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2009 US Budget Holds Mixed News For Science
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Feb 05, 2008 02:47 PM
from the squishy-researchers-beware dept.
from the squishy-researchers-beware dept.
sciencehabit writes "ScienceNOW has the details on the impacts of President Bush's appropriation request — bad news for biomedicine, better news for the physical sciences. Some agencies really get slammed and many projects are jeopardized. The Bush administration's theory is that a 5-year run-up in National Institutes of Health funding, which ended in 2003, left the federal funding picture seriously unbalanced. Each year since then the administration's budget request for science has moved to shift the balance. Biomedical researchers are expected to lobby hard in Congress for relief. The NYTimes notes that prognosticators expect Congress not to act on a budget until the next President arrives, betting on it being a Democrat. "
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Good News Everyone! (Score:2, Funny)
What's Mixed? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: What's Mixed? (Score:5, Funny)
It's too bad a respectable organization like the Creation Science Institute has to split the funding with such poseurs.
Parent
Is this a surprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
But funding is up? (Score:4, Informative)
Bush has spent more on science than any other President in the history of the United States, so to say that he is anti-science is sharply distortionary.
Parent
Re: But funding is up? (Score:3, Insightful)
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This implies that the proposed budget is very low in science. It isn't. It is very good for the physical sciences (with double-digit percentage increases to many agencies).
You might have a point if the post were titled "Yeah, but...." & the text were "even with funding, Bush isn't pro-science."
Not quite the whole truth... (Score:5, Informative)
The news is not all that good. What you have to remember is that this 17% is coming on top of a cut in 2008 so the net increase is far smaller. Not only that but the effects of the cut this year were greatly magnified because they were retroactively made 3 months into the financial year! Hence some of the money which was cut had already been spent and, since it could not be retroactively reclaimed, resulted in far greater damage to the programs.
That being said I'm sure my american colleagues will be happy with this but, since it was the US parliament which butchered the budget this year I don't think they'll be celebrating until it actually gets enacted.
Parent
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Hmm, well I don't believe that for a second, especially if one adjusts for inflation, total budget size, etc. But I'm willing to entertain that claim if you can provide some concrete references.
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http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/07/b1984135.html [americanprogress.org]
Is one you might believe. That's a fairly progressive web site and the figures do not include research for military purposes. Scroll down and you'll see that the biggest spender is Bush. Really, just look at the deficits, and ask yourself, what -hasn't- Bu
It is the fault of Congress (Score:5, Interesting)
However, Bush has budgeted to give science in general quite a bit more funding than what Congress has been willing to sign. He proposed large increases last year, which got cut by Congress & his proposed increases in the physical science this year are actually quite good. (Good enough that surely some think that it isn't fiscally conservative.)
I'm personally writing my representatives in Congress asking them to not slash the proposed increases as they have done in the past.
Parent
Yeah... (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, it didn't do it any long-term favors to biomedical research, as the NIH and university leaderships handled their huge influx of money about as well as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan did with theirs. There are dozens of universities with new buildings they were planning to pay off with NIH overhead, that are now completely screwed.
Actually (Score:2)
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It works 100% of the time. Why would there need to be a study?
Err, because HIV, as a liquid-borne virus, can be transmitted through many more routes than just sex?
(e.g ask anyone still alive who got it from a tainted blood transfusion back in the 1980's).
I fear that your response was almost something for a researcher to point at as actual justification for having such a study and publishing it... (e.g. transmission prevention via various sexual protections vs. transmission through other common forms of human-to-human liquid transmission, etc).
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
At first, it's cool that you can get hold of some, then it becomes a godsend, then it's a desperately needed commodity that you must have more and more of, at any cost and damn the consequences...
Sorta like Cocaine in a way.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
How do you think Senators would feel if they didn't get their annual COLA [wikipedia.org]
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm always baffled to see people on Slashdot arguing we shouldn't fund basic research. Would we even be having this discussion without federally funded research? It was a federally funded research organization, DARPA, which invented the internet after all, not private industry. The World Wide Web was invented at CERN, and government-funded projects like Colossus and ENIAC were vital to the development of the modern computer.
Even if we spend billions of dollars a year on basic research, the occasional runaway success like the internet does so much to benefit the economy that it more than pays for itself. You have to spend money to make money, and we've done pretty well by investing in technology and medicine over the past 50 years.
Parent
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
My problem is that this funding goes from being a benevolent grant to a research institution, to becoming a perceived right and entitlement.
Note that this doesn't apply to just research grants, either - everything from corporate welfare programs to Medicare becomes an annual contest to see who can squeeze the most milk out of the governmental teat. What were once programs designed as social safety nets and promotional programs, have become horrific and competing demands for more, more more...
- don't boost Medicare as much as the AARP demands? Why, you beast you! How DARE you leave the elderly to die!
- don't boost educational funding as much as demanded by the teacher unions and school districts? "You're hurting our kids!" (in spite of the fact that education was once a completely state and locally-funded thing...)
- don't boost (insert corporate welfare program here) by as much as (insert lobbyist org here) demanded? You're killing off (insert industry here)!
Meanwhile? You, me, and most other rational human beings know full well that for the most part, we're spending (m/b)illions more this year than we did last year. Nobody is going to die, no business collapses, no school fails - but each year the hyperbole comes marching along.You know? 100 years ago, congress-critters would compete for re-election by bragging about how they kept the government out of everyones' lives. Now they do it by bragging on how much pork they managed to drag home to their respective constituencies.
Again, I have no kick against funding things such as research, industry promotional programs, and social safety net programs. However, I think that each and every one of them should --with damned few exceptions-- have to either get a set non-renewable amount for a set period of time (and not a dime more), or they must re-compete each year for the same level of funding they got the year before. Then we have a non-political panel at the OMB go over each program with a scalpel, and start hacking/slashing those programs that have no provable value at all (e.g. corporate welfare). The savings get rolled into next year's budget.
Parent
Name a few, please? (Score:2)
Meanwhile, it didn't do it any long-term favors to biomedical research, as the NIH and university leaderships handled their huge influx of money about as well as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan did with theirs. There are dozens of universities with new buildings they were planning to pay off with NIH overhead, that are now completely screwed.
In my admittedly limited experience, buildings are far to expensive to pay off with the F&A overhead of federal research grants. That's why they're virtually always funded by rich donors.
Perhaps you know of a few dozen exceptions?
F&A money usually runs about 1/3 of the total grant, but is immediately split up between the researcher's department, college, and university (and even the researcher gets a slice back, laundered of its spending restrictions). Not all of those parties want to spend their s
How to get money for science! (Score:3, Funny)
Bush is anti-children! Would someone please think of the children and fund science!!
That'll shame him and Congress into getting more money!
Independent Science (Score:3, Insightful)
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Instead, research has retreated into the universities, in which the government funds. I'd at least argue that public subsidy of higher education is in the USA's best interest.
However, some people have issues in which to put forth grants and such monies, due to ethics/religion/dogma/whatever. Do we cave and make everybody happy, or continue on and give grants to the
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I'd at least argue that public subsidy of higher education is in the USA's best interest.
The Constitution does not give the authority to the U.S. to do things that are in the USA's best interest, but only those things which the Constitution specifically allows the U.S. to do (Tenth Amendment).
Or try this: do you think multiple universities without government intervention could create the current-needed particle accelerator labs?
I don't care. The ends do not justify the means.
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Constitutionally, I agree with you. However, our Civil War ended this idea within our federal government. Further change back to the "Strong state, weak federation" will take a rather nasty war: the federal likes its power and will nary give it up. I just try to work with what he have in our current sit
Re:Independent Science (Score:4, Insightful)
But as James Madison said, this is all unconstitutional.
No Child Left Behind is just as much, if not more, a violation of my rights under the Constitution as anything else Bush is accused of doing, whether it is "warrantless wiretapping" or "free speech zones." The Constitution and its authors are quite clear.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm glad that you have that sense of intellectual contentment (dare I say idealism?). It must be lonely there, as it seems Hamilton and the anti-Federalists have had the last word!
Would you say the same to someone who, if we had decades of erosion of all free speech rights, said that those laws abridging free speech were unconstitutional? I am simply asserting civil liberties here, of no less importance, value, or legal right than free speech rights.
I personally think that your reading is even narrower than Madison's
Nah.
in Federalist 41, he wrote a great deal about the necessities of funding for defense
Yes, which is specifically mentioned in Article I, Section 8. It's an enumerated power.
Had Madison been around long enough to read Szilard and Einstein's letter warning of a nuclear threat from Germany & had he guaged such a threat as realistic, I have little doubt that Madison would have approved of the Manhattan project and the modern national labs that were commissioned to that end.
And I would too. I did not imply that ALL science funding is unconstitutional; if it has a specific Section 8 purpose, then it is not uncons
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Re: Independent Science (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, you might be experiencing difficulties if you are researching climate change or the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs under the current administration, but hopefully that's a short-term blip on an otherwise effective system.
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i guess someone forgot to tell bush (Score:2, Funny)
poor biomedicine. we all know that messing with the building blocks of life is the devil's work, but still
maybe if someone told the theocrats that the god-given holy oil, currently unjustly in the hands of the heathen mohammedeans on the arabian peninsula, was an act of god as manifested in billion, i me
Delay is good! (Score:2, Funny)
While the Democratically-controlled Congress may indeed delay approving a budget, I'm sure they know that the next election could just as easily put another Republican in the White House -- and that their razor-thin majority (especially in the Senate) could be lost as well, depending on the R-side coattails.
I think the goal is to not act on the budget until the next
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But I suspect that it has more to do with it being an election year. What kind of press will they get by changing science funding. Cut it and you get bad press for cutting science. Raise it and you're a "tax and spend liberal". No win.
Slow News Day?? (Score:3, Insightful)
The parties are working up their versions of a budget and waiting for the elections to play out. In the meantime, they'll temporarily fund the government.
For those hawks that believe that private industry can do research "better" I offer the following.
1. Some research is so basic that there's no near-term mass-market application.
2. If the research can't become a profit center, it's dropped. This is already happening in the now-privatized University R&D and it happened long, long ago in business.
3. Most countries have some kind of nationalized R&D AND economic planning to sell the R&D. This model appears gets about the same results as the looser American style.
4. Corporate R&D is mostly stealing ideas from someone else who cannot afford litigation.
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"1. Some research is so basic that there's no near-term mass-market application."
So you want a federal government to fund science that has no application for the masses? Sounds like something that benefits the few rather than the many, which is better done in the private sector. I don't want my tax dollars at work for something that benefits almost no one.
"2. If the research can't become a profit center, it's dropped. This is already happening in the now-privatized University R&D and it happene
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1. Some research is so basic that there's no near-term mass-market application.
IIRC there's currently a shedload of funding (albeit belated) into the basics of eco-friendly energy solutions... from major players in the energy industry.
2. If the research can't become a profit center, it's dropped.
Bell Labs, XEROX (and PARC), and for more recent and tech-relevant examples - IBM, Novell, Sun (which hasn't seen a dime of profit off of OOo). Are you sure about that being true? (especially in light of the fact that damned near anything can be monetized nowadays).
3. Most countries have some kind of nationalized R&D AND economic planning to sell the R&D. This model appears gets about the same results as the looser American style.
Kinda got confused here - is R&D fo
This budget is simply a clever trap (Score:2)
To roll back a number of the tax cuts will be un-popular, and may be pointed to as putting us in a massive recession (though it is obviously coming re
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The Bush administration's theory is that a 5-year run-up in National Institutes of Health funding, which ended in 2003, left the federal funding picture seriously unbalanced.
So what they're saying is that along with the massive 5-year run-up in the military funding (not DARPA research, which IS needed, but funding to create and execute a war), scientific funding was recovering from the previous gutting it was given to fund the start of said milita
Re: This budget is simply a clever trap (Score:2)
This budget is a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no hope for science funding in the emergency stimulus bill and only a little hope for a April/May supplemental appropriations bill tacked onto war spending. So there will be a long time at 2008 levels of funding and then cuts and basically level funding for the rest in the eventual 2009 budget passed by Congress and signed by the then president.
Don't believe me, read what the Director of Fermilab thinks:
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2008/today08-02-05.html [fnal.gov]
The only real hope for science funding is through universities really. If you know any university trustees, let them know about the problems. If these wealthy and well connected people feel that their companies are at risk due to the US trailing in science, then they can make an impact with Representative and Senators. We need more people like Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel, expressing why science funding is key.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/20/EDFDUHP1I.DTL [sfgate.com]
looks good for computer science (Score:3, Informative)
The "20% hikes for math and physical sciences, engineering, and computer sciences" is the main highlight, since NSF funding for computer science has been declining for the past few years. In addition, "a 25% increase in the number of graduate research fellowships" will free up money for professors to spend what grant money they do get on actual research instead of on paying grad-students' tuition and stipends. I may also help to increase the attractiveness of CS/engineering/science graduate school for U.S. students, among whom enrollments have been declining hugely (it's not a huge carrot, but an NSF fellowship pays $30k/year, versus the usual ~$18-22k grad-student stipend, so is substantially more attractive).
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Quiz: Which do you think will be released to the public?
For the record, biotech companies are not all evil, all the time. They have done great things and not always just for the bottom line. But to have no p
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I'll agree government isn't necessarily the answer either, but I see that as more of a problem with your government than government in general.
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My counter-argument would be that free-market capitalism has a better chance of discovering a cure for cancer than a government.
So our answer? Give the corporations researching these cures tax rebates.
Re:Should be cut entirely (Score:5, Insightful)
But this does not in any way support the contention that government funded "scientific research" should be cut entirely. There are many areas of research whose outcomes are so uncertain that it doesn't make any sense for private enterprise to finance them, but where the net economic and social benefits are very long term and very positive. Consider research on the germ theory or disease, or the discovery of the electron. Together, those fields for the bedrock of all modern economies. Space exploration and fusion power research are two modern examples where the fundamental research could not possibly be supported directly by private enterprise without governmental assistance. There are other areas related specifically to government responsibilities (defense, law enforcement, environmental stewardship, etc.) where I would expect the government to provide funding. Finally, there are a number of research areas with a large societal benefit, but little to no profit or market advantage, where private actors shouldn't be expected to fill. The modern archetype is vaccine research.
I'm as big a fan of the free market and constitutional restrictions on government action as the next guy, but I still accept that there are areas that there are things, like government funding of fundamental research, that would not be supported but for government intervention.
Parent
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Cheap medicines for instance...the large pharmaceutical companies don't want to bother because the profit margins are not fat enough.
Another reasonable area of involvement would be for things that are simply too expensive for smaller organizations. Things like CERN exist as international collaborations for a reason.
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It spells out "gnaa" if you view it using a monospace font.
-Esme