US government halts study on health effects of coal mining

The weasel words in that are "almost never".

If something has merit then let it stand on its merit.

> Our lives are better in many, many ways because purely scientific (or even engineering) endeavors we're funded by the public.

Sure and I'm not saying to block them all. I'm saying it's fine to take a look at them individually, there are no sacred cows, and labeling something "____ Science" doesn't make it beyond reproach.

> Unlike, say, funding Nazi political campaigns under the guise of "freedom of speech".

That was quick. Usually it takes more than one reply before the Nazi references come out.

> When you're optimizing a program, you identify the biggest performance problems, address their root cause, fix those, then re-evaluate. You don't start cherry picking tiny constant gains out of the system and expect to succeed. All that does is waste time and misdirect effort.

Everything about how the Federal government operates is a form of cherry picking. It's a side effect of having limited time and funds. The executive branch decides what they're going to follow up on.

If you're upset that your particular cherries aren't the ones being picked, and it really seems like that's the root of your dissent, then so be it. That's hardly scientific though. That's just being a sore loser.

Title of this article is somewhat misleading; it's actually even more serious, apparently.

> Being specific, why wouldn't we carefully measure the impact of private industry on public health? Private industry isn't on the hook for health emergencies, the public is. So we shut this down because... "waste?"

Sure but there's plenty of other things we should be measuring too. Canceling one doesn't mean we're against measuring things. It just means that the executive branch has prioritized other things above this particular one. That's a natural side effect of limited resources.

> Given the the ongoing phenomenon of our executive parroting nonsense, pseudoscientific marketing speak like "clean coal" it certainly appears to be the executive helping the coal industry with it's long-standing and well-documented agenda of stifling public research and denying transparency.

I'm pretty sure President Obama is the one that championed the phrase "Clean Coal". It didn't make much sense when he said it either (though sequestration is interesting).

> I don't get why cancelling an ongoing public health research project is "my cherries". If the coal industry and their legacy, heavily subsidized, environmentaly damaging, largely export-driven, minimally job creating industry is causing public health crisis, I do not want to further reward them.

So go make some money and fund a project to research the negative effects of things you don't like. Or lobby your representatives to do so. Or organize your fellow citizens to elect a group of officials that will do so.

It's "your cherries" because you're clearly offended by something in this action.

> It's their cherries you're proposing to pick, all the while suggesting that scientifically driving inquiry into public health is a luxury we may not be able to afford.

What we can afford is a sliding scale that has to factor in deficit spending and taxation levels. If you're of the opinion that budgets should be balanced and taxes should be low, then you have to be more selective in what you can afford.

> To which I ask: why? What's in it for anyone? Why are you proposing that defunding public health and environmental research is fair but coal industry subsidies are conveniently absent from your austerity program. Why?

I haven't proposed any specific policy proposals in this thread. All I've claimed from the beginning is that I think we need to look at funding proposals individually. Just because something is "for the public good", "involves public health", "will further science", does not mean the Federal government can or should spend money on it.

Similarly just because the prior administration funded a project does not mean the current one must continue it. If that were true would you be standing behind every executive order that President Trump puts forward, regardless of the outcome of future elections?