These goals are in line with the administration’s own stated priorities. Just weeks after shuttering OCS, the White House announced an executive order intended to, in its words, restore scientific integrity policies of federally funded research activities. Ironically, most of Draper’s work at OCS was focused on scientific integrity initiatives. Every bit of those efforts has now been canceled, he says. 

The Office of the Chief Scientist was hardly an example of bloated bureaucracy, either. According to Draper, its operating costs were around 0.001% of NASA’s budget: a “whopping” $349,000 per year.  

“Having no money is what gave us our power,” Draper said, explaining that low, independent funding helped keep OCS unbiased. “We were trying to bring you the best — and that is what has been lost.”

If OCS’s closure was shortsighted, it wasn’t alone. The larger exodus of NASA employees would turn out to be just as haphazard.

“I'm actually not opposed to reducing workforce if you do it in a thoughtful way,” Nagaraja said, “[But] the number of people that have left the agency — and the number of skills that NASA has lost — is tremendous.”