U.S. Science Agencies Get Some Relief In 2014 Budget 83
sciencehabit writes "The ghost of former President George W. Bush permeates the 2014 budget that Congress released this week. His presence is good news for physical scientists, but less cheery for biomedical researchers, as Congress reserved some of the biggest spending increases for NASA and the Department of Energy. The National Institutes of Health, meanwhile, got a $1 billion increase that is drawing mixed reviews from research advocates."
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Yeah, agree. I may be wrong, but I feel like NASA has a much better ROI than the NIH.
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Only if you're willing to put 0% of increases in disease treat-ability down to NIH research. It's hard to look at a person who survived cancer due to an experimental treatment and say "if we let 20 people like you die, we could have gotten an extra satellite in orbit." That's not to say I think NASA doesn't need funding, it does! It's just that NIH as useless is staggeringly unreasonable.
Re:Suck it NIH (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anybody called it "useless". They simply stated that NASA has a better ROI and deserved more of a budget increase.
They didn't DEFUND the NIH. They just gave them less of an increase. The real world isn't binary where it's all or nothing.
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I don't think it makes sense to talk about ROI when comparing NASA and NiH. The GP had it correct, how do you balance lives saved over space exploration. It is comparing apples and oranges. One might choose one or the other based on other criteria, but there's no way the units on ROI between NASA and NiH match. Think of it in terms of data types, you couldn't compare an integer and a character unless you coerced one to the other, and you would only do that if one was masquerading as the other.
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Taking the really long view, if we don't spread out into space we will become extinct the next time there is a planet wide catastrophe, whether of our own making(climate change, nuclear war) or some natural event (supervolcano, giant asteroid, gamma ray burst etc
And any other research is just equivalent to deckchairs on the Titanic
I am not sure what the NIH does. I thought it stood for Not Invented Here
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2007 NIH budget: $30.3 billion
Far from doubling the NIH budget hasn't kept pace with inflation and has been declining in real dollars since 2003. The $8.2 billion (not 10) stimulus largely went to fund existing projects that the previous decade of NIH budgets were too miserly to properly fund. Scientists have become accustomed to having the NIH whack 10% (or more) off of a successful grant application, and when only 18% (officially, though I know of no field getting any
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Actually, they did defund NIH. Our rents and other costs went up, so this is below sustaining level.
But that's in the real world, where cybersecurity gets Trillions that goes unremarked while real science gets fractions of pennies on the dollar.
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Yes, because no one will spend money to save a kid from cancer...
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How do you compare survival of the species (NASA) over increased survival of more people (NIH)? In my mind NASA funding is long term benefits while NIH is more about short term benefits. To put is simplistically, nothing the NIH is doing is going to save us from the inevitable death of this planet. But NASA research will. I'm digressing though. We can play a subjective cost/benefit comparison game all day. But that wasn't what I meant by ROI. I meant it in the strict economical sense. For every $1 of inves
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Get back to me after a disease kills off or renders ineffective half of your population.
A lot what we do keeps people from dying from non-rare diseases. The exotic diseases just get more press.
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Yeah that hurts if 100% of your population is living together. But if the population is segmented into 10-20% semi-isolated groups, that would help mitigate the effects of a pandemic wouldn't it?
The black plague killed something like 30-60% of Europe's population. But the world only lost an estimated 15-25% of the population. If early man had not explorer for new land and places to live the world population might've looked closer to Europe's loss wouldn't it?
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course, those 20 people are all over 80 years old and have numerous other problems besides cancer....
Flat is the new up (Score:2, Interesting)
Calling it a "spending increase" for NASA is a bit strongly worded. What it is, is that the 2013 sequester is not repeated in the 2014 budget-- it's still a cut from the funding from before the 2013 sequester.
Re:Flat is the new up (Score:4, Informative)
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So, you like getting dementia in your 60s then?
Considering we live to our late 80s now, that's going to be fun for you!
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No, I loved dementia in my teens. But the doctor is old and tired now.
Re me no worry about diseases (Score:1)
Technically, you can't have dementia in your teens.
Early onset is usually in the 40s.
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Retirement is between 62-67 in the US and 55-70 worldwide. Society has already decided it's probably best to throw in the towel at that point. So it's not a huge deal if my brain decides to. By then my kids would probably be grown up, I won't be having anymore, entertainment activities will probably start to diminish at that point as well. Most everything past 60 is gravy in my mind, heck if I die at 60, my kids will get more of my retirement. Not saying I'd kill myself or advocate for someone killing me wh
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Let's be honest after retirement you're just chilling in the waiting room while you wait for death to call your number.
I'll tell that to my dad who became a professor in his 60s
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He's not retired now is he?
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Hey they had to come up with the Sebelius Sneeze didn't they?
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Yes, it's too bad that the government printing money to pay for science programs creates inflation that reduces the net spending on science programs.
Raise Taxes! (Score:4, Insightful)
And give it all to NASA, pls.
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I get the feeling that Texas doesn't like their anagram.
Is a person who pays tax a taxen?
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And give it all to NASA, pls.
Pork isn't pork when it is your pork.
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FTFY
Maybe good news (Score:3, Insightful)
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As long as the number of planets available to colonize, divided by the years it takes to suck them dry is less than the amount of time it takes for planets to either reset or be created/discovered, then we can just become nomads.
Sucking planets dry in a great circle of abandon/respawn isn't much different than crop rotation on a galactic scale.
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Sounds like the strategy being used in West Virgina.
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Sounds like the aliens from Independence Day and Oblivion.
Ghost of GWB (Score:4, Insightful)
Ghost of GWB?
How many years has Obama been in office? Eventually you've got to give him some credit... you know, what with the 2nd term and all....
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It's nonsensical anyway, it's Congress that sets spending.
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People always rebut "But the President sends a proposed budget to Congress". Yes, and it's a complete waste of time. Congress takes that proposal, throws it directly in the garbage, and then creates a budget- as is their constitutional power. It has always worked like that and always will.
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What usually happens is when something unpopular happens with the budget, people blame Congress OR the President depending on which one is controlled by the party they dislike. Likewise when something popular happens with the budget, people give credit to Congress OR the President depending on which is controlled by the party they like.
Re:Ghost of GWB (Score:4, Informative)
In my book, holding a past increase steady warrants credit too (Obama resisted the urge to cut it back down to save money). But credit for bringing us up to current levels has to go to Bush. (Lots more pretty graphs to look at. [aaas.org])
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I'm confused, is this supposed to mean that it's easy or hard? I feel like it's the former, but the latter makes more sense. Because haggus is pretty good.
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That only works when he accepts credit for the shape the country is in since his election - and not since when he was swore the oath, but since the time he won the election.
People like to look at the months before Obama was sworn in and as an entire picture of Bush's presidency when in reality, it was businesses reacting to Obama winning
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Ghost of GWB?
How many years has Obama been in office? Eventually you've got to give him some credit... you know, what with the 2nd term and all....
What, specifically, should he be given credit for?
He already got the Nobel Peace Prize before he did anything related to peace.
I would say that he is in the credit hole at this point and still trying to dig his way out.
Technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Economics tells us that there are only two real things that cause economic growth.
1. Population growth.
2. Technological progress.
We need as much of the latter as possible, and should address that goal with the full intent of the nation starting with generous public support of math and science education as early as possible in the life of our children.
Furthermore any public constraint or impediment towards that end should be uprooted and eradicated with extreme vigor and prejudice.
The motivation is nothing short of the survival of the human species.
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This is wrong. The only thing that causes economic growth is increased production efficiency. That can be because of technology or improved methods, investments in capital equipment, etc. Technological progress that does not directly improve production efficiency does not grow the economy.
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Proof of point. Pre-industrial France to pre-industrial Britain. France was technologically superior, but they used that technology for artistic ventures like marionettes. Britain used it to increase its production.
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You have the cart before the horse.
Without technology Britain would not have been able to improve production. Technology pulls production efficiency along behind it.
Also the idea that improving production efficiency is the only thing that counts is missing the point that having new high value things to make, say like modern pharmaceuticals and CPUs and jetliners increases the value of manufacturing processes tremendously.
It isn't just making stuff that more efficiently, it's also about making stuff that has
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I think France did ok. They had a lot of social and economic issues and experienced a lot of revolts from the XVIIIth to the XIXth century. Plus they had the continental powers to deal with. Unlike the UK they couldn't just hunker down and rely on the Navy to defend their nation. They have always had to split their resources more towards land armies than the UK.
I mean Ampére? French. Sabatier? French. Pasteur? French. They didn't do THAT bad in technological development.
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I'm not saying they didn't do well. In fact I'm kind of stating the opposite, they did better. The problem was, most of their advances and efforts weren't about increasing production and efficiency and by that token economic growth. France stagnated economically during the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a result. It's a common question in European history classes, why Britain and not France for the industrial revolution? And pretty much every answer boils down to, their priorities were elsewhere.
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Napoleon III remodeled Paris at vast expense to stop the constant worker rebellions. Then his incessant infatuation with warfare ignited the Franco-Prussian war when he decided to invade Belgium. France had to pay heavy war reparations [wikipedia.org] after it lost that war with Germany. So it comes as little surprise their economy stagnated then.
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No, population growth increases economic growth as well. As production is defined by the number of workers x tool efficiency.
Most of the money is for cybersecurity and related (Score:1)
Trillions.
There's your budget hole.
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And no moral authority to confiscate wealth from hard working Americans to fund it.
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"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
In providing for the common defence you may need to establish R&D operations to find better versions of guns and other arms. In promoting the general welfare the government may ne