Agencies Closing Science Advisory Committees

MAR 20, 2025

NASA, NOAA, USGS, and other agencies are in the process of eliminating or significantly reducing their scientific advisory committees.

Lindsay McKenzie

Science Policy Reporter, FYI, AIP

Empty Conference Room.png — More than a dozen advisory committees focused on scientific issues have been marked for closure in recent weeks.

Shutterstock

Multiple government agencies have begun eliminating science advisory committees following an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last month.

The order, titled “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” calls for the elimination of several specific advisory committees — including the Health Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Long COVID — with the justification that reducing the size of the federal government will “minimize government waste and abuse, reduce inflation, and promote American freedom and innovation.”

The executive order also directs the heads of some agencies and departments to identify additional committees for termination. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey are among the science agencies that have begun eliminating some non-statutory advisory committees in response to the executive order.

NASA has taken a different approach, with acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro directing the agency to consolidate its Astrophysics, Biological and Physical Sciences, Earth Science, Heliophysics, and Planetary Sciences advisory committees into a “single advisory committee with broad representation from across the NASA science community,” a NASA spokesperson told FYI.

This restructuring of NASA’s science advisory committees will “provide the opportunity to retain one non-statutory science committee and ensure continued support of NASA science goals, improving efficiency, while ensuring NASA maintains the important process of engaging with the science community,” the NASA spokesperson said. They added that NASA’s Applied Sciences Advisory Committee will be unaffected by the changes.

A spokesperson for the National Science Foundation declined to comment when asked if the agency planned to eliminate any of its advisory committees. A National Institute of Standards and Technology spokesperson said the executive order did not apply to the agency and that none of its advisory committees have been terminated. As of publication, the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health had not responded to requests for comment.

Jacob Carter, a scientific integrity expert and co-founder of the science policy newsletter SciLight, was a member of the recently terminated Advisory Committee for Science Quality and Integrity at USGS. Carter published an article about the committee’s abrupt termination earlier this month, sharing a letter from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum identifying a total of six advisory committees for elimination on the basis that they are “unnecessary and have fulfilled the purposes for which they were established.”

The Advisory Committee for Science Quality and Integrity was very recently established and met only once earlier this year before being disbanded at the end of February. The committee was created to address concerns about scientific misconduct and violations of scientific integrity in USGS labs raised by the Department of Interior’s Office of Inspector General.

While disappointed at the committee’s termination, Carter said he was unsurprised that a committee focused on scientific integrity was targeted by the Trump administration given the President’s record of sidelining scientific advice. “I think the fact that the first-ever federal advisory committee on scientific integrity was disbanded is a pretty clear signal that this administration does not intend to adhere closely to scientific integrity policies or care much about the protection of and rights of scientists and their work,” Carter said.

While some federal advisory committees are created by Congress and cannot easily be shuttered, many are non-statutory and can be eliminated by senior agency leadership. A list of current and recently terminated federal advisory committees is maintained by the General Services Administration, but this database does not reflect all pending changes.

In his first term in office, Trump called for a third of all committees not required by law to be eliminated and attempted to cap the total number of committees across the federal government at 350. At the time, and again today, science advocates criticized the president’s actions, noting the importance of these committees in sharing valuable scientific expertise with government leaders.

“We want to make sure that government decisions are informed by the best available science and evidence, free from political interference, and responsive to diverse community voices,” said Kristie Ellickson, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy. This is why Ellickson and her colleagues are tracking not only the elimination of advisory committees but also work delays and restrictions on who gets to participate in them, she said.

The Trump administration has, for example, dismissed the members of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Science Advisory Committee and Science Advisory Board and has canceled or delayed meetings of the Center for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, Ellickson said.

“All of these tactics aim to silence independent scientific advice to federal agencies,” Ellickson said, warning that more changes are likely to come.

Science-related advisory committees marked for termination or consolidation at federal agencies:

This list is not comprehensive and may be updated.

EPA:

Department of Homeland Security:

NASA:

NOAA:

USGS: