NASA widens dual-anonymous peer review of science proposals under a metascience push

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman framed the announcement as the agency testing its own methods. "Under President Trump's leadership, we are building on that legacy by creating new opportunities for great science, experimenting with how we evaluate and accelerate the best ideas, and investing in the next generation of researchers through the Genesis Mission Fellowships," he said ^[10]. He and Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, were scheduled to discuss both programs in a fireside chat at the summit ^[11].

An experiment needs an outcome measure. The release supplies the hypothesis: dual-anonymous review "enhances fairness and supports innovative and unconventional research ideas," NASA says ^[2]. Both halves can be checked. Fairness shows up in award rates by career stage or institution once reviewers stop seeing names. Novelty is harder to measure. The release does not report results from the earlier pilot, and it does not list which programs will switch, when, or what the fellowships will cost ^[12].

How the expansion is designed matters as much as how far it goes. Rolling anonymous review out to more programs gives NASA a before-and-after comparison. That is weak evidence, because the applicant pool and the budget also change from year to year. A stronger test, and the one I'd expect a metascience office to want, would assign proposals within a single call at random to anonymous or named review and then compare who gets funded.

The fellowship half is narrower. NASA describes its fellows as accelerated doctoral students with "dual competencies in super intelligence (SI) and science or engineering" ^[7]. They will work directly on NASA mission areas and conduct research in NASA laboratories, with the stated aim of "advancing SI-enabled scientific discovery" ^[8].