Split opens up on Capitol Hill over science funding by Rebecca Trager.
From the post:
A conflict several years in the making between Republican leaders in Congress and US science agencies has reached boiling point. Science advocates and researchers that depend on government grants are particularly worried now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress. They fear that science budgets will be cut and the independence of research agencies curtailed.
Their concerns have been sparked by two simultaneous developments: increasing public criticism by key Republicans of research funded by agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a congressional power shift that has placed many vocal so-called climate change sceptics and opponents of environmental regulations in positions of power. This shift has been marked by a number of top Republicans publicly questioning the value of some research based on a reading of the grant’s title and abstract.
But the problem appears to go beyond mocking apparently silly-sounding research. ‘It is not only that politicians are making fun of scientific projects that sound outlandish or impractical, they are literally rejecting science in order to gain political advantage,’ says Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, US. This could have to do with pleasing campaign contributors or constituencies, he suggests.
‘There is an attack on the actual substance of the science being done in an attempt to limit the type of science that federal agencies can do because the results of that investigation would be politically inconvenient,’ says Will White, a marine biology professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, US, who has received science agency grants in the past.
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An important story and one where you have a direct interest in coming to the aid of science. Science has been generating important and big data for decades. Now it is about to step up its game and the political elites want to put their oar in.
Not that science was ever the genteel and clean pursuit of truth myth that we were taught in elementary school, on that see: The raw politics of science by Judith Curry. Judith isn’t talking about politics as with the government but inside science itself.
That’s important to remember because despite their experience with internal politics of science, scientists as a class don’t seem to get that pointing out politicians could be replaced by sump pumps isn’t a winning strategy.
Not that I disagree, in fact I had to invent the comparison to a “sump pump” to have something I was comfortable publishing on this blog. My actual opinion is a good deal more colorful and quite a bit less generous.
The other reason why scientists are at a disadvantage is that as a rule, politicians may have attended Ivy League colleges but they have a bar maid’s understanding of the world. The sole and only question of interest to a politician is what are you doing right now to further their interests. Well, or what it would take for you to further their interests.
That scientists may discover things unknown to their constituents, that may save the lives of their constituents, that may help reshape the future, but none of those are values in their universe. What matters are the uninformed opinions of people benighted enough to elect them to public office. So long as those opinions total up to be more than 50% of the voters in their district, what else is there to value?
None of what I have just said is new, original or surprising to anyone. You will hear politer and coarser versions of it as debates over the funding of science heats up.
NIH only so long as he has people to donate to him, volunteer for him, vote for him, do deals with him, etc. What if by using big data supporters of science could reach out to every cancer survivor who survived because of the NIH? Or reached out to the survivors who lost a loved one because NIH funded research found a cure too late due to budget cuts?
Do you think they would be as sympathetic to Rand Paul as before? When the blood on the knife in the back of the NIH is that of a family member? Somehow I doubt they would keep donating to Sen. Paul.
Won’t it be ironic if big data makes big government personal for everyone? Not just the top 1%.
Let’s use big data to make the 2016 election personal, very personal for everyone.
PS: I’m thinking about data sets that could be used together to create a “personal” interest in the 2016 elections. Suggestions more than welcome!
I first saw this in a tweet by Chemistry World.