SOPA Creator Now In Charge of NSF Grants 307
sl4shd0rk writes "Remember SOPA? If not, perhaps the name Lamar Smith will ring a bell. The U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology chose Smith to Chair as an overseer for the National Science Foundation's funding process. Smith is preparing a bill (PDF) which will require that every grant must benefit 'national defense,' be of 'utmost importance to society,' and not be 'duplicative of other research.' Duplicating research seems reasonable until you consider that this could also mean the NSF will not provide funding for research once someone has already provided results — manufactured or otherwise. A strange target since there is a process in place which makes an effort to limit duplicate funding already. The first and second requirements, even when read in context, still miss the point of basic research. If we were absolutely without-a-doubt-certain of the results, there would be little point in doing the research in the first place."
Learning from History... (Score:5, Informative)
For those that have even a fragment of history, you'll remember that the middle east used to be a center of learning and science.
In the days of the crusades, their scientific knowledge far outstripped that of Europe (there's a reason the numerals we use today are called "arabic numerals".
So, what happened to change that? Did Europe suddenly invest massively in science to go toe to toe? Alas not. Religious zealots got in places of power, and started to dictate that the progress of science was "against the will of god" (as the priesthood didn't understand it, so it scared them, and anything that scares a religious zealot is "against the will of god"). The role of religion in Europe started to lessen, allowing scientific method to progress apace and advancement to occur.
There's a reason ethics committees exist for scientific projects; the lay-people on them are a voice for the average person: They force the people doing pure science to think carefully about ramifications of performing experimentation in a particular fashion (is the experiment ethical? Can the way it's performed in a different way, not affecting the core of the theory, that is ethical?). The professionals are there to ensure the science is actually valid and to pick out the ones sloppily created that are mathematically wrong, or are unable by structure to draw the conclusions they're looking for from the experiments performed.
I'm vaguely hopeful that this incursion of zealotry into the workings of scientific progress can be rooted out and cast aside, but from the path that the US has been following towards a combination between a corporate feudalism headed by a close to a theocracy (what are the chances of an atheist being elected president these days, since the pledge of allegiance was altered in 1954 to include the "under god" segment; no, for you younger ones, that wasn't part of the original, and was tagged on for political ends), it's not a certainty. That's somewhat worrying really.
Re:ah the anti-NSF crowd again (Score:2, Informative)
You are crazy if you think availability doesn't play in. Ever [thedailyshow.com] heard [thedailyshow.com] of Australia [thedailyshow.com]? Yes, it's a people problem, but so is drunk driving. Fixing it means attacking it from all angles, both the tech and the people.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Informative)
2) The discovery of green fluorescent protein, one of the most widely used tools in molecular biology. From wikipedia: "In the 1960s and 1970s, GFP, along with the separate luminescent protein aequorin, was first purified from Aequorea victoria and its properties studied by Osamu Shimomura. . . However, its utility as a tool for molecular biologists did not begin to be realized until 1992 when Douglas Prasher reported the cloning and nucleotide sequence of wtGFP in Gene.[6] The funding for this project had run out, so Prasher sent cDNA samples to several labs. The lab of Martin Chalfie expressed the coding sequence of wtGFP, with the first few amino acids deleted, in heterologous cells of E. coli and C. elegans, publishing the results in Science in 1994."
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:2, Informative)
I'm sure half the research outlined here wouldn't have happened [wikipedia.org] if people had been funded only with principles like the ones in this bill. I mean, what the hell kind of national defense benefits could there be from experiments like firing protons at the nucleus of lithium atoms or trying to fuse light nuclei together? And what possible benefit could there be to society at large of investigating the possibility of neutron-initiated chain reactions with uranium nuclei? It's all a bunch of Jewish physicists playing with their silly and irrelevant theories. Why should we allocate our precious resources to this when there is a war on? It probably wouldn't even work.
[This message brought to you by the German Nazi Party in the 1930s, who also thought it worthwhile to politicize science [wikipedia.org]]
I really don't want to Godwin this thread already, because it's a great idea you have proposed. It's a nice way to show how badly the proposed bill will align with the way science actually works. But I think besides compiling examples of important research that wouldn't have been funded, it's also worthwhile to point out how badly science goes off the rails and how badly it affects a country when politics interferes too much. It didn't work well for Nazi Germany, it didn't work well for the USSR with Lysenkoism [wikipedia.org], and there are plenty of other examples [wikipedia.org] closer to home.
Science funded by the public should be answerable to the broader goals of public interest. No question. But mess with it too much in terms of dictating how the results should play out (before you've actually done the experiment!), and you're simply going to undermine the scientific process. It's fair to set priorities for the work to be done (so much for defense-related stuff, so much for health-related stuff, so much for "basic research", and so on), and you should demand quality research that passes the harsh and competitive scrutiny of fellow scientists, but that's about it. You should allow some freedom to generally explore, otherwise you're going to miss a lot that may turn out to be vitally important.
Re:idiots, idiots everywhere. (Score:5, Informative)
"We" didn't. My state voted 54% to 45% for democratic representatives, due to gerrymandering in 2010, that resulted in 9 republican reps and 4 democratic ones.
They have power because they have power, and use that power to maintain power.
Re:ah the anti-NSF crowd again (Score:5, Informative)
I could point out that some research on both sides are utterly crap. funding the study of beetles migration habits? yeah I dont think we need to waste money on that one
Unless you care about how it could affect agricultural production. The boll weevil alone does $300 million in damage to cotton crops. The bark beetle and elm leaf beetle carry Dutch elm disease, which has devastated elm trees in both Europe and North America. Another beetle damages potato crops in Idaho. On the other hand, there are beetles that eat pests and the dung beetle saves the cattle industry $380 million every year in dung disposal costs.
Re:ah the anti-NSF crowd again (Score:5, Informative)
Except they aren't going to cut NSF funding to do something useful like repair bridges. They'll instead spend $436 million on tanks the Army doesn't want or some other BS.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/29/1932931/army-tanks-spending/?mobile=nc [thinkprogress.org]
Re:ah the anti-NSF crowd again (Score:5, Informative)
Also, the pine beetle is killing off huge swaths of pine forest in the Rocky Mountains.
It does actually matter to some folks.
Actual Bill (Score:4, Informative)
(a) is in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science
(b) is not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal science agencies.
Now, we can argue whether that is good or not, but I am so tired of summaries which are blatantly trying to mislead us, like we are children who can't understand the actual words in the bill.
Re:ah the anti-NSF crowd again (Score:4, Informative)
Where do we stop, then? A knife is more dangerous than a baseball bat. A bat is more dangerous than a stick. A stick is more dangerous than fists. Fists are more dangerous than feet.
So ... are guns the magical "okay, we cut it off at guns!" place? What about swords? Switchblades? Oh wait, those are illegal in some states, too. And, I might add, clearly I would be far more dangerous carrying my switchblade than I would my hunting knife ....
It is these sorts of arguments that, IMO, make me want to own a gun (which I do). Why? Because you're convincing me that, if push comes to shove, the guy who doesn't care about the law that may try to kill me to take whatever they want is probably not going to care that the gun increases his ability for violence. I'd like to meet him where he is, if I have to.
And that's not even the 2nd amendment (which isn't really about self-defense-from-criminals). :)
And before I get painted as a crazy, gun-toting, gun-LOVING, tea-party conservative lunatic... I'm more libertarian and I own a single gun, and it's a rifle. I prefer my large dog; he's a very good deterrent. Also, I don't like violence and would absolutely hate to have to shoot my gun at someone. Not having been in the military, I cannot imagine what it would be like to have killed someone.