This is just trolling. The two examples show this: "look at the liberals funding soccer and hollywood research!". Congress can slash overall NSF budget but is it really going to get involved in the NSF granting process? No.
The End of Public Funded Research
31–38 of 38 posts
Re: The End of Public Funded Research
#32Here's the soccer research in question: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone... It's actually quite interesting. The real question is how do you judge the merits of individuals in a team where there aren't a lot of individual measures. That is, in basketball there are a lot of individual measure, rebounds/assists/points/steals/blocks/turnovers. But in soccer far fewer (and occur with less freq…
the cornell sound simulation project has some cool videos online
Re: The End of Public Funded Research
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Republican presidents behave as they have in the past, science funding is likely to increase. http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/trtot08p.pdf http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/trres08p.pdf Don't know about the house and senate.
I'm really dissapointed that the ministery of peace has always gotten more research money than the normal variety. It seems hard to defend especially since the cold war ended. Some people must be really eager to start a new cold war with China. Depressing.
The military funds a huge amount of basic research.
For example, a huge amount of computational E&M is funded by the military. Most of it is published in non-classified (though paywalled) journals and is directly useful to anyone building E&M communication or sensor devices. (I cite computational E&M specifically because I used to work in that field.)
Re: The End of Public Funded Research
#34Although this article is a bit scary, the title is completely editorialized. Nowhere does it indicate that this is the "end of public research." The republicans are simply asking Americans to review publicly funded projects.
Asking the general public to evaluate the contributions, impact, applicability, etc. of a research project is a pretty good way to get a lot of useful projects shot down. There's a reason we use people who know enough about the fields in question to recognize good, useful research when they see it.
Re: The End of Public Funded Research
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Republican presidents behave as they have in the past, science funding is likely to increase. http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/trtot08p.pdf http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/trres08p.pdf Don't know about the house and senate.
http://www.nsf.gov/about/congress/107/highlights/cu02_1219.j... Long story short: Republicans go along with the minimum budget increase possible.
So how come the minimum budget increase possible was so large under Bush, also fairly large under Reagan, but so small under Clinton?
Re: The End of Public Funded Research
#36What is scary is people don't see the big picture, they see $750,000 to develop computer models to analyze the on-field contributions of soccer players, I see $750,000 to research another branch of game theory that could be used to help ease diplomatic tensions in third-world countries (I know it's a stretch, but go with it). Add to the fact that, as said in other comments, the contribution to NSF is marginal when lo…
I suspect the main reason the NSF was targeted is it's transparency.
As far as I know, HHS and the Office of Minority and Women's Businesses don't have a publicly available list of projects. The NSF does.
Quite a disincentive for good management, no?
Re: The End of Public Funded Research
#37Watch Connections[1] to learn why this attitude towards scientific research is foolish. The soccer study could be crucial to finding a cure for cancer or sending astronauts to Mars. That's not reaching; that is really how it works. Technology is a package deal. Take the whole thing or leave it.
Re: The End of Public Funded Research
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually made an account so I could post as myself. Although someone has already made my point, I need to reiterate it -- crowdsourcing scientific review is an awful idea. Journals and funding agencies use peer review specifically because a review needs knowledge of the subject area and of the context of the research. Few scientists will review a wasteful proposal in kind terms. The research dollar is so limited th…
A scientist in field X is great at judging the benefits of project Y (relative to project Z) to field X . He can provide an expert opinion on whether the project is new, whether it is likely to succeed, whether other people working in X will use it. He has no particular expertise whatsoever at deciding whether project Y is more useful to society as a whole than other possible uses of the money. In a democracy, that d…
> He has no particular expertise whatsoever at deciding
> whether project Y is more useful to society as a whole
> than other possible uses of the money. In a democracy,
> that decision is left up to our elected leaders.
That is not and never has been how science is funded in the United States or in any other developed economy. In the case of the US, Congress provides funding to and defines the overall mission of various funding agencies. The beaurocracies of those agencies supply funding to researchers, usually on the advice and recommendation of peer review panels. It is no accident that every time Congress created a new funding agency, it followed that same basic model. NSF works that way. DOE works that way. NIH works that way. DOD works that way.
The only case in which our elected leaders have a direct say in decisions of funding research are ear marks. In all other cases, Congress explicitly distanced itself from the quotidian chore of deciding on specific research programs.
Your assertion of how decisions about specific research programs should be made in our democracy is not well supported either by history or by the actual structure of our government. It sounds, instead, like a statement of personal opinion. Indeed, that fine-grained control over the quotidian role of government is something Representative Cantor and his party have campaigned against in the form of ear marks.
In any case, reforming 10^5 dollars worth of NSF funding in the presence of a 10^11 dolar budget deficit is clearly political grandstanding and not a sincere attempt to address structural budgetary problems.