Can Long Term Research Survive the Coming Age of Austerity? 306
Hugh Pickens writes "Alexis Madrigal writes that everyone agrees you need science and technology R&D, but when budgets get tight, research into quantum dots or the fundamental forces that cause earthquakes has a hard time holding the line against health care or tax cuts for the richest Americans. Different countries are taking different approaches. Japan is focusing on its most elite researchers, giving up to $50 million to 30 different people. Other countries are just giving up on some areas of research to focus on others; for example, US particle physicists who will spend their careers trying to drive from the backseat as our European counterparts run the Large Hadron Collider. A third approach might be to reduce redundancies in research. 'An idea to provide funding in a larger number of key areas that would avoid duplication is to create dedicated research centers where several investigators can work in parallel on complementary topics,' writes Joerg Heber. "If we do less research we need to do it right. And using this crisis to think about our research infrastructure needn't be a bad thing. It should be seen as an opportunity to reform the academic research system in a more comprehensive and fundamental way than the academic community and the politicians normally dare to think about.'"
I have a better question (Score:4, Interesting)
Can Progress Survive Austerity as a Foregone Conclusion?
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Well said.
But take a step back and find the wealth. You'll probably find that the vast bulk of it is in the hands of relatively few people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth#In_the_United_States) who seem to be intent on sharing less rather than more.
When imaginary money moves, sometimes real assets do as well. Who owns most of the real estate in America? Who has a lien for nearly everything they don't hold clear title to? Who is primarily responsible for conjuring and parcelling out m
Re:I have a better question (Score:5, Insightful)
Ponzi schemes are zero to negative sum games with a fairly clear redistribution of a fixed amount of wealth among a population, with a heavy redistribution toward the top of the pyramid. The real economy, though, is stranger. If you look at the matter in terms of 'real' wealth(ie. the goods and services that people actually want for their own sake, rather than the assorted intermediary constructs), the world has basically never been better off, with the exception of unpleasant looking mid to longterm numbers on petrochemicals. And yet, the correct perturbations in the framework of legal fictions that we lay on top of that can actually make people, on average, worse off.
That's the part of economics where my intuition just sort of curls up and dies. Your classic "The crops failed, so the supply of wheat is at 50%, ergo famine" is easy. The "a fixed quantity of wealth is distributed among hypothetical investors, one of them starts a ponzi scheme, now the distribution is different." is also pretty easy. But when "We have so many available houses that getting a place to live is now cheaper than before!" becomes an international crisis, you know that your head is rammed so far up the ass of the twilight zone that comprehension is going to be difficult...
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research money (Score:2)
On the other hand, lots of the fundamental knowledge necessary for the "major work" mentioned earlier comes from the incr
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Not quite. Hopefully we can agree that Einstein's best work is his general theory of relativity. He was a patent clerk from 1903 until 1909. He did publish four major papers in 1905 including his work on special relativity and the photoelectric effect, but he did his most advanced work on GRT from about 1909 until 1917, with bits published in between. He then did his best work when he was in academia. He continued to do still widely cited work until at least 1935, when he published his EPR paper. I think du
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But not everybody is Feymann, Gell-Mann or Curie. Lots of researchers rest on their laurels after gaining recognition for one good piece of work. Nor is it the case that only well-known "elite" researchers are capable of making breakthroughs. One thing that constantly irritated me during my PhD was the level of hero worship I'd see amongst fellow students as well as faculty. I really don't give a shit who wrote a particular paper, I care about the content of the paper. It's an appeal to authority that I fel
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Reading most of the research that's generated by people like me, you realize it's just PhDs trying their darnedest to ++publicationCount, which is a pretty stupid thing for taxpayer dollars to fund... On the other hand, lots of the fundamental knowledge necessary for the "major work" mentioned earlier comes from the incremental work that isn't sexy in its own right, but very necessary nonetheless. No simple answer here.
It's punctuated equilibrium. Most published research is average of course, and does not advance us very far. Those few "major works" that advance us in leaps rely on those lesser published results. You cannot have the major advances without the minor advances.
Is there a better way to do things? I'm skeptical. Publication count is going to remain important for as long as research grants and research positions are limited, which is going to be always. Every system is going to have flaws.
As a researcher, I think giving to the most elite is a moderately good idea.
Really? Beca
"driving from the back seat" (Score:4, Insightful)
The US really should accept that it doesn't need one of everything and there is no shame using the resources of other countries rather than duplicating them.
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Dear US scientists, learn to share. We don't need another Large Hadron Collider.
The US really should accept that it doesn't need one of everything and there is no shame using the resources of other countries rather than duplicating them.
I'm sure "US scientists" would have absolutely no problem sharing. Your scorn is better directed at the military and bureaucrats.
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I'd extend this to a number of areas.
The problem with most research is the tragedy of the commons. Once you discover something, everybody benefits (unless it is something like a military secret that you keep close control of for a few decades). What nation discovered the last antibiotic you took? Do you even care? Patents can give a company incentive to discover as long as most nations respect them, and they can also inhibit progress when they get out of control. Patents usually don't help with blue-sk
Re:"driving from the back seat" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. After all, there were dozens of proposals for experiments on the LHC - and only a handful made the cut. There just can't possibly be any point to building a second LHC using a different set of experiments.
Problem is (Score:3)
For some stuff, the science is "easy", but it's the needed engineering that costs an arm and a leg (Space Shuttle, LHC, etc, etc)
Which means you can't go "brute force" anymore on problems.
Think, rethink experiments, use creativity. It will be better.
I am sure there are new things to be discovered "on the cheap"
Not that I'm agains LHC, on the contrary. But what if someone finds a way to have 10Tev collisions using a different and easier method.
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But what if someone finds a way to have 10Tev collisions using a different and easier method
We can do them for free in the upper atmosphere in much larger quantities than the LHC. The difficulty is monitoring the results with a finer granularity than 'ooo, the aurora borealis looks pretty'.
What everyone misses (Score:4, Interesting)
Boo hoo (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, people.
Perceived need is infinite. Resources are finite. Further, as we push back the boundaries of knowledge, the experiments get more and more expensive.
We can argue all day about priorities, but let's actually talk about those priorities - simple, pointless whinging (such as 'US particle physicists have to drive from the back seat' because the Euros have the LHC....) is little more than tantrum-throwing.
In a democracy, there is ALWAYS going to be a pressure from the mass to address their needs with Bread and Circuses. It's not the best long-term solution for anything (well, unless your goal is to breed a larger underclass), but the fact is that you have to sell your idea, or implement a tyranny in which your priorities 'win'.
Duplications leads to innovation (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not only that but they serve as an error check on each other.
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I agree - "reducing duplication" is not the way to reform academic research. But there are a lot of other ways it could be made more efficient.
Consider that most professors don't actually do much research; instead, they manage research groups. That's fine if they want to be managers, but more often the system just forces them in that direction. The result is that most real research is done by postdocs and new professors in their first few years on the job. A typical researcher gets maybe 10 years to rea
Less Duplication? (Score:4, Insightful)
Less duplication? In scientific research? So instead of the replication and confirmation/expansion of results, which used to be at the foundation of the scientific method, every "experiment" or study will now be done once and its outcome accepted unquestioningly as the final word?
Clearly, all we have to do is eliminate all funding for genetics (evolution), geology, and climate research, and they'll be plenty of money left over to test all of our new weapons at least twice before putting them into the field.
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Experiments need to be repeated because they're fairly often wrong. If we remove verification from science, while we will produce more results initially, a large portion of that will be wrong, and so will any future science based on those results, and in the end, so much of science will be incorrect that it's completely useless.
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Mod parent up!
Having said that, I also need to point out that confirmation nowadays is neither easy nor cheap. We need to, alas, cut down on duplication and in many cases we can only afford to fund those that are most likely to get it right in the first place.
Comeon, /. (Score:3, Insightful)
has a hard time holding the line against health care or tax cuts for the richest Americans.
Flamebait like this in the article summary just will veer the discussion completely off-topic.
It's also why I now have AdBlock Plus turned on when I (less frequently) browse this site.
Tone down the obvious political bias! Thanks!
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What bias is that?
They are really debating things like health care and tax cuts for the richest Americans while trying to figure out how to deal with the budget. How would you say that without the bias?
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That would be untrue though. Unless you added some more qualifiers.
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You cannot talk about government spending, on science or anything else, without also talking about politics, since arguments about where and how much the government should spend money are pretty much what politics is. Sorry if you consider a simple presentation of the facts to be "political bias," but it's absurd to pretend that the subject can be discussed apolitically.
plenty of money for research. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just imagine how much cash we'd have for research if we would have forced the banks to do the same thing that GM was forced to do.
Declare bankruptcy, wipe out shareholders, and trim bond holders. Those are the people that invested in risky behavior and they should have paid the price.
The swedes did it and they recovered from their banking crisis.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/06/go-swedish-part-47/ [ritholtz.com]
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In what universe were the equity holders of GM wiped out? The stock never dropped below 28 and now the UAW owns the largest piece valued at $4.8 billion. That the bond holders got a haircut rather than the equity holders was a travesty of contract law and an under the table handout to the union.
Not that the bailout of the banks was any better, but to suggest that the handling of GM is the correct method is crazy.
what is /. now? (Score:3)
has a hard time holding the line against health care or tax cuts for the richest Americans.
- and my comments are routinely moderated as 'troll' [slashdot.org], while obviously trolling is done on regular basis in the 'story' summaries?
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As others have said, I fail to see how this is a troll. The general consensus in Washington right now is that we're going to have to make some hard choices in how we spend our money, seeing as the current debt is getting rather high in both nominal terms and as a percentage of GDP. Government-funded scientific research will likely be determined to be something we can't afford given that the Democrats will hold the line on entitlement spending and Republicans will hold the line on keeping taxes at current
Sure you can still work (Score:3)
The rest of the World has been doing good research without the colossal budgets their American colleagues enjoy (I know, I was part of a project that operated on a shoestring - but we still found the free brown dwarfs in the galaxy). Maybe there will be fewer spectacular programmes, but of course great research will still get done. Of course, you can always join international collaborations as partners to pool resources, rather than be the rich kid having all the toys to themselves.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but Americans have had it so good for so long they didn't even realise how fortunate they are. Even with less excess wealth about they are still by far the richest people per capita - although certainly indvidivual Americans have it very tough at the moment - so it sounds a bit whiney when we hear that some program is being reduced because the US is going from (comparatively) very wealthy to just wealthy. Be grateful for what you already have, and appreciate all the things you also have that don't require lots of money (your health, friends, family, girlfriend, more opportunities than most Africans can dream of, more cheeseburgers than even Garfield can dream of, Mom's basement, and that fact you even have a computer to read Slashdot on!)
wah (Score:2)
Rounding Error (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of this type of funding is a rounding error in the budget. The NSF gets $7B I believe. It's really not worth talking about cutting except for ideological reasons...
Re:Rounding Error (Score:4, Interesting)
Tax cuts for the rich? (Score:3, Insightful)
It turns out that "the rich" pay the majority of the taxes. Thus any meaningful tax cut, for any purpose, will cut taxes for "the rich" more than it will cut taxes for "the poor".
There have been several times in the history of the USA where the overall tax rate was lowered, and tax revenues went up. This is because "the rich" moved money out of tax shelters and started investing it, which grew GNP. In other words, tax revenue went up because government was collecting a lower rate on a much larger amount of money. And "the rich" paid more taxes than they paid before.
There are some people who view the above as a problem; this problem is called "the rich get richer". Even if the poor get richer also, which confuses me. How will you increase jobs without someone who is rich getting richer? And how does that rich person hurt the poor by getting richer?
Historically, the US government has not managed to collect more than 19 or 20 percent of GNP in tax revenue. Even when the highest tax bracket was 70% or even higher, revenues as a percent of GNP were not higher than when the highest tax bracket was under 40%. If you think you can fix the USA's financial problems by taxing the rich, you need to explain one of these: (a) why this time it will be different, and the government will collect over 20% of GNP; (b) why GNP will grow faster with higher tax rates; or (c) why the high tax rates will limit the growth of GNP and collect less tax revenue, but it's worth it because it is important to keep the rich from getting richer.
My own view is that if 19% is what the US government can realistically collect, we should be trying to grow the GNP of the US so that the government is collecting 19% of a larger GNP. That means reducing taxes, regulatory burden, and uncertainty.
But don't take my word for this; see some references:
Thomas Sowell: Dissecting The Demagoguery About 'Tax Cuts For The Rich' [investors.com]
Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy: The 19 Percent Solution [reason.com]
Disclaimer: I'm either middle class or posibly upper-middle-class, but I am not remotely "the rich" and tax cuts for "the rich" would not directly benefit me.
steveha
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There are some people who view the above as a problem; this problem is called "the rich get richer". Even if the poor get richer also, which confuses me.
In principle we should only care about people's standards of living. If everyone is getting richer in the sense that each person has a higher standard of living, that is certainly a good thing! However one problem with the rich getting richer faster than the poor get richer is that it creates a larger social disparity. While we can argue about whether disparity in itself is a moral problem, there are certa
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And how does that rich person hurt the poor by getting richer?
Everyone who wants tax cuts seems to always want to pay for them by eliminating Medicare, Social Security, the minimum wage etc. Wealth is supposedly created somehow, but most of the time it looks like a zero-sum game with the rich taking from everyone else.
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That's just wrong in so many ways. The first, and most fatal flaw is to consider the tax/investment situation as a straight line. It's not. We were more prosperous as a nation in times when taxes were significantly higher, so at the very least, you'd need to consider the possibility that there were local maxima and minima rather than a straight line, or even a simple curve.
And considering the overall decline of the average American's real earning power over the past decade, it's fair bet that we're not at o
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How will you increase jobs without someone who is rich getting richer?
This basically highlights everything that is wrong with the above post.
Jobs/Production is created by demand. Which is a nice way of saying spending. The rich want to remain rich and get even richer, but by doing so they are not spending and instead dragging whole economies with them.
The rich simply aren't capable of doing the spending required of them with the current wealth distribution, because saving and getting richer is so engraved in them. And that is why you need to keep a firm hand on the wealth dis
Re:Tax cuts for the rich? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some people who view the above as a problem; this problem is called "the rich get richer". Even if the poor get richer also, which confuses me. How will you increase jobs without someone who is rich getting richer? And how does that rich person hurt the poor by getting richer?
The majority of the public has no problem with "the rich get richer". Look at the path of Clinton's approval rating; we were ALL getting richer and it was fucking great, no matter what kind of douchebag shit he pulled.
What people have a problem with, though, is when the rich get richer but the rest of us get fucking poorer. How the rich have been doing that lately (they've always been doing this, but sooooo much more during the last decade) is by making themselves richer without actually producing anything of value. You don't increase jobs by funneling money into your pocket, you increase jobs by investing in actual enterprises.
Yes, we have been getting poorer. Average wages haven't been increasing when adjusted for inflation -- unless you make over 100k. But many things have been getting more expensive compared to inflation -- food and shelter, which everybody needs, and for which poor people have to pay a far, far larger percentage of their income.
It's nice to think that more investment and job creation will be the natural result of lower taxes and deregulation, but recent history is pretty clear: all rich people need to do to get richer, is spend money in a way that accomplishes that. If that means investing in industry, they'll do that. If it means rolling up a gigantic tarball of toxic debt and hot-potatoing it around the marketplace until it crashes the economy, and then run begging to the US government to wash the hands of whoever caught it last, they'll do that, instead. For example, Koch Industries, who fund Reason Magazine, made a pretty penny in 2008 via "contango" oil price manipulation. They got more money, but produced no additional value. They brazenly enriched themselves at the cost of the rest of us.
Multiply that action by thousands, or hundreds of thousands, and you start to see the path that led us here. Money going upstairs and nothing of value coming down.
Lower taxes and looser regulation is what we've been DOING FOR TEN YEARS. it's what GOT US HERE.
Re:Tax cuts for the rich? (Score:4, Interesting)
There have been several times in the history of the USA where the overall tax rate was lowered, and tax revenues went up. This is because "the rich" moved money out of tax shelters and started investing it, which grew GNP. In other words, tax revenue went up because government was collecting a lower rate on a much larger amount of money. And "the rich" paid more taxes than they paid before.
Three examples from the late 20th century where tax-cuts lead to increased revenues: JFK, Reagan, and Clinton. However, on closer inspection, JFK cut taxes while closing loopholes, citing his own family as an example of how the wealthy evaded taxes. Rich people pulled their money out of tax shelters because that is exactly what JFK forced them to do by closing said loopholes. Reagan's tax cutting lead to a decrease in tax receipts, but they were coupled with deregulations of financial markets (and two subsequent tax increases) that increased revenues overall. This deregulation arguably lead to the creation of bubbles (e.g., Black Monday), which landed in the lap of Bush 1.0 and lead to him raising taxes. Clinton cut taxes as well, but focused them on the middle class, and again tax receipts were not the primary source of growth, it was the Dot Com Bubble, which arguably lead to the 2001 recession at the start of Bush 2.0. Speaking of Bush 2.0, he also cut taxes--dramatically--and passed on a huge deficit and a Carter-style recession to Obama.
I am not trying to argue with you, nor am I defending the policies of any administration, I just want to point out that the world is vastly more complicated than "cutting taxes increases revenues." Also, American presidents have developed a habit of increasing spending/cutting taxes and using creative accounting/deregulation to make themselves look good, and then passing an economic shit sandwich on to the next administration.
There are some people who view the above as a problem; this problem is called "the rich get richer". Even if the poor get richer also, which confuses me. How will you increase jobs without someone who is rich getting richer? And how does that rich person hurt the poor by getting richer?
If the rich get richer faster than the overall economy is growing, then the poor get poorer--either by direct loss or by incurring more debt. I refuse to use a pie analogy, but the economy is finite in size and when it shrinks, those whose wealth increases are by definition gaining at the expense of others. Reasonable People do not have a problem with "the rich getting richer;" they have a problem with the rich getting richer at the expense of the middle class. Again, not trying to pick a fight, just trying to contextualize your question.
Disclaimer: I don't even live in the US; I make my modest income in Euros in a country with a 50% income tax rate and a 20% sales tax.
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So, what you're saying is that tax shelters should be closed?
These "tax shelters" include things like municipal bonds, so it won't be easy to shut them all.
If you do manage to shut them all, the rich may leave the USA and go to a more tax-favorable country. I hear the Bahamas are nice.
If you have a plan for preventing the rich from leaving the country, you still can't get them to invest their money effectively.
You could just take all the money from the rich, but that only works once and may have consequenc
Wrong assumption (Score:2)
The assumption that we have to take "the coming age of austerity" for granted is backwards. Health care and research aren't mutually exclusive. We need both, and the world has enough resources to provide both!
Happened in ag sci (Score:2)
Here at my university, after the budget cuts were announced the first thing we cut was the agricultural science department. I guess because it's not very glamorous anymore, and some of it is long term (and apparently no one needs to eat anymore, glad we got that one taken care of.). One of my interests is pomology (the study of fruit producing plants), and almost all of that got cut just about everywhere due to it's long term nature, so I wouldn't say it is out of the question that something similar could
A single source of funding = a single place to cut (Score:2)
Short answer: No. Nope, it can't. We need to get the budget balanced and the debt down to a reasonable amount. There will be many brutal discussions about what gets funded and what doesn't. Long term research just doesn't have the lobbying clout of Defense or Big Oil. They're going to get hammered. Note that I'm not endorsing cuts to long term research, just predicting that in the shady politics where an actual default is contemplated as a craven political move, we have no hope of actually doing anything us
Psychology (Score:2)
Well luckily there seems to be a lot of places you could take research money from without stinting technological or knowledge advancement.
I used to work in the Psychology department of a university and I dare you to come up with a reason why it benefits anyone to do another study on how harmful smoking is or the dynamics of a relationship.
Still they get millions in grants.
Wrong question (Score:2)
How about we stop giving more money to those who don't need it and share the wealth more evenly? Oh noes, that's socialism. Give me a fucking break.
I am pissed, because of a very recent study, that has shown once again that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Between 2000 and 2010 net income has dropped by 2.5% in Germany. Lower income groups have had a decrease between 16% and 22% in their paycheck. High income groups have seen a modest increase of 1%. Partly, because the low-wage sector was expan
Age of Austerity for Whom? (Score:3)
a serious concern (Score:3)
Cuts happen, it's just the way it is, stupid or not. There are a few things we could do to actually improve the research infrastructure in the country and get more out of the money we do have.
Primarily: stop giving out grants, move everything to industry style contracts. It's time to recognize that industrial research labs and academic research labs are operating on the same level. This does a few things: it allows the government to specify public ownership of research results (right now Universities keep their IP and defense contractors do not... odd, yes?), second, it leads to the normalization of lab pay. If you're on a contract, you should be paid the professional rate. Graduate tuition is simply academic administrators picking the government's pocket, things need to move to the cost plus fee model used in industrial contracts. Under a contract, that money would be moved over toward salary and benefits instead, a very good thing. A school could continue with the myth that their "students" are part time workers who require large amounts of "training", but then a government contracting officer could actually require proof of that statement, and details of the "training" being done.
Another thing that would help would be an acknowledgement that not everyone is cut out to run a lab. Long term research positions for people with PhDs should be viable career options rather than "spouse" prizes. There are many, many people out there who are great researchers and great team leaders, but can't write a grant to save their life. We still want those people to succeed at research.
Ok... long enough... essentially, anyone who tells you there isn't waste/fraud/abuse in scientific funding is full of BS, we can still do a lot better. If we're not willing to try to improve, we're going to keep losing money.
Spending on Research (Score:3)
You could cut all funding for scientific research or 10% from Defense. In the former cause you would decimate the American university system, and the economy as a whole. In the latter case you might have to do without the Joint Strike Fighter (the total cost of which is ten times the entire research budget) or about four nuclear subs. In neither case would you even put a dent in overall spending. A bit more perspective: federal spending on research is equal to approximately %30 of the amount paid for interest on the National Debt.
Fighting over rounding errors in the budget like funding for research, the top income tax rate, education, etc. is simply another way to divert attention from Defense and Health and Human Services, which are by themselves larger than the economies of many countries.
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Well if you are as confident as you sound then I guess there is no reason say anything other then "I disagree"
But just just because I am a fan of logic I would like to point your circular argument.
You "prove" that modern medicine has a handle on nutrition because modern medicine knows of no nutritional based diseases that are prevalent and can treat all that it finds.
But you fail to take into account that if modern medicine knows nothing/little about nutrition then it might not diagnosis a disease as nutrit
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Why would homeopathy work for anything? The mechanism is completely bogus. If anyone gets better after a homeopathic treatment, it's entirely placebo or luck (which is actually true of a lot of things -- we tend to naturally get over viruses like the cold and allergies wax and wane, etc.).
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>Alt-Med has been growing like gangbusters, its popularity at an all time high: it must work.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
It's only popular because people like you have been able to dress your snake oil up in white coats and "professional" language. It's marketing.
>Mark my words.
I've marked your words, and underneath I've written "raving loony."
You should be sued into the ground. Indeed, if a single person has died because you discouraged him or her from seeking actual effective treatment in time, you
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Why not give a small amount, even 10% of that research money go towards helping alternative medicine practitioners prove that their work is actually effective? We know it it from the millions of satisfied patients, now we just need some money and lab space to prove it.
There is plenty of money in the Alternative Medicine industry. Have you been seen what they charge for useless homeopathic medicines? Tell you what, why don't you put some of your money into just a few peer-reviewed scientifically sound research projects that don't rely on anecdotal evidence to prove their conclusions. Once you get something that proves your basic approach to medicine is sound, then we'll start throwing money at you. Until that, why should you get any more money than astrologists, psych
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Take $10,000,000 + "we think X causes cancer" and you will get, surprise surprise, "proof" that X causes cancer.
And "alt-med" is different? If you take $10,000,000 + "we think X cures cancer" and you will get, surprise surprise, "proof" that X cures cancer. Then all of the sudden we're all strapping magnets to our heads and yelling into our cell phones at a minimum 18" distance to avoid tumors because of the latest "study". The reason "Big Pharma" is so successful (aside from very favorable patent law) is that their research shows tangible, measurable results. "Alt-med," even after thousands of years of research
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I am not posting this to necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but growing popularity definitely does not correlate to effectiveness. After all, there are a lot of stupid people out there that will fall for anything, such as the less-reputable side of any business.
A few years back, my brother was hit by a reckless driver, and my brother's car was thrown into a tree. Long-story-short, he had nasty back problems for
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Because that money has ALREADY been spent on so called "Alt-Med" and the results disproved it.
In-fact your wording is that the money will go to "prove" it meaning that the money wouldn't go to science at all. Scientific research isn't spent to prove anything. It is spent to test hypothesis.
Spending money to prove quackery (aka alt-med) is spending money for advertising and propaganda not science.
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This is true. In fact, there's actually a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine [scienceblogs.com] is doing it. Total number of beneficial effective medical techniques they have developed via the use of chiropractic, homeopathy, chi, acupuncture, or any other so-called alternative medicine: 0. Their yearly budget: something in the range of $120 million. Your (if you're an American) tax dollars at work.
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I've seen it posted here before, but no-one's responded to this post with it, so I'll express the sentiment;
In the olden days, modern medicine as we know it didn't really exist, so any treatments were what we'd call 'alternative medicine' today. Over the years we discovered that some of it worked well, and some of it didn't, and by applying the techniques that had been found to work, modern medicine evolved. All that stuff that didn't work: well that's still alternative medicine.
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the rich benefit disproportionately from government services, they should pay their fair share for them.
So to you, "fair" is that out of 10 people, 1 person pays almost the entire bill, 4 people pay a little bit, and the remaining 5 pay nothing at all? On top of that, those non-paying 5 people are the ones consuming most of the benefits! This all seems "fair" to you?
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The non-paying 5 are not consuming most benefits. They have no factories to be protected by the police, they own no deposits to be insured by the government, they own no home to be protected from fire. They do not use the roads to make money, nor do they benefit from the legal system to uphold their patents or copyrights.
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What?
The police exist to protect people as well. I guess without factories, then there would be no rape, assault, theft or murder.
Then they do not have a single bank account (see FDIC), which is highly unlikely.
Many people that do not pay taxes live in free, or highly subsidized government housing (e.g., paid for by taxes). This building/house will also be insure
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2. That's a simplistic way of putting it
3. That's the way it has to work
Yes the rich should pay more back to society, having gotten more. I see no evidence that the American dream is reality: hard work and self-sustenance are illusions that conservatives pretend are real. The rich owe more back to the public than the poor, since they earned their wealth either by being born into wealth, getting a lot of help from the public, or most ofte
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Re:how about just make the rich pay their fair sha (Score:5, Interesting)
the rich benefit disproportionately from government services, they should pay their fair share for them.
So to you, "fair" is that out of 10 people, 1 person pays almost the entire bill, 4 people pay a little bit, and the remaining 5 pay nothing at all? On top of that, those non-paying 5 people are the ones consuming most of the benefits! This all seems "fair" to you?
Yes, it's completely reasonable, for 2 main reasons:
1. Trying to get anything out of the non-paying 5 is about as effective as trying to squeeze blood from a stone. They don't have the money, that's why they aren't paying. Trying to get anything more from the chipping-in-but-still-not-huge contributors also is hard to do right now.
2. The guy who's paying almost the entire bill has the ability to make the rules about who gets what.
The other issue is that once you take away the silly analogy of a country with 10 people in it and get back in reality, you discover that your numbers are misleading at best: The groups you've described only apply to income taxes, and ignore all other kinds of taxes (most notably payroll taxes). And the 1 guy with a lot of cash is paying about 70% of the total bill, not "almost the entire" amount.
The alternate analogy here: Imagine 10 people living in a house with a roof that needs $20K worth of repairs. 1 person makes $100K, 4 people make $50K, 2 people make $15K, and 2 people make nothing. How would you going to come up with the money to pay for it? Would you kick out the people making nothing, knowing that they have nowhere to go and will likely die of exposure or starvation once winter comes? Would you try to ignore the need for repairs until the roof collapses?
Re:how about just make the rich pay their fair sha (Score:5, Insightful)
The rich benefit disproportionally from stability. Put it this way: How much happier is each segment of the population living here than any backwards place in the world with little police and poor sanitation?
The rich have everything to lose; they are usually making their money from large businesses that could suffer or fail entirely without police, without the sanitation necessary for cities, and without fairly stable government (taxes, property ownership/deeds, etc). If they lived in a place like that, a huge number of costs would appear--armed security guards, bribes, custom-built sanitation, etc. Oh, there would still be rich people, as indeed there are, but they'd almost certainly be terrified every day that organized crime may come knocking on their door and take away their money, their children, their goods, or their lives. Compared to that, taxes are a percentage of their income. Where would you live?
The middle-income (who are generally tradesmen) benefit a great deal, because they depend on people paying them fairly for their knowledge, their ability, or their goods, but they are not balanced on the edge of a knife. They aren't extremely obvious targets, but they'll probably deal with a certain number of criminals every year. They probably know how to, or have the resources to, acquire sanitation, but it's on a personal/familial scale, not distributed across an entire company's holdings. In general, they probably prefer to live wherever they were born, because they know the ins and outs of the place.
Poor people in first-world countries have to work every day, may hardly get breaks, are treated poorly, live in crappy housing, and if they're stuck with a knife, often there's not a lot that people will do. They have it better than poor people in third world countries, but how much better? Especially when they're taxed for the luxury of living in your country--which will be robbing them of purchasing power that they may desperately need?
Re:how about just make the rich pay their fair sha (Score:5, Insightful)
out of 10 people, 1 person pays almost the entire bill, 4 people pay a little bit, and the remaining 5 pay nothing at all
This is a classic Big Lie, which has been repeated so often that not only does the right wing now treat it as gospel, but the left wing is starting to let it slide in debates. In reality, when you look at the total tax burden (not just the narrowly defined "federal income tax," which does not include the FICA taxes that everyone with a paycheck pays) of federal, state, and local taxes, poor people pay an equal or higher percentage of their income in taxes than rich people do. You can argue all day about whether you think this is a good thing or not, but as the saying goes, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts."
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And the lower 25% pay hardly any overall taxes and the lower 50% pay 0 or negative federal income taxes.
The lower 15% are paid not to work, and the middle make enough in wages or handouts to survive having to pay for the generational debt passed to them.
The system is broken on both ends and is pressing on the middle. It needs to be fixed. I don't think you realize how much money is being taken in a year.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/feed-your-family-on-10-billion-a-day.html [typepad.com] kind of puts
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The lie comes from focusing on only one tax from one level of government.
This link http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/02/tax-rates-for-rich-and-poor.html [blogspot.com] shows the effective federal tax rate:
From a recent CBO report http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/98xx/doc9884/12-23-EffectiveTaxRates_Letter.pdf [cbo.gov], here are effective tax rates (total taxes divided by total income) for 2005, the most recent year available:
Lowest quintile: 4.3 percent
Second quintile: 9.9 percent
Middle quintile: 14.2 percent
Fourth quintile: 17.4 percent
Percentiles 81-90: 20.3 percent
Percentiles 91-95: 22.4 percent
Percentiles 96-99: 25.7 percent
Percentiles 99.0-99.5: 29.7 percent
Percentiles 99.5-99.9: 31.2 percent
Percentiles 99.9-99.99: 32.1 percent
Top 0.01 Percentile: 31.5 percent
For state and local taxes,http://www.itepnet.org/whopays3.pdf [itepnet.org] shows that lower income pays a higher tax rate (11%) than higher income (7%).
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Perhaps the rich should just get less services....
The problem is these services are so complex only the Rich have resources to use them.
I remember in my state there was a new service for Small Businesses to give some discounts for training. At the time I worked for a small company (5 employees) we spent a day filling out the paper work only to get it rejected because the training had to be in state. So we then had to fine training available in State then it was rejected because our reasons for such trainin
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Most of the Rich Work quite hard and make a lot of sacrifices during their life to get rich. You make it sound like it is an easy thing to obtain. Being born in a rich family helps a little bit but it isn't a guarantee. There are a lot of stories of the Self made man, who just got sick of being poor and then rose to become rich.
They didn't want to live like they are poor and wanted more services in life so they worked to become rich.
I have worked with Rich People and they work very hard. I have worked wit
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The rich pay most of the taxes anyway
This is a myth. In most western nations, the _middle classes_ fund the majority of government services. The poor don't pay much if any tax, and the rich can generally shelter themselves from much of the taxation. It's Ma and Pa Kettle who shoulder the burden.
This is one of the contributing reasons third world countries have trouble funding their programs - No middle classes. They just have very rich and very poor. It's also one of the real dangers posed by the
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They have 80% of the wealth.
The wealthy are the ones that use the services. The poor own no oil companies that need protecting.
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You know... most businesses hire private security. Just sayin'.
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Federal Dollars in US. (Score:2)
While most basic R&D is done within Universities, it is mostly funded by grants – mostly Federal in nature (NIH, NSF, etc.) Sometimes a interested party will throw money at basic research [non-profits researching a specific illness, Industry groups, etc.]. So if Federal research dollars dry up I suspect we will see a lot of unemployed post-docs and graduate students.
Biting the hand that feeds them (Score:2)
The problem is a Rift between companies who can fund their research and the Scientific community.
A lot of companies would like to put money into R&D however the Scientific community tends to shun Private Enterprise as the evil daemon. Especially when they ask what could this research be used for they go into so prerecorded rant about how Science isn't about making money it is just about learning more about the universe...
For a lot of this stuff they can say. "Smaller Faster Computer Chips", "Possible n
Re:Biting the hand that feeds them (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the case. Or to clarify for some departments this is not the case, for instance engineering departments have long been heavily funded by private enterprise. In the life sciences it used to be that you didn't go after private money; there wasn't any as biotech's really only been around since the 1980's. However the competition for academia's traditional funding sources (federal agencies like the NIH and NSF) has gotten...untenable. NIH grants were designed for about a 30% success rate: about one applicant in three won a grant. So if you were competent you could keep your lab running by getting a grant on your first or second try and have overlapping grants. Rarely did someone get laid off or projects interrupted due to lack of funds. Now grant success rates are typically half what they were, and success rates in the single digits are increasingly common. Academic researchers are increasingly at risk of losing their jobs, projects get side tracked by the desperate and continual writing of grant proposals. This has been the trend over the course of my career starting in the late 90's and there is no end in sight. The traditional funding sources in the life sciences are no longer something you can depend on to keep your lab running, so you look elsewhere. There is pressure on academics to get patents on their discoveries, to form start up companies, and to form partnerships with private industry. This started before I did, and was merely uncommon by the time I entered grad school. Now it's everywhere and a decent patent is worth more to an assistant professor up for tenure than a Nature paper.
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I'm sorry but that's just plain mistaken. The modern university hoards the results of it's researchers as a means to fund their own bottom line and they are every bit as much pandering to Corporate interest as any other industry today. Corporations have cut research spending because they have become myopic and obsessed with quarterly earnings. The idea of investing any significant amount for the possible long term benefit to the company or humanity in some distant future is a quaint idea from some distant p
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Research doesn't drive bubbles, it drives new markets. Bubbles are over investments on current markets, in an attempt to get rich quick.
Once we get rid of the Get Rich Quick and live modestly like it was back in the 50's then things can get better. But we can't do it like the Rules of the 1950's are still valid today.
We need new Liberal Rules, however for these Liberal Rules to succeed we need conservative minded people to make sure they are not exploited.
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Point 1:
Research drives knowledge and innovation.
Knowledge and innovation drives productive.
Increased productive equals more cash in your pocket.
The Market generates signals on how to allocates resources
Markets are driven by expected future earnings.
Future earnings are determined by future productive.
The future is hard to predict.
So yeah, sometimes the market gets out of kilter. Sometimes it because of technology - sometimes tulips, but at the base it is irrational exuberance.
Point 2: The 50s are dead.
If yo
Re:yea uhhhh (Score:5, Informative)
Government doesn't ever realize a black hole of research because the researcher will always say "A break through is immanent", just to get the next grant for the next ten years, until he can retire. Private enterprise, as much as the left wing hates it, knows when and how to cut research that is a dead end.
Wrong. Private enterprise simply doesn't invest in research, unless it's something that's basically a guaranteed win that'll return a profit in 5 years or less. Private companies never do fundamental research, because it costs too much and if it does result in profit, it won't be for decades. Companies used to do more of this, back in the 50s-60s, but look at one of the main companies that did this: Bell Labs. Bell was a giant telecom monopoly that had to spend some of their money on something that looked good so government regulators wouldn't mess with them, so they created Bell Labs and put a bunch of people to work chasing their dreams and inventing Unix and C.
The days of a single telecom monopoly are gone, and I don't think anyone wants to return to the days of being required to lease your phone at a high price and pay by the minute.
wrong (Score:3)
Many big companies used to invest in long term research, and some still do: IBM, Google, Microsoft, Xerox, Nokia, and others. In addition to their own research labs, they also have been paying for university research, gave scholarships, collaborating with researchers, participating in the scientific community, etc.
A company that hasn't been doing any significant research in 15 years is... Apple. All Apple ever does is suck up other people's research results and computer science graduates, charge inflate
If not money, then what? (Score:2)
If not money, then how would you allocate resources to “productive” uses? Have you read any recent communist economic publications? They basic admit that Hayek was right when it came to price signals. If the hard left is giving up on a command and control economy you know that money is important.