocket if they don't have institutional funds to back up their publication, particularly in the case of non-large research institutions, not to not not for my Michigan colleague here. But if you're in a smaller school like a Michigan community college, you may not have access to resources to help you with publication.
▶ 1:21:23Speaking of Michigan, Dr. Owen Smith, the administrative data about research activity can reveal lots of things as as you explained, funding trends, collaborations, emerging fields. How can the federal government better leverage research data to guide our science funding decisions without just relying on proprietary data Having a publicly accessible infrastructure to do this work that is based on something
▶ 1:21:54like the extension model that so successfully drove agricultural research through the 20th century would be a really nice way to think about this, engaging with the scientific community um various locations around the country to establish priorities and feed them up into the policy process on an evidentiary basis would be a great start.
▶ 1:22:24Thank you. I As I yield back, Mr. Chairman, I I certainly hope we can all work together on a a solution that actually works to solve the problems that have been identified. I yield back. The gentlelady yields. I now recognize member Rivas for 5 minutes of questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding today's hearing. As an electrical engineer and former STEM educator, I created a nonprofit to encourage girls and women to get interested in STEM.
▶ 1:22:55And part of the reason why I founded this as we all know, you know, women have lagged in entering and advancing in STEM fields. And I know from personal experience how hard that can be as a woman in these non-traditional Women are often credited less than men and are underrepresented as authors in scientific literature.
▶ 1:23:20Rather than addressing these inequities in STEM, these disparities are further exacerbated by the Trump administration's policy decisions that are affecting the scientific community. More specifically, we must hold the administration accountable for the harm that they're causing not just to women researchers, but to our nation's research security and integrity through their cuts to science.
▶ 1:23:46In March of 2026, the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America published an article discussing that when the Trump administration unexpectedly terminated nearly 2,300 active NIH research grants and withdrew billion, it was early career investigators and women that were most negatively impacted.
▶ 1:24:15The article stated that the 2025 terminations unevenly affected women investigators and at key career stages, magnifying long-term consequences for the US biomedical workforce. This is on top of the president's fiscal year 2027 budget, which proposes a cut of nearly 55% over fiscal year 2026 to the National Science Foundation.
▶ 1:24:43We can't complete compete globally if we're actively inhibiting our ability to conduct scientific research. By ensuring that women are getting the credit that they deserve, we will help to narrow this gender gap and [snorts] by, you know, introducing girls to STEM careers and to ensure differing perspectives are discussed at the research level. Science benefits from a diverse group of voices. Dr.
▶ 1:25:10Owen Smith, I've discussed the long-standing gender inequity in scientific research publishing coupled with the administration's cut to science. We know that the chaotic attacks to science funding from the Trump administration have affected female scientists more than male scientists.
▶ 1:25:30Disproportionately attacking female-led fields will deepen the inequalities that female scientists already face and we will lose their contributions to many parts of our scientific ecosystems. And so many have been working over the years to increase that representation of women in these fields.
▶ 1:25:51In your expert opinion, what fields are most at risk when considering these attacks on female-led Thank you for the question. You're pointing out really essential things here. Most importantly, American science is American scientists. We want to protect them. We want to engage all of the talent the country has in doing this important work.
▶ 1:26:21One of the things we know is that female-dominated fields in science are facing greater challenges under these budgets. Areas such as public health some of those. One of the things that comments are pointing to is precisely the importance of being able to see these things in detail.
▶ 1:26:50One of the articles that you cited, women are credited less than men in science, actually uses data that was developed by my research my my research organization. And the way they did that was by using administrative data that saw every person paid on a grant and compared the students who worked on the grant to the students who showed up on the author list.
▶ 1:27:19We saw a lot of female scientists who were PhD students or postdocs who were working on the project who didn't make the author list. I wasn't an author on those that paper. We made these data available responsibly for research use.
▶ 1:27:35This is a concrete example of the ways that having data about the research available for broad research use responsibly under the right kind of regulatory environment can really crack into these details to get at the policy questions in a broader way than simply what are the fields?
▶ 1:28:01It's what are the levers that we could use to ensure that all of America's is aimed at our core problems. Thank you. Thank you. Like you said, they're already being left out.
▶ 1:28:17time has expired. I now recognize
▶ 1:28:19I yield back. Representative Issa for 5 minutes of questioning. Dr. Smith, let me just ask a question follow-up. The organization that didn't recognize women was funded in part by the federal government, but was not a federal They were not federal employees, right? That is correct. The organization Sorry.
▶ 1:28:42Go ahead. The organization I run, the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science, is a data repository that collects information about the direct cost expenditures of federal grants.
▶ 1:28:53No, I'm just trying to understand where the the people that were denied authorship credit were not federal employees, but grantees. Yes, these were
▶ 1:29:03So, did you discover what was wrong in the cultures of those organizations that did that basically diminished the the work of those people? I was not an author on the paper that reported this. The authors on the paper, which was published in nature about three times
▶ 1:29:21I'm only asking because this is one of the great questions. Academia is also always lecturing us as though, you know, we're we're the people who don't don't get it and then this is a result of academia. This was very much an academic problem. These are university laboratories and research teams that were not doing what I believe they should have.
▶ 1:29:43Well, this this committee certainly could go a long way toward mandating that any touch, feel, or participation be included and the data act supports an uh certainly an unlimited amount of names that could be included with some deference toward uh correctly stating exactly what their role was, but at least they'd be listed as authors. Uh Mr. Maxwell, switching subjects, I'm concerned about two things that I hope you can help me with.
▶ 1:30:11One is uh the growth of the the universal mining by China of our research data. Uh you know, some of the previous questions were about concerns about the reductions or non-increases in funding, but isn't it true that effectively we fund China's research in addition to China funding China's research as a result of our open and transparent system?
▶ 1:30:37Yeah, I I think one of the the important things when we're talking about data and then I'll answer your your question about articles as well. Uh data generated by taxpayer funded research doesn't have IP protections. It's open to anyone who wants to use it. Um, according to the Nelson memo, this is the year of implementation where all that data has to be made publicly available in a repository. So, that the publisher is never at any point hold the data in any sort of, you know, protective way. It always remains with the author.
▶ 1:31:02It's always available to anyone seeking that data from the Um, when it comes to the So, in that regard, the Chinese have access to any US data funded by taxpayer research. The Chinese are now moving to a closed publication system. At least that's the reports we're starting to see. Absolutely, they have moved to it.
▶ 1:31:20Right. And they would like to see most of their publications done in leading Chinese journals. And so, their their information is now moving behind Chinese paywalls even as we're moving all of our information to immediate public access. So, that's a scenario obviously of concern.
▶ 1:31:35A second area of concern is uh and perhaps you you can go into some detail, but the growth of AI creeping into uh scientific research essentially takes the the real research and then that which is known by a computer and merges them. Does that concern you that it it is making scientific research more voluminous, but not necessarily more informative? Absolutely. Absolutely.
▶ 1:32:03The I I would say the publishing industry right now is at the tip of the spear of AI slop even more than anyone is saying in their you know, their social media feeds. Um, trying to figure out how to sort through that is what every one of my publishers is talking about now. Behind closed doors, how you sort the real from the fake is is at the forefront of everyone's mind right now.
▶ 1:32:23And it's it it requires both throwing money at it, but I think also Congress needs to think about what research we use and what publications we use to train these models and making sure and from our perspective, we believe the licensed version of record is what AI should be trained on as opposed to whatever can be found in the public domain. Thank you. And I'll just close with Dr.
▶ 1:32:45Smith one more time because you do look at all this information in this day and age of AI, in this day and age of what that which is published is copyrighted and yet it is free, it's sort of a a dichotomy of what we think of as copyrighted. However, once copyrighted, plagiarism is still plagiarism. Do we have the ability or can we have the ability uh in in deference to Mr.
▶ 1:33:15Maxwell to in fact quickly determine whether or not material is original or not original and annotated digitally so that people could begin to realize the the true source of something or the absence of a source? And quickly cuz my time's expired. that's something that's beyond my area of expertise. I'd be happy to look into it and consult with a couple of colleagues and return
▶ 1:33:38Okay, perhaps anyone could answer for the record. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. The gentleman's time is expired. I now recognize Dr. Foster for 5 minutes of questioning. Uh thank you and thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, this is uh not a new area.
▶ 1:33:51I remember back when I was in grad school many moons ago hearing stories about how coming out of a developing country, there was a whole alternate world of spectroscopy, of molecular spectroscopy where you the papers were coming out describing the theory, the calculations, the apparatus, the analysis, and the results.
▶ 1:34:10Then it was just diverging with the rest of the world's knowledge of spectroscopy and eventually things and they the English sent over a professor and found that there was no apparatus from these papers that were being published. And this was, you know, in the first half of the last Um, and you know, obviously large language models and AI the slop is just making things exponentially worse. You know, back in 2022 when I was chairing this committee, we had a comparable hearing.
▶ 1:34:37And back then we used we used the tools available then to um sort of hide the fact hide um obscure plagiarism. And we put Fermi's famous paper where he basically said here are the neutron absorption and generation cross-sections that that allow a chain reaction to proceed in one of the most famous papers in physics. And we put that through something designed to obscure the you know, obscure the plagiarism to generate a plausible similar paper.
▶ 1:35:07And then we put it through the state-of-the-art checkers and it said, "No, this is a wonderfully creative new paper that and with no plagiarism that we can detect." And so, it's a cat and mouse is just going to to continue here. Um, I do have some hope that maybe certain kinds of, you know, very obvious mistakes in in papers maybe amenable to looking at with AI.
▶ 1:35:31That you're going to see when you see a retracted paper, you're going to be say, "Okay, let's get a big sample of retracted papers and train the the agents on those." Is that Do you Is any of you aware of efforts along those I am aware of some that are working with text. The most effective appear to work with a combination of text and other data about use.
▶ 1:35:54So, papers that come from paper mills tend to also cite other papers from the same authors and the same paper Yeah, you have these old networks of of people citing each other's paper to get boost their ratings. Exactly. So, many many many data features together with textual features tend to do a better job of predicting, but I don't believe anyone has knocked the problem yet, though maybe uh Well, yeah, I was going to say one of I think one of the challenges is that's like a a deeper cut on this issue is attaching really quality
▶ 1:36:24metadata to the papers. Ones that can really be, you know, text and data minable and and actually yield AI results has proven to be a challenge even for publishers. And and and so, I think that that that's an evolving area where everyone the more information you can find that AI can use, at least integrity AIs that can use to find mistakes in the papers or notice a lack thereof of that metadata would be really useful. And it's something that I know we're working on.
▶ 1:36:51Yeah, and this is there's a lot of work that's very comparable in just commercial AI looking at how do you get rid of hallucinations? And you know, the way you get rid of hallucinations is actually check the logic and and check the numbers behind any assertions. And yes, you know, I still use these things for coding just to keep my brain from rotting. And so, I've just the the rate of increase of of capacity of these things is really impressive and I So, I I urge I it'd be nice to actually throw some federal money towards that those sort of efforts so that we develop this capability.
▶ 1:37:22Um, that's a separate issue. About a year ago, the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia banned sending letters to journals around the country suggesting that they were partisan in scientific debates and insinuating that they were suppressing what they called opposing viewpoints. So, at that time I think there were at least four journals who publicly reported receiving similar letters. The New England England Journal of Medicine, Journal of American Medical Association, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and publication of the American College of Chest Physicians.
▶ 1:37:53Uh I believe these letters, at least one of which was made public, really represented dangerous and intentional overreach by uh the federal government into scientific research. And it's particularly concerning because that so much of our nation's research is federally funded. So, um Miss Mr. Maxwell, did any of your members receive this or similar letters? Um, if they did, do they have Do you think they had an impact on the public their publications that they chose to publish?
▶ 1:38:20So, I will get you a a formal answer on the number. The the ones you quoted are the ones that I remember. Um, I the New England Journal for certain. I remember in JAMA as well. they are the two I remember, but let me check back and see if anybody else received them. I'm not aware of anyone doing a direct response cuz as I recall, his tenure at that position expired and they were not followed up on by his by by his successor.
▶ 1:38:48Yeah, but do you get Is there any way of knowing whether it sort of cast a pall over, you know, all journals knowing that they might be targeted this way? Yeah, so I I appreciate if you come back with a for the record, that would be very informative. Thank you. The gentleman's time is expired.
▶ 1:39:04I now recognize myself for 5 minutes of I would say one of the things that has become evident in our current standards is that whoever controls what people believe controls the money and power of this enormous government that we have. With a $7 trillion budget and a $30 trillion GDP, it's enormous.
▶ 1:39:25Uh in 2024, one of the world's top journals published a study predicting the large decrease in global economic output without major changes to public and to climate policy. The study prompted global and domestic policy changes worth trillions of dollars invested, trillions. And widespread media coverage of climate concerns before it was retracted. Ms.
▶ 1:39:49Travis, this has sparked significant concern and distrust in peer review What steps should policy makers and federal agencies take to protect our constituencies from undue or even harmful policies based on flawed Thank you for the question.
▶ 1:40:07I think uh the particular case that that you're talking about, um the paper that was was because one of uh I apologize, it's either 160 or 1,600 of the data sets uh looked at in that study needed to be adjusted and the adjustment um changed the conclusion and by standards for
▶ 1:40:30What can we do to change that? we can we all do a disservice to science by not talking about nuance, by not by by saying that this is the single study that is changes everything. That study is one of many that have studied the same thing and it should have been scrutinized for being an outlier, not taken and and looked at in in total.
▶ 1:40:56So, the single best thing that we can do is to acknowledge that science is complex and that the research process is
▶ 1:41:04And that's why the peer review process is extremely uh important and I think we neglected in this case. Mr. Maxwell, on a daily basis I get on my phone and look for data online, which a lot of times is inaccurate. How should we balance open science goals with the need to ensure that there is quality quality outlets possible for us and is there any way to do this at a uh measure that's not exorbitant for us as the government? Sure, thank you for the question.
▶ 1:41:32Um I I think candidly, when we think about open science, open science works at two different levels. There is a level it works at for actual researchers and the way they interact with the research and then there is a level of the public's access to that science. I think that conflating the two often creates um you know, I I think creates structural um problems within the scientific ecosystem.
▶ 1:41:55Um and candidly, policy makers need to ask themselves, is making the article immediately available the day of publication worth the cost you take from authors having to pay, the loss of readership quality controls cuz as subscriptions go away, that means you lose the ability of the readers themselves to judge the quality of the journals themselves. And so, I think there needs to be a much broader, to to Kate's point about nuance, it is not just simply as simple as the article itself is the be-all and end-all of research.
▶ 1:42:26It's really what we want, where it is in the research ecosystem and how we want to fund that and how it informs discovery and innovation. One one of the things that I'm going to go a little off script here because I think this has affect all of us in very real ways recently. Uh I I thought it was interesting. I I tried to stay very much away from the political aspects of the the partisanship of this this research. But it was pointed out that this administration had done some things that they were they were claiming as nefarious.
▶ 1:42:54I would go back to when this really started. AI really came into effect last presidency. I mean, it really started to have its main impact. Uh research also was warped in the last administration when it came to when I was a doctor treating COVID patients and I was censored by people who had data that was non-peer reviewed, non-scientific, and censored me on things I knew to be true as a doctor because they were the government and they controlled the truth.
▶ 1:43:21Then I saw this again applied in climate control studies in climate change. A hard-carrying democratic physicist named Koonin wrote a very good book called Unsettled on climate change. He was on Obama's climate control panel. And stated how we had been misusing science over and over again to divert trillions of dollars to make lots of billionaires and lots of millionaires on this pseudoscience, not peer reviewed.
▶ 1:43:49Excuse me, it was peer reviewed, but that wasn't included in the study, not included in the punishment that the government funded. And I'll go a step further, it was so mismanaged that we were funding school studies with millions and billions of dollars to get predetermined outcomes. And if you didn't get the right outcome for this climate change, we were not going to fund you the next time. That's manipulation by the government. And with that, I yield.
▶ 1:44:17I thank the witnesses for their valuable testimony and the members for their The record will remain open for 10 days for additional comments and written questions from members. This hearing is now adjourned.