Bloodbath for Science
blogs.discovermagazine.com
Bloodbath for Science
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Bloodbath for Science
#2Maybe this will encourage scientists to interact with the public more and ask for funding from them instead.
I don't even know why they're so important other than a vague "moar knowledge mean moar technology!"
Re: Bloodbath for Science
#3Can't we find $1.5 billion floating around in the military budget to cut instead of the funds that fuels science and innovation? Sure companies do a fine job of innovating but they don't do things like Fermilab, which have long term potential to change our world. Long term being far longer then stock holders in public companies would allow for.
Re: Bloodbath for Science
#4Maybe this will encourage scientists to interact with the public more and ask for funding from them instead. I don't even know why they're so important other than a vague "moar knowledge mean moar technology!"
How about a cure for cancer? Vaccines against HIV, influenza, etc? Tissue bioreactors that grow organs? Postpone aging?
Sure, there is a lot of esoteric stuff being done. Catfish genomics, characterizing motor proteins of archaea, etc. I can't speak for every research team or every goal. Yes, we could better coordinate and collectively strive for greater human societal objectives. But then a lot of feet would get stepped on. Who knows if some "pointless" research project may wind up saving us?
Re: Bloodbath for Science
#5Maybe this will encourage scientists to interact with the public more and ask for funding from them instead. I don't even know why they're so important other than a vague "moar knowledge mean moar technology!"
Governments fund cures and vaccines for disease. Private companies don't work on cures, which is why the last things we've cured is polio, which was developed by an NIH-funded university researcher; and widespread famine through much of the developing world, by crop breeding and fertilizer research led by Norman Borlaug and the US and Mexican government.
Re: Bloodbath for Science
#6The problem with the logic in this post is that it implies an unbounded amount of money funneled into research. In the real world, there's a bound on the amount of money that should be funneled into research. That bound should probably less than the amount of money it would take to bankrupt the supporting country. Any argument that doesn't even consider this question fails to impress me right out of the gate.
There isn't a government expenditure that can't be supported the exact same way and with virtually the same arguments, but the sum total of all these wonderful programs is that none of them are going to be funded at all in a few years when the funding entity is bankrupt and the dollars it can give you are worthless. Take a 20% cut now (and probably another cut soon) or a 100% cut not all that many more proposal cycles from now.
At some point the answer has to be no.
Re: Bloodbath for Science
#7The problem with the logic in this post is that it implies an unbounded amount of money funneled into research. In the real world, there's a bound on the amount of money that should be funneled into research. That bound should probably less than the amount of money it would take to bankrupt the supporting country. Any argument that doesn't even consider this question fails to impress me right out of the gate. There i…
The point is, we can and should take the money from somewhere else. Instead of a 20% DOE cut now, how about a 0.1% cut to defense, or another cut somewhere else, and a 0% cut to the DOE.
Politicians refuse to cut defense spending because it's not politically viable and they're more worried about getting reelected than making a difference. "Elite" research scientists make an easy scapegoat.
Re: Bloodbath for Science
#8The problem with the logic in this post is that it implies an unbounded amount of money funneled into research. In the real world, there's a bound on the amount of money that should be funneled into research. That bound should probably less than the amount of money it would take to bankrupt the supporting country. Any argument that doesn't even consider this question fails to impress me right out of the gate. There i…
Agreed, I don't think people realize just how broke the US is. In 9 years, the interest alone will consume 50% of the US budget. That doesn't leave enough to cover social security and medicare -- let alone anything else that the federal government does.
Hopefully people will start demanding cuts in other places too, for instance the DEA, DOE, DOD, etc. There just isn't enough money. The DOD budget has increased 100% in the past 10 years. We've seen massive new entitlement programs passed, these will not be able to be funded.
Re: Bloodbath for Science
#9And how does cutting $100 billion in government spending “help our economy grow and create jobs”? The immediate result will be the loss of something like a million jobs.
Those people will finally get to move on helping "make things that people want" instead of squandering stolen money.
Re: Bloodbath for Science
#10Maybe this will encourage scientists to interact with the public more and ask for funding from them instead. I don't even know why they're so important other than a vague "moar knowledge mean moar technology!"
Governments fund cures and vaccines for disease. Private companies don't work on cures, which is why the last things we've cured is polio, which was developed by an NIH-funded university researcher; and widespread famine through much of the developing world, by crop breeding and fertilizer research led by Norman Borlaug and the US and Mexican government.
For the record, we haven't cured Polio. We do have a vaccine for it though. :-)