When Scientists Give Up 348
New submitter ferespo sends a report from All Things Considered about the struggle for scientific funding in today's political and economic environment. "Federal funding for biomedical research has declined by more than 20 percent in the past decade. There are far more scientists competing for grants than there is money to support them." It's a tough situation for new scientists trying to set up labs. In addition to all of the scientific work they do, it's essentially a full-time job in addition to that to maintain funding. The reviewers who decide which projects receive funding are risk-averse to the point where innovative research is all but off the table. The consequences of this are two-fold: not only are we giving up on the types of research that led to so many of today's marvels, but many promising young scientists are giving up on the field altogether.
If you think medical funding is bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Try the "not immediately useful" sciences, like astronomy, which are shedding researchers like crazy as the NSF / what-have-you cuts their budgets and increase "proposal pressure". Just talking to a PhD will reveal two hard truths about being a scientist: you will never be rich and you will never have job security. It takes a special kind of crazy to be a scientist these days.
Re:If you think medical funding is bad (Score:5, Insightful)
you will never be rich and you will never have job security
So it's like most jobs then.
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Similar to many jobs. That's what I had in my mind when I posted my sarcastic comment. "Welcome to the real world." I like developing software and have been doing so in industry for a twenty years or so. Do I love my job? Not entirely. There's a lot of BS involved surrounding the parts of it that I enjoy doing. I read the summary as if academics are dismayed that they're susceptible to the same problems we all have to face. I'd love to have a guaranteed job where I get to focus all my time on things
If you think research is bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If you think medical funding is bad (Score:5, Insightful)
In college I started out as a physics major. Then I realized "holy shit I'll never get a job" and switched to engineering.
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In college I started out as a physics major. Then I realized "holy shit I'll never get a job" and switched to engineering.
I'm sorry you bailed on your real potential. Not as a physicist, but the training helps make you a better IT prospect than anyone who learned coding in college. Let's see:
myself - physics major, now a rather well paid systems/storage analyst for a fortune 500
friend 1 - physics major, astrophysics major (ABD), now a systems admin and IT director for a major hospital
friend 2 - math major, now a highly paid database admin and IT director for a major health care firm
friend 3 - biology major, now a high priced
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Ummmm...I'm not unemployed and am doing rather well for myself. I taught myself to code starting with BASIC in elementary school. I went for a master's in electrical engineering specializing in computer architecture so I could really get into the hardware, which gave me a much better understanding of software.
Anyway, glad you're doing well. I've always said that when I retire I'm going to go back to school and finish that physics degree.
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I've always said that when I retire I'm going to go back to school and finish that physics degree.
If it's something you're passionate about, don't wait. I went back as soon as my son left the house, and I found I had more free time. Very satisfying.
Move To China (Score:4)
Re:Move To China (Score:5, Insightful)
America is fast becoming a Design and Services Economy, best to leave the real innovation to China and others.
Except China hasn't done any particularly innovative research yet, at least in the biomedical sciences. Its biggest success story is BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute, although they rarely use the full name), which is sort of like the Foxconn of genomics. I don't mean that in a bad way, because they've been very productive (and their employees seem to be better-paid and less suicidal), but they're basically just a sequence factory. Ironically, all of the tech they're using was developed in the US and UK. Their approach to developing their own sequencing technology? Buy a US company (Complete Genomics).
Although you're partly right about "move to China" being the solution - they've been trying to repatriate leading expat scientists for years (with some success), but now they've started luring non-Chinese too. (Most of whom don't actually move to China, but maintain joint appointments, because you'd have to be absolutely insane to leave California for China if you weren't native Chinese.) Still, anyone in that position is usually going to be in the top tier of researchers already (one is a Nobel laureate), not the hypothetical junior faculty member worrying about tenure.
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Still, anyone in that position is usually going to be in the top tier of researchers already (one is a Nobel laureate), not the hypothetical junior faculty member worrying about tenure.
Which really seems like a missed opportunity. Get them when they are cheap. You would get 10,000, barely making rent, juniors with their entire careers in front of them for the cost of a noble laureate. It has got to be a better cost to result ration to buy talent before it becomes a hot commodity.
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The space race of the 21st Century is over. China won, the US lost.
Won how? The US per-capita GDP is still about eight times higher than China's, the US share of Nobel laureates is vastly higher, and NASA is driving a dune buggy on Mars, not the Chinese.
Happened to me (Score:5, Interesting)
More people who want money than there is money? (Score:2)
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Doesn't surprise me (Score:5, Insightful)
We're at a point where there's nothing going for scientists. They have to fight, all simultaneously:
-for funding in a very crowded market
-Politicians trying to control the results of what they do, to the point where the scientific integrity is at risk
-Govt's muzzling you because they don't want pesky things like facts to get in the way of their ideology
-Idiot reporters who completely, constantly, and continually misrepresent your research (should it make the presses)
-umpteen bajillion quacks who don't know their ass from their mouth, yet somehow manage to convince people that they are right and that actual experts are wrong (ie: Jenny McCarthy, or whoever FoodBabe is)
Doing scientific research is hard enough as it is, without having to deal with the current environment of anti-intellectualism.
I'm honestly surprised that scientists arn't yet being marched into concentration camps at gunpoint.
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I'm honestly surprised that scientists arn't yet being marched into concentration camps at gunpoint.
We're planning that for this weekend.
Re:Doesn't surprise me (Score:4, Interesting)
-Politicians trying to control the results of what they do, to the point where the scientific integrity is at risk
-Govt's muzzling you because they don't want pesky things like facts to get in the way of their ideology
These issues honestly aren't that big of a problem for all but a handful of people; certainly not for anyone in the biomedical sciences.
-Idiot reporters who completely, constantly, and continually misrepresent your research (should it make the presses)
That's certainly true, but I would add that university PR departments are just as awful, and scientists willingly submit to that.
Doing scientific research is hard enough as it is, without having to deal with the current environment of anti-intellectualism. I'm honestly surprised that scientists arn't yet being marched into concentration camps at gunpoint.
What makes you think the current environment is anything new? Do you think that Americans (or any other nationality) were somehow less ignorant and anti-intellectual 30 years ago, or 100? The only thing that's definitely worse is that electronic media have made it so much easier for us to read all the awful things that Joe Public says about us. At the same time, there are more people working in science than ever before, it's much more ethnically diverse (our imported Chinese laborers are treated very well compared to the men who built railroads in the late 1800s), and the opportunities for women keep getting better. We also have something resembling a real community of scientists that can advocate for common interests, instead of being merely a handful of aristocrats who could afford to tinker in labs.
I don't want to sound too idealistic, because I agree with the basic premise of the article, but I'm obsessed with the recurring theme of social decay and lamentations for some fantasy golden age that never really existed. The real problem isn't that society has turned against us, it's that policy makers, university bureaucrats, and senior scientists have deliberately generated an over-supply of PhD recipients, and we've simultaneously become utterly dependent on a pool of government funding that is not infinitely growable. I am not happy about any of this, since it is painfully obvious that I picked the wrong career 15 years ago, but I'm not going to blame Middle America for my shitty job prospects. (And I say this as someone who is not usually shy about expressing my elitist disdain for the ignorance of Middle America.)
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Do you think that Americans (or any other nationality) were somehow less ignorant and anti-intellectual 30 years ago, or 100?
Ignorant perhaps, but definitely anti-intellectual has swung back and forth over the past 100 years or so. 20 years ago, computer programming was all the rage for everyone -- and that's not exactly brainless work. Between the end of WW2 and about a decade after the moon landing, Americans were all about science -- promises of flying cars and robot housekeepers and who knows what else. Didn't make your average Joe any smarter, but it kept him interested in what science was doing (or more precisely, what i
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20 years ago, computer programming was all the rage for everyone -- and that's not exactly brainless work.
We must read different news sources then, because from what I can see it's becoming all the rage now, and people are starting to use phrases like "coding literacy" and discussing whether programming should be part of primary education.
Between the end of WW2 and about a decade after the moon landing, Americans were all about science -- promises of flying cars and robot housekeepers and who knows what els
Not only this... (Score:2)
No Leaders anywhere today... (Score:3)
The lack of Leadership, and I mean true forward looking people who take risks to move the Nation forward are no where to be found. The mantra of becoming rich is gospel and quick monetization, quarterly Wall Street figures reign supreme.
The Leaders of the past few generations, those who would see a public interest and use the immense power and resources of the Government to enable it, are long gone.
So the question isn't really one of giving up... the question is one of choice and priority. If you have no vision and no real sense of purpose beyond enriching yourself when you occupy a position of influence, then the rot will spread and not just Scientists but many others will wither away as well.
We can spend on un-ending and meaningless Wars, enriching the military-industrial-political complex through war mongering, developing our sense of uber individuality where our selfish needs are supreme above any common good or we can choose to go after bettering the lives of our fellow humans by challenging ourselves to bigger better goals and being a good/reasonable neighbor.
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So the question isn't really one of giving up... the question is one of choice and priority. If you have no vision and no real sense of purpose beyond enriching yourself when you occupy a position of influence, then the rot will spread and not just Scientists but many others will wither away as well.
I'm starting a new movement "The Boot Party": everyone promises to vote *against* the incumbent regardless of political party.
Government not acting in the interests of the people? Give 'em the boot!
Won't you join me?
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I'll enlist! Where do we start? Here is one guy in Iceland who did just that and won...
http://www.pri.org/stories/201... [pri.org]
I have seen him talk and he is funny and very sensible. I wish he'd have left some sort of legacy so a pattern of change and good candidates could appear. Perhaps wishful thinking but its a start.
Tax patents/royalties to fund basic research (Score:5, Interesting)
You have a multi-billion-dollar-sales patented drug? Chip in 0.5% of the revenue to fund NIH grants. Or make your own equivalent grants to truly independant researchers.
Enter into a licensing deal on a drug patent? Chip in 0.5% of the revenue to fund grants.
Re:Tax patents/royalties to fund basic research (Score:5, Insightful)
Even then, the problem is the fundamental science aspect. That's what they can't get funding for. You're talking about engineering work, something we're trying to turn into a product. You'd still need to be able to convince the NIH to throw some of that money at people who are trying to find out the answers to questions that may or may not ever have a practical application. But we won't know if there's a practical application until we do the research.
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I heard this piece on NPR yesterday, and the thing that kept running through my mind is how the pharmaceutical industry is extorting huge profits based on fundamental research-- with much of that happening under NIH grants. Why not set a tax rate on drug patent royalties and use that to fund the NIH?
Because that's not really how basic research is supposed to work, and because the gap between NIH-funded research (which is indeed hugely important, but not the way you seem to think it is) and actual drugs is e
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I agree about the patents but blame the corporations that claim they can't make the drugs with out them
Intellectual Property Tax! (Score:2)
Your comments got me thinking -- if people want to treat 'intellectual property' as 'property', then shouldn't it be subject to property taxes?
Of course, the problem with both of our ideas is that the companies would do exactly what they've been doing with their logos -- spin off a company in another country, give the IP to that company, and then rent the use of the IP back to the original company. (thereby reducing the profits of the main company, reducing their tax burden ... and the spin-off is in a low
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Enter into a licensing deal on a drug patent? Chip in 0.5% of the revenue to fund grants.
Great in theory; does not work in practice. Look at Hollywood. Every film ever made loses money for the studio. Their accounting says so. The drug companies would just adopt the same scheme, and never pay a penny.
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I am assuming you never licensed a patent from a university. I can assure you that they have become quite adept at extracting money from the licensing of some pretty pathetic patents.
I recently inherited the handling of our licensed technology portfolio, and I can assure you that we pay a pretty penny for some almost trivial, but essential patents.
The downside is that universities are beginning to use this calculus in their decisions to bring on key researchers, and to focus their efforts on "profitable"
Not enough STEM workers, obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly, we need to encourage more young people to go into STEM fields. Until then, more H1-Bs for the best and brightest biomed workers.
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You are joking, but really, how does the "Grant money for science is drying up" exist in the same country where we continually get "there are not enough people going into science" ?
There is a cognitive disconnect here. It even exists in private industry, where much much less funding is going into research as well.
The obvious solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious solution is to return to traditional methods: establish an independent income, then take up scientific research as a hobby.
Historically, our most notable scientists were working at day jobs or otherwise independently wealthy, and did amazing research on their own as a hobby. Some devoted entire wings of their house towards scientific research, amassing a collection of equipment (or specimens) over decades.
Henry Cavendish [wikipedia.org], of the Cavendish experiment, is one such example. The experiment was so delicate that air currents would affect the measurements, so Cavendish set up the experiment in a shed on his property and measured the results from a distance, using a telescope.
There used to be a term "Gentleman Scientist" [wikipedia.org] for this, but it might more accurately be called "self-funded research".
Consider Paul Stamets [wikipedia.org] as a modern example. With only an honorary doctorate, he is co-author on many papers [google.com] and has proposed several medications, including treatments for cancer [fungi.com].
I could also nominate Robert Murray Smith [youtube.com] to the position. His YouTube Videos [youtube.com] are as good as many published Chemistry papers.
The benefits are obvious: You get to work on whatever you think is interesting (or fruitful), you can set your own pace, and you can draw your own line between supporting your dreams and your lifestyle: If you have a family emergency, you can pause your research and spend more money on personal welfare. It also forces you to come up with more efficient (read: less expensive) ways to work.
There's a wealth of useful equipment on eBay and other places, big expensive equipment is not out of the reach of the dedicated researcher. Ben Krasnow has three (I think) electron microscopes [hackaday.com]. I personally own a UV/VIS spectrophotometer. a microgram scale, and a Weston cell.
The idea that "research can only be done at the behest of government" or "is only associated with university" is a modern fiction. Government would *like* you to believe that everything depends on their whim and largesse, but it's not the only, nor even the best way.
Build a lab and start tinkering, or join a hackerspace. Lots of people do it. Lots of good science is done this way.
Re:The obvious solution (Score:4, Informative)
The obvious solution is to return to traditional methods: establish an independent income, then take up scientific research as a hobby.
The problem though is that a lot of the big scientific problems require more capital than any ordinary person would ever be able to amass on their own. My PhD project consumed supplies at the rate of tens of thousands of dollars per year, and that is ignoring the cost of time, utilities, physical space, and standard lab supplies that our lab kept around for general consumption. That also is ignoring the cost of the instrumentation that we used to do the work.
If someone did fund something like it independently, then they would run in to the cost of publishing the results; the main paper from my graduate work cost somewhere around $1,500 to publish in an open access journal. Without budgets set up for that purpose, why would someone do this on their own?
Sure, there are interesting projects that can be self-funded, but not many of them. And the two people described in the NPR story were both working on projects that were way beyond that level of resource requirements.
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The obvious solution is to return to traditional methods: establish an independent income, then take up scientific research as a hobby.
Sad but true. My only friend who made it to being a teaching professor can sustain himself because he was rich going in. He donates his teacher's salary checks to a charity or some such, and lives off his investments. He teaches science and does a bit of research because that is his passion. No way he could make it otherwise.
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It also forces you to come up with more efficient (read: less expensive) ways to work.
What is the "less expensive" way to store & protect your anthrax, or other dangerous pathogen that you'd like to muck with? How do you bypass the fees & other costs mandated by government, such as the FDA requirements for drug tests, or hazardous waste disposal, or a 24/7 guard & clean room to make sure your anthrax isn't stolen or accidentally released?
Sometimes, shooting a person in the head doesn't force them to come with a way to survive with a hole in their head... it just kills them.
The idea that "research can only be done at the behest of government" or "is only associated with university" is a modern fiction.
I thi
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You should have picked a better example. Remember just a while ago where a very well funded organization (CDC) with everything you mentioned misplaced some damned smallpox [theguardian.com] in a friggin' cardboard box?
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The obvious problem (Score:2)
Some great science can be done on very low budgets, even by high school students. [smithsonianmag.com] However, Space X was not and never could be the product of a high school science fair. Nor could the Human Genome project.
Remove public funding, and science will indeed to back to hobbyist, 18th Century style....where the only people who can afford to do expensive science are the idle rich. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not trade thousands of universities and colleges doing science involving millions of students an
Risk aversion (Score:3)
The reviewers who decide which projects receive funding are risk-averse to the point where innovative research is all but off the table.
One of my all-time favorite quotes:
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." -- Alan Kay
Not just lack of funding (Score:3)
not in the written story (Score:2)
I listened to this on the radio, and they left some bits out.
Apparently Bill Clinton and GW Bush substantially increased funding ironically. The lab community were foolish, took all that money and used it to build new labs... they assumed the funding would continue indefinitely and they were wrong. Now all those new labs are floundering looking for funds. It's not that funding has dropped from historic levels... it's that there was a massive increase in the late 90s early 2000's that didn't continue.
STEM (Score:3)
The problem is that we don't have enough people graduating with STEM degrees. All the smart people people at Fox news know this.
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Not in nominal dollars (Score:2)
They are crying about funding in real dollars. Please cry to the Fed about that. In addition, plugging numbers from their own publications [amfar.org] into online CPI calculators shows they are overstating the case (Shocking!)
Political Posts Galore (Score:2)
There's going to be a LOT of posts about politics here. Mine will be no different. oh look, the first post is about global warming. "Just link your thesis to Global Warming, and you won't have a problem."
Except that's the complete opposite of what the article is saying...
We need good science. I'm very annoyed that we are subsidizing profitable industries while NOT funding important science work. You all should be too. What happened to us? What happened to America? When did we become so.... Stupid? When
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It's sort of funny but... (Score:2)
So I have a simple idea, half the DHS budget and hand it to fundamental research. Also play a random game where projects are ordered by what seems to be some sort of worthiness. Then use that as a weighted order to select random projects. Th
Re:Easy solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly that is true, that and a few other sexy items just grease the path.
I think the realization of us being $17 tril in debt, the decline in our national intelligence, the decline in our politically correct institutions of learning, our political commitment to mediocrity, and more such, have set us on the path for not doing basic research anymore as it does not get votes.
I think we are at the end, and some other nation, maybe China, will have to take over world "leadership."
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I want to reassure you, we have the best governement money can buy!
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Gee, if only someone like Barry Goldwater had warned his fellow Republicans about the consequences of climbing into bed with the Jesus freaks.
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Re:Easy solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, suggest you are disproving it and Exxon will fund you up the wazoo.
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously?
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
The Koch' brothers also funded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatur project, which started out with key people being sceptical about global warming. But the data convinced them otherwise:
http://www.theguardian.com/sci... [theguardian.com]
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, the conspiracy theory that the government is funding climate scientists who say that global warming is real and caused by human activity with the purpose to strengthen the government's authoritarian grip on society is a myth. But also the more plausible idea that scientists exaggerate their findings to get more funding does not seem to be true:
http://arstechnica.com/science... [arstechnica.com]
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously?
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
The Koch' brothers also funded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatur project, which started out with key people being sceptical about global warming. But the data convinced them otherwise:
http://www.theguardian.com/sci... [theguardian.com]
right... and that's even to be expected. I don't fault the oil industry for funding research that furthers their goals. It makes sense.
The problem is with the public. You have less than 100 credible scientists worldwide that have a problem with the idea of Climate change being a problem created by human activity. And of those only a few actually flat out deny it entirely. The entirety of the rest of the scientific community world wide, scientists that number in the millions, fully support the idea. This isn't just a majority, it's a broad and overwhelming consensus. There are more scientists that deny Relativity, Evolution or Continental drift, than deny climate change. If you doubt the scientific consensus on climate change at this point you're just an ideolog that will argue your political point until the house burns down around you.
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"Assuming that oil companies fund studies that disprove man-made global warming and governments fund studies that prove it, "
There are no studies that disprove it. Their are papers that cherry pick one thing and then go on about it being a reason to doubt AGW.
Fact of the matter, AGW is EASY science, and easy to test. AGWs exact impact on climate is harder science.
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The amount of money that Exxon spends -- actually the amount of money that the entire oil industry spends on climate research -- is dwarfed by government funding. By an order of magnitude. These are easily obtained figures, just look them up.
How much of that government funding is spent on big ticket items like building, launching and collecting data from satellites, or maintaining and collecting data from a large network of weather stations, or deploying and collecting data from 3,600 ARGO floats? Those are things that someone like Exxon are unlikely to fund for any reason yet the information they collect is quite valuable.
Re:Easy solution (Score:4, Informative)
No. No it is not.
You are lying.
You are spreading myths.
Assuming that oil companies fund studies that disprove man-made global warming and governments fund studies that prove it, you would expect to see a 10-to-1 ratio in the number of studies published for AGW versus against. And that's pretty much what you see out there.
No it is not what you see out there.
Your statement belies a belief that who pays determines the outcome. Believe it or not, most scientists have a tremendous amount of integrity and follow the rigor required by the scientific method. That's why you dont see many of them working for oil companies. Some scientists have worked for oil companies (or any company) and gotten the "wrong results" and ceased to work for those companies. The gentleman who did research on herbicides re: frogs is one such. Other scientists found themselves massaging data and keeping their jobs. They are in the minority however. And among government funded scientists you can find both flavors of scientist, those for and against. The key difference is, no one has had funding cut off due to results.
In short: you are full of it.
Re:Easy solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Didn't we see an article recently (like this AM for me) discussing lack of reproducability in studies?
And not as in "noone bothered to reproduce our study", but "we couldn't even reproduce our own study when someone paid us to"....
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This is an opinion of yours, regardless of your stating it as fact. There are numerous examples of scientists faking data, fudging data, faking entire studies and seeking confirmation for their bias. They are human with each and every human foible others have. You are also incorrect in that there are a large number of scientists working for oil and other venues you personally do
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Informative)
So.. let's mod the idiot +4 insightful, because we're apparently dumbfucks who believe stupid-conspiracy theories about science funding.
So here's the Actual breakdown of NSF research funding [nsf.gov](which is about 80% of their total funding [nsf.gov], with the rest allocated to science education and overhead).
Now, back to that first link. About 1.75% of research funding goes to environmental research of any sort, which is the umbrella category for climate change research among a fuck-ton of others. half goes to defense research.
So if you want an "easy target" for money, there's your answer. Not paranoia about evil climate change researchers. Next is health, with a good 25%ish, which is the thing that this article whines about. So, yeah, change from an area that gets 25% of national research spending, to one that gets 2. Good job.
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I would say that the defense spending one is a bit misleading, since a lot of basic science winds up under the Defense Department part of it. Friends of mine were researchers working on a particular parasite that primarily lived in snails. Because some of the neurological pathways involved in what the parasite did to the snails were congruent to those in humans they managed to get funding under the Defense Department banner. I am not sure that any weapon would ever be able come out if this (unless there was
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NIH is in addition to NSF funding. 25% of NSF funding goes to medical research. Just like DARPA doubles up on defense research. And NASA on aerospace.
And I did intentionally gloss over the fact that there are a few other major funding organizations out there for science grants, but I didn't want to get into the complex budgetary analysis that would involve, and the inevitable pedantic claims of comparing apples and oranges and whether certain allocations "count".
Focusing on the NSF seemed like a good way
Re:Easy solution (Score:4, Funny)
Or tell the Pentagon that it can be used to kill Muslims.
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i knew one of the idiots would say this.
and thats what it is: idiocy. unsupported by reality.
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I've heard that Breast Cancer works well.
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Accusations that climate science is money-driven reveal ignorance of how science is done
http://arstechnica.com/science... [arstechnica.com]
Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of basic research does not produce profits in anything like a marketable timeline, and yet, without basic research, marketable discoveries won't happen at all. You can't feed yourself on developments that might take years to produce results.
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Science is hard and requires years of experience. Virtually no PhD students produce ground-breaking discoveries, simply because they aren't at the level of expertise yet where they can do that. A PhD is a way of obtaining the expertise required to carry out research.
However, whenever you hear about a lab that discovered something amazing, it's almost certain that the grunt work of carrying out experiments and collecting data was done by grad students. You're right that most scientists are stuck doing boring
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With every post of yours I have the good fortune to read, I am imbued with the sense you really don't have a clue what's going on in the world. I'm sure you think you do - you seem to have gathered some things to hold on to and assume they represent reality, but it seems you go no further than that. You are happy with your choices, and will do nothing to challenge them or to even ensure they're correct.
The fact you think you know for sure that ground-breaking physics research will never lead to anything w
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Re:Easy solution (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised to see countries such as BRIC members, EU members, or other countries start trying to woo the best and brightest for economic gains.
It may not be profitable to do R&D in the next quarter, but governments will greatly profit in a longer interval. For example, Paraguay's stake in their hydroelectric dam might not have meant much in the next quarter when they went in with Brazil on building it... but it has guaranteed the country completely energy independence for now and the near future.
Government funding will still be around. It just won't be the US who hands over currency.
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I wouldn't be surprised to see countries such as BRIC members, EU members, or other countries start trying to woo the best and brightest for economic gains.
I think this focus on the "best and brightest" is actually a part of the problem. Sure, you'll need certain skills to run a research group, but these skills are found in many people and not just in the top of the batch. Beyond a certain point, the individual abilities of a researcher tend to be only weakly correlated with the actual research outcomes. There are many examples of people doing amazing science even though they are generally not considered to be top-notch scientists, even including Nobel laureat
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for every stupid project they come up with
Do you have any examples for this?
Oh yeah you don't, because there is no such thing...
Re:Stop using tax dollars (Score:4, Informative)
He's not entirely wrong, especially when some projects like these get government funding...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Stop using tax dollars (Score:3, Informative)
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True that it's political nonsense, but can you honestly agree that a study to find out how to buy worcestershire sauce is worthy of government funding?
I'm all for government funding of basic research, but has anyone considered that maybe the lack of funding is due to closer scrutiny of funding bunk?
Re: Stop using tax dollars (Score:4, Insightful)
True that it's political nonsense, but can you honestly agree that a study to find out how to buy worcestershire sauce is worthy of government funding?
I have no idea. Can you provide a copy of the actual report? Or only third-hand accounts of this report from an obviously biased source (Wikipedia links to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article that describes the organization the gives out the Golden Fleece Awards, with a three line summary of the report in question---what assurances do we have that this summary is accurate?)?
If the report's only purpose in life was to explain how to buy a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, then there is a problem. But is that really why the report was commissioned? Is that really all it says? Is is possible that the report is about purchasing food in general, with the sauce as an example? Is it possible that the report was commissioned in order to demonstrate how Byzantine the process of buying supplies is in an effort to cut down on paperwork in the long run? How do we know that the report actually cost $6,000?
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You bring up valid points. I'd actually love to see the report if I could find it (I'm sure it's out there somewhere). The most reliable source I can find is from the NY Times, which itself doesn't list any references either.
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07... [nytimes.com]
I guess I chose a bad example to run with. The point I'm trying to make is that some science is worth government funding......like Fermilab for example....where as some isn't. If I were to write a grant application on deconstructing the contents of t
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Yes, I do, and here is why:
United States Department of the Army for a 1981 study on how to buy Worcestershire sauce
The ESDoA is a fairly large organization. Studying the logistics, methods, and process of buying something is well worth the money.
They but this stuff but the ton. So looking at it is well worth while.
Should they have just assumed they had the best process? That the logistic are fine? That no new way could possible come out? that no unforeseen errors in the process had cropped up?
How do you thi
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for every stupid project they come up with
Do you have any examples for this?
A few gems, sorted by year.
That actually disproves the point more than it proves it. If you look at the author affiliations on that page, there is exactly one American researcher on there, and he is named with a large number of international researchers for the same work. On top of that, he is not solely an American, suggesting his funding contribution (which we cannot ascertain from this, other than to say it was almost certainly less than 100%) was likely not all from US funding.
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Sure, but can we assume that the other researchers didn't receive grant money from *their* governments?
One of the points of Ig Noble is to "make people laugh, and then make them think". After thinking about some of these nominees, you can sort of think about what their research could impact. However, some seem absolutely silly, and it would seem wrong to give them federal funding at some other projects expense. Deciding which projects are grant worthy is tricky, especially when you have so many PhD's wan
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Sure, but can we assume that the other researchers didn't receive grant money from *their* governments?
What difference does that make? Why should we care what kind of research the government of Japan wants to fund?
Re:Stop using tax dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stop using tax dollars (Score:4, Insightful)
That's kind of the point of the article. We are stopping use of tax dollars, and guess what? Private companies don't want to fund research, so it just doesn't happen. Great for your (short term) taxes, great for the companies (short term) profits, bad in the long term for absolutely everyone.
I assume that's exactly what I assume low-tax narcissists like you want.
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Cool. We'll just make sure that there are monopolies like Bell to support all that research.
Perhaps Comcast Labs?
Unfortunately Microsoft Labs seems to be a very poor producer given their finances (near unlimited) and their restraints (near unlimited).
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Bell Labs simply sat on many of their discoveries for decades because while they were clearly useful, they had this paranoid idea that anything that could let people use phones differently was a threat to their profits.
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And in hind sight, they where correct!
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Well it's not like government funded research has ever brought us anything useful -- think DARPA.
Stop using tax dollars (Score:2)
These days people expect Uncle Sugar will give them funding for every stupid project they come up with
It's a reasonable assumption when you consider things like this http://www.washingtonpost.com/... [washingtonpost.com]
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Private research dollars are expected to produce profitable innovations. Bell Labs wasn't run for the good of all humanity, it was run to innovate in the communications space, and it did. They made tremendous amounts of money on the research their lab produced. And the rest of us have continued to benefit from the existence of the transistor. But even though they were wildly successful, where are they now?
Government funded research isn't expected to produce profit, but instead to the betterment of all.
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We need more privately funded research, like we had in the days of Bell Labs or Xerox PARC.
It was a different country that had Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. Same reason why it is so difficult if not impossible to send people to the moon and back because this is not the same country as it was before.
However, I wonder what kind of research Google is doing? We see the self driving cars but is there some other stuff they are doing but not talking about? After all, they can easily hire a bunch of really young superbright PhD types, give them a facility and a few billion dollars, turn them loose on whate
Re:Welcome to government science (Score:5, Insightful)
No, actually the government was very dynamic at one time and got a lot of really impressive research done. Then people like you who think "government bad" started to complain about taxes and regulation, and over the course of the past 40 years or so, you've managed to suck a lot of life out of the government. It's the whole Gordon Gecko philosophy: greed is good. No, actually, it isn't. What's good is working together.
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"lack of government regulation"? The fucking government made them the monopoly they were.
Jesus, all the anti-government nut jobs came out for this article.
Re:The Invisible Hand (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt one could even begin to count the ways that government helped Bell along.