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2009 US Budget Holds Mixed News For Science
sciencehabit writes "ScienceNOW has the details on the impacts of President Bush's appropriation request — bad news for biomedicine, better news for the physical sciences. Some agencies really get slammed and many projects are jeopardized. The Bush administration's theory is that a 5-year run-up in National Institutes of Health funding, which ended in 2003, left the federal funding picture seriously unbalanced. Each year since then the administration's budget request for science has moved to shift the balance. Biomedical researchers are expected to lobby hard in Congress for relief. The NYTimes notes that prognosticators expect Congress not to act on a budget until the next President arrives, betting on it being a Democrat. "
You get to actually go to the moon and spend a few months there. Except you will catch cancer from the cosmic rays and you will die a horrible painful death.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
What's "mixed" about earmarks for the Creation Science Institute?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Science has been bad news for Bush's agenda.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I rarely respond to trolls, but...what the hell is that ASCII art supposed to be?
Living With a Nerd
Meanwhile, it didn't do it any long-term favors to biomedical research, as the NIH and university leaderships handled their huge influx of money about as well as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan did with theirs. There are dozens of universities with new buildings they were planning to pay off with NIH overhead, that are now completely screwed.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Bush is anti-children! Would someone please think of the children and fund science!!
That'll shame him and Congress into getting more money!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Actually, the major research centers didn't even see a penny's worth of an increase. Instead, much of the NIH funding was diverted to arcane projects at unknown colleges, and earmarked for things like research into efficacy of remote prayer... or studies into the effectiveness of abstinence, as a method of HIV prevention.
After all, it's not like scientific research for anything other than bona fide military purposes is the proper role of government anyway.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
The bad news for science is where there IS funding. Science should be independent of government as much as possible.
and his cadre of theocrats that the heliocentric earth is an abomination in the eyes of god, an affront to the rightful god-created geocentric universe. that's why the physical sciences didn't get as shafted
poor biomedicine. we all know that messing with the building blocks of life is the devil's work, but still
maybe if someone told the theocrats that the god-given holy oil, currently unjustly in the hands of the heathen mohammedeans on the arabian peninsula, was an act of god as manifested in billion, i mean er, million, i mean er, six thousand year old organic matter. and that biological research might someday free the god-given holy oil to its rightful ownership by christian nations through artificially made, i mean er, as manifested by god working through the hands of biological researchers. then maybe they will support more biological research
amen
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Science has been bad news for Bush's agenda.
Bush has spent more on science than any other President in the history of the United States, so to say that he is anti-science is sharply distortionary.
This is my sig.
Example: Biotech company developes two new treatments for diabetes. One is administered daily in pill form and costs $10 a pill to make but can be sold at $100 a pill comercially. The other is a one time treatment that would cost $200, most of which would go to the doctors performing the procedure.
Quiz: Which do you think will be released to the public?
For the record, biotech companies are not all evil, all the time. They have done great things and not always just for the bottom line. But to have no public funding for public medical research seams extremely dangerous to me.
Bullshit. If the private market's so frigging great, how come we don't have a cure for lung cancer? If I ran a multi-billion tobacco company, I'd definitely want to find a way of keeping my customers, not killing them.
I'll agree government isn't necessarily the answer either, but I see that as more of a problem with your government than government in general.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
The NYTimes notes that prognosticators expect Congress not to act on a budget until the next President arrives, betting on it being a Democrat.
While the Democratically-controlled Congress may indeed delay approving a budget, I'm sure they know that the next election could just as easily put another Republican in the White House -- and that their razor-thin majority (especially in the Senate) could be lost as well, depending on the R-side coattails.
I think the goal is to not act on the budget until the next President arrives, betting on it not being an Idiot.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
There's no less objective entity on earth than the US government. To think any money it steals in favor of "science" is a worthy cause is a serious delusion. The less money goverment spends on science, the more actual knowledge we may discover.
There should be no government spending on scientific research at all - and no government prohibitions on research (eg stem cell research).
But I'm afraid this simple truth is beyond the grasp of most intellectuals. And nerds.
First pass at the budget is ALWAYS ignored.
The parties are working up their versions of a budget and waiting for the elections to play out. In the meantime, they'll temporarily fund the government.
For those hawks that believe that private industry can do research "better" I offer the following.
1. Some research is so basic that there's no near-term mass-market application.
2. If the research can't become a profit center, it's dropped. This is already happening in the now-privatized University R&D and it happened long, long ago in business.
3. Most countries have some kind of nationalized R&D AND economic planning to sell the R&D. This model appears gets about the same results as the looser American style.
4. Corporate R&D is mostly stealing ideas from someone else who cannot afford litigation.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
What kind of argument is that? We don't have time machines either, the philosophy of capitalism is not at fault.
My counter-argument would be that free-market capitalism has a better chance of discovering a cure for cancer than a government.
So our answer? Give the corporations researching these cures tax rebates.
- cut the tax cuts.
- cut the security spending.
- allow a massive deficit.
- cut none security spending.
To roll back a number of the tax cuts will be un-popular, and may be pointed to as putting us in a massive recession (though it is obviously coming regardless of what is done).The military spending really is needed. The republicans have been gutting the DOD and DARPA. The pubs pointed fingers at Clinton for undercutting DOD, but DOD was in far better shape in 2000, then it is today. And DARPA was re-tasked by the white house into spending on items for TODAY. IOW, they gutted research for tomorrow's needs (that is probably the single worse decision that W. has made in his 8 years; it may well start a hot war with china, since they may achieve close enough tech parity to us to go after taiwan; we will have no choice but to either allow Taiwan to be be taken or for us to use small nukes/biological/chemicals).
The deficit is probably what will happen, but that will impact America for decades to come. Of course the deficit will not be
Yes, I can now see that the pubs have laid a clever trap for the dems and America. Do we allow it? I suspect that when the cuts come from this budget, the pubs will attack the dems, and Americans will buy this garbage. IOW, we will put back into office more pubs and will see the deficits be blown up further esp. if romney makes it (another neo-con like W.).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you had said "Applied Technology and product research should be cut entirely", I'd agree with you. But the private sector already pays the vast majority of that. Further, private industry already pays for a 2/3 majority of all R&D research in the United States: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/guitotal.htm As you can see from the graphs, that fraction has been increasing every year, (in real dollar terms!) since the early 1970s. Clearly, private industry DOES see many areas where funding large R&D programs brings it a competitive advantage.
But this does not in any way support the contention that government funded "scientific research" should be cut entirely. There are many areas of research whose outcomes are so uncertain that it doesn't make any sense for private enterprise to finance them, but where the net economic and social benefits are very long term and very positive. Consider research on the germ theory or disease, or the discovery of the electron. Together, those fields for the bedrock of all modern economies. Space exploration and fusion power research are two modern examples where the fundamental research could not possibly be supported directly by private enterprise without governmental assistance. There are other areas related specifically to government responsibilities (defense, law enforcement, environmental stewardship, etc.) where I would expect the government to provide funding. Finally, there are a number of research areas with a large societal benefit, but little to no profit or market advantage, where private actors shouldn't be expected to fill. The modern archetype is vaccine research.
I'm as big a fan of the free market and constitutional restrictions on government action as the next guy, but I still accept that there are areas that there are things, like government funding of fundamental research, that would not be supported but for government intervention.
They are able to deduct the R&D costs directly.
Government research is needed for the diseases that are rare and therefore wouldn't be profitable for a corp to R&D medication for it - even with the deductions factored in. I can understand your point and agree with much of it. Either way, you either have politicized R&D with the Government or profit motivated corporate research. Both aren't perfect by themselves but together they can cover much more ground than if there was only one research funding avenue.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
It spells out "gnaa" if you view it using a monospace font.
-Esme
It is true that Bush does not make policy decisions based on scientific research and it is true that some of his personal beliefs run counter to current scientific understanding. This has impacted what science gets funded (as many ex-pat stem cell researchers now in Singapore would tell you).
However, Bush has budgeted to give science in general quite a bit more funding than what Congress has been willing to sign. He proposed large increases last year, which got cut by Congress & his proposed increases in the physical science this year are actually quite good. (Good enough that surely some think that it isn't fiscally conservative.)
I'm personally writing my representatives in Congress asking them to not slash the proposed increases as they have done in the past.
I can't help but think that leaving NASA in something of a funding "holding pattern" helps to limit the planetary observation that they were chastised for shorting, leading to less evidence on silly politically charged topics like global warming, greenhouse gases, and air pollution.
Perhaps you know of a few dozen exceptions?
F&A money usually runs about 1/3 of the total grant, but is immediately split up between the researcher's department, college, and university (and even the researcher gets a slice back, laundered of its spending restrictions). Not all of those parties want to spend their slice on a new building; in fact most of it goes toward operating expenses and (relatively) small purchases that are not in their institutional budget. Trying to squeeze $10MM out of it would seriously cramp their style.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is a lame duck president. Congress will wait for a new president before doing anything. Before the budget will get passed there will be at least one continuing resolution where funding will be at the current very low levels across the board for science. Then Congress, realizing it needs to deal with the ballooning budget problems, will need to pass a lean budget for science in order to fund things like welfare. Only NASA will be largely spared since it is so spread-out over many Congressional districts.
There is no hope for science funding in the emergency stimulus bill and only a little hope for a April/May supplemental appropriations bill tacked onto war spending. So there will be a long time at 2008 levels of funding and then cuts and basically level funding for the rest in the eventual 2009 budget passed by Congress and signed by the then president.
Don't believe me, read what the Director of Fermilab thinks:
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive_2008/today08-02-05.html
The only real hope for science funding is through universities really. If you know any university trustees, let them know about the problems. If these wealthy and well connected people feel that their companies are at risk due to the US trailing in science, then they can make an impact with Representative and Senators. We need more people like Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel, expressing why science funding is key.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/20/EDFDUHP1I.DTL
Plus if you take that logic (Private Corporations should fund all Research) eventually what you end up with is corporations approaching the size of our government funding the same thing or it not happening at all. Theres simply nowhere else to get such giant amounts of money from.
"The NYTimes notes that prognosticators expect Congress not to act on a budget until the next President arrives, betting on it being a Democrat."
And it's been this way for years. The President proposes a budget, and Congress promptly throws it all away. Why does the Whitehouse - in ANY administration - bother?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Well, I suppose if your example drug company wanted to let the competition eat its lunch, it would release the $100 pill. Most companies don't want to do that.
You might be thinking they'd use patents to prevent the competition from releasing the better cure. Problem is, that requires them to put on the public record the fact that they're holding back a better, cheaper treatment. Any company doing this would get killed on PR alone. Do you know how much money pharma companies dump into "philanthropic" programs just to deal with the PR implications of the way they do business today? Multiply that by the thousandfold hit they'd take trying what you suggest, and you have a pretty good going-out-of-business plan.
Perhaps you think all the drugmakers would collude to suppress the better solution. Of course, that kind of activity would be highly illegal. Not too easy to hide, either. It only takes one company that feels it isn't getting its share of the profits, and the gig's up. (You may not know all of their names, but there are a lot of drug companies out there.) Which means a lot of trouble to divide profits up among a lot of players; not a good idea. Hell, even if you keep everyone's shareholders happy, a single whistle-blower can ruin your whole day. Before too long, a company trying this would get killed twice -- once on PR, and once in anti-trust lawsuits.
All that, of course, assumes the particular pairing of treatments you describe would come about in a single drug-maker's pipeline in a relatively narrow time window without a bunch of intermediate steps. That's not a very likely scenario. One of the factors that makes it unlikely is the fact that no one party (or group of parties with united interests) controls the entire drug R&D pipeline -- a fact which becomes less true as the government exerts more direct control over the research. (And that's what funding really is -- control.)
In short, fears like the one you express are common because most people have a shortage of insight about the drug industry and an excess of paranoia about corporations and/or health care.
I'm sorry...it's just that...well...Timecop kinda sucked...and...well...maybe you should worship someone else?
You know...like the fonz?
http://digilander.libero.it/spaziowebceskino/img/griffin.png
I mean...Peter Griffin completely had it right. Timecop? What the hell were you thinking?
Living With a Nerd
It is very good for the physical sciences (with double-digit percentage increases to many agencies).
The news is not all that good. What you have to remember is that this 17% is coming on top of a cut in 2008 so the net increase is far smaller. Not only that but the effects of the cut this year were greatly magnified because they were retroactively made 3 months into the financial year! Hence some of the money which was cut had already been spent and, since it could not be retroactively reclaimed, resulted in far greater damage to the programs.
That being said I'm sure my american colleagues will be happy with this but, since it was the US parliament which butchered the budget this year I don't think they'll be celebrating until it actually gets enacted.
No money for biology and other "iffy" sciences like meteorology, lots of money for geologists to find proof that the oldest rock on earth is 5999 years old.
Time and time again examples of ethical dilemmas like this are brought forward without specific examples behind them. If there is a treatment which is known to work, someone will release it to the public, even if it means making less long term because if it is superior, the first company to do it will make more money than their competitors, and eliminate the market for the non-cure drugs. (People bring this same sort of example out for cars, without contemplating why Honda and Toyota came to have the market share that they have today.)
That said, I would be interested in hearing actual examples of this dilemma occurring, but to my knowledge it hasn't happened. (I do academic research in medically relevant fields, so I'm reasonably conversant with the extant pharmacopoeia.)
http://www.donarmstrong.com
20% hikes for math and physical sciences, engineering and computer science.
Sounds good to me.
This is "Flamebait"? Next time, try a little research before you reach for that button, mods. Here, let me start you off:
http://oversight.house.gov/investigations.asp?Issue=Politics+and+Science
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/02/72672
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08climate.html
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
Maybe, but can government really afford to be as independent of science as possible?
Government is, ideally, about decision-making and allocation of resources. Therefore, the government has (or at least should have) a very strong vested interest in making educated decisions and allocating its limited resources as smartly as possible, in order to get the most bang for its buck and not lead the country into any silly pitfalls like health crises or dubiously justified wars.
What we have instead currently is a system so politically charged the repulsing forces are close to tearing it apart. It invests its resources in carefully selected areas which agree a priori with its beliefs, and throttles any research that turns up results that fly in the face of those beliefs. The beliefs are themselves not the problem, it's the slavish devotion to them, and their preference over any facts, where the trouble starts.
Let's put it this way: If it were a single person, cherry-picking things he reads or hears for facts that agree with the way his mind is already made up, and then making decisions based on those beliefs, most people would call him a "flatulating butthead."
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
It's not so much a question of if it's happened before as much as it is a question of if it could happen in the future. I'm not necissarily saying that there are two fully developed drugs sitting side by side, but perhaps one avenue of research gets more funding than the other, or more prominant researchers.
Probably the closest examples that I can think of are probably more along the lines of the effectiveness of drugs. We've been giving our sick children infant cough syrup for years while just recently publicly funded research found that it was not only innefective but quite possibly dangerous as well.
I am not a pharmiciutical hating Nazi for the record. I have comments in support of the Biotech firms on several slashdot pages. Like I said, they've done great things (Merck's campaign to eleminate river blindness comes to mind), but it seems like this is one area that public founds could be used to form a safety net and encourage research in directions that aren't necissarily profitable.
I realize this has a fairly small chance of actually being passed, what with Bush being a lame-duck president and most spending increases most likely going to an "economic stimulus package" and worthy causes like bailing out real-estate and bond speculators, but it would be pretty good for computer science research, especially the sort of basic research that DARPA doesn't fund (DARPA funds mainly short-term, deployment-focused R&D).
The "20% hikes for math and physical sciences, engineering, and computer sciences" is the main highlight, since NSF funding for computer science has been declining for the past few years. In addition, "a 25% increase in the number of graduate research fellowships" will free up money for professors to spend what grant money they do get on actual research instead of on paying grad-students' tuition and stipends. I may also help to increase the attractiveness of CS/engineering/science graduate school for U.S. students, among whom enrollments have been declining hugely (it's not a huge carrot, but an NSF fellowship pays $30k/year, versus the usual ~$18-22k grad-student stipend, so is substantially more attractive).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"NIH Grantees Win 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine"
"NIH Grantees Win 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine"
"NIH Grantees Win..." Oh heck, this is getting boring. Let me just quote:
"Of the 81 American Nobel laureates in physiology or medicine since 1945, 62 either worked at or were funded by the NIH before winning the prize."
(source)
"The Constitution does not give the authority to the U.S. to do things that are in the USA's best interest, but only those things which the Constitution specifically allows the U.S. to do (Tenth Amendment)."
Um, actually that's not right, as the Constitution does, in fact, give authority to act in the USA's best interest. And the "specifically allows" argument is wrong too. It's something people trot out when things like this get discussed, but it isn't true and really never has been.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Welfare_Clause
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States"
Now, SPECIFICALLY what is the "general Welfare" and how can the US go about providing for it?
Now you see why that argument doesn't work.
Fuck you and fuck Timecop, you elitist douchebag swine.
YHBT
Commercial fusion power is not be competitive for a LONG time if EVER. The SUN produces 276 mW/cm at its core and IT has a density of 160 g/cm^3 (2)!!! If the SUN has that much trouble with fusion, what makes us pathetic humans stand a chance?
Yes, I know that Deuterium - Deuterium reactions are a lot faster and easier, but this is competing against solar, coal and nuclear energy.
(2) http://fusedweb.llnl.gov/CPEP/Chart_Pages/5.Plasmas/SunLayers.html
Yeah, this an example of why it's imperative to have funding for research in non-pharmaceutical affiliated laboratories in public universities doing basic research and verifying that what is being claimed to be the case by drug companies is actually the case in long term studies.
Plus, higher funding rates for the NIH will make sure that I'm kept in cheeseburgers.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
First off, I heavily disagree with you, but still don't think you warrant the troll mod. You have an opinion, and aren't trolling (perhaps).
What about science for the sake of knowledge? Finding life, say, on Europa will probably have no economic benefits whatsoever, but would benefit humanity as a whole. The same goes for other just-because lines of research, like SETI, which will probably never have a practical application, but still is just neat. The same goes for most of experimental physics, most of which isn't not geared towards any marketable solution. I rather doubt that the Higgs boson will be making anyone rich (discounting the Nobel winnings) in my, or my grand kids lifetime.
Then you have the discoveries that have no short-term benefits, like heliocentrism which only came in handy 600 years after its discovery, capitalism is far to shortsighted to support things that only MAY become useful in a couple generations.
My problem with rabid capitalists is that they seem to think that everything worthwhile must involve profit. Life is more than money, sometimes the satisfaction of having your worldview expand is worth far more than any amount of money shoved at it, or made from it (Darwin, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, etc... all of whom were involved with publicly funded institutions). Even if no profit was made from the discovery of extraterrestrial life, it still would change the shape of human knowledge FOREVER, a much more important achievement than simple cash.
Also, to dispell another popular, and obnoxious, myth: science != technology. They are related, by not equivalent.
Also, on a more subjective level, I disagree with national defense. We have too much of it already. It is far too big a money sink for its worth. Put it towards education and acting civil to our neighbors (in this day and age that means the world in general), and we won't need to spend trillions on finding a better way to kill people (what an odd proposition to begin with).
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Well, considering I posted a link with all the evidence necessary to prove you wrong, and you posted not one iota of evidence to the contrary, I fail to see what you think is so definitive about your argument.
Perhaps if hundreds of years of court decisions, case law, and opinions from Constitutional Scholars didn't disagree, you might have something.
As it is, you're a guy who links to his own bloviating as though it were proof of anything, which would be humorous if it weren't so sad.
Example: Biotech company developes two new treatments for diabetes. One is administered daily in pill form and costs $10 a pill to make but can be sold at $100 a pill comercially. The other is a one time treatment that would cost $200, most of which would go to the doctors performing the procedure.
This is total conspiracy theory bullshit. Do you honestly think that a true cure would only sell for 2 times the amount of a treatment regimen? Markets don't work that way.
A cure is always worth more than a treatment regimen - how much more? Whatever the market will bear. If your treatment regimen costs $100, you can bet the cure will cost $100,000. Drug companies would price the cure so they make money. Thanks to insurance companies footing the bill, they will get every dollar of that amount while the cure is under patent protection.
-ted
Why does everyone expect the government to pay for everything?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Yikes! Clearly you don't want to have anymore US researchers. Almost all science PhDs in this country were supported (directly or indirectly) by government grants (NSF, NIH, DOE .... ) during their thesis work. Without federal funding to universities, science in this country would stop.
I don't understand those who think science funding is a liberal cause.
The federal government funds basic scientific research so that companies don't have to. Economically, this has been a tremendously successful strategy, which is now being copied world wide. The way scientific funding is allocated is rather ingenious. Hundreds of proposals are sent in to the big three granting agencies (NIH, NSF and DOE), and are then re-distributed to past grant winners for evaluation. Only the best are selected. In biology around 10% are funded, in physical science around 5%. If you can't come up with something good and economical, no money. The competition for federal funding thus forces scientists to work hard, be creative and be frugal (much like the free market). There is no way corporate labs can compete with this system in basic research, because there are just so many ideas out there, and no way to know for sure which ones will work. There's simply too much risk in basic research. Plus a scientist who is happy to make $40K to $50 off of grants expects twice that in a corporate environment (because we don't like to wear suits, or something like that). The large corporate basic science labs have thus been driven out of business. Corporations and investors are free to select only the successful projects and people, without having to be weighed down by the failures.
Now, we could stop doing this, but that wouldn't mean corporations would start funding basic research again. Europe and China now use a similar system, so we would simply be putting US businesses at a disadvantage.
The current Democratically led Congress did not understand this, and cut science funding levels from what Bush had requested (wrap your mind around that for a second). They probably expected some feeble complaints from academics and were very surprised when they started hearing from big business (meaning donors).
This is one thing the government does pretty well. There is a good system set up, with minimal political interference (unlike NASA), healthy competition, and tangible economic results. It could be better, but it is hardly a liberal financial black hole.
As if the Federal government is the main entity for technology, education or medicine. You guys really worship at the altar of Big Government don't you? The bigger the government the better, huh? Yeah those guys who handled Katrina should be first and foremost in education and biotech.... I hate to break it to you but private funding exceeds the Feds in cases where it makes any difference. States fund schools, and they SHOULD.
We may be using the wrong metric - money spent and patents issued instead of measuring research effort.
Funding for biological science is so good these days that biological and biomedical science graduate students at my school have by far the highest stipends. I don't know a whole lot about congressional budgets, but I certainly know that the view from my office window doesn't make it look like they're hurting at all. My program isn't exactly falling apart, but I certainly wouldn't mind if we had enough cash to match their stipends, get the lion's share of a massive increase in the size of our university, and take all of our students on numerous expensive weekend retreats in the Fall. I think that every graduate student at this university wishes that their department had their kind of "funding problems."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/318/5852/913b
Speaking Out About U.S. Science Output
I was amazed by J. Mervis's News of the Week story "U.S. output flattens, and NSF wonders why" (3 August, p. 582). Not by the conclusion that U.S. science productivity is flattening out, but because apparently nobody interviewed by the NSF could identify the reason. Had the question been posed of almost any working scientist I know, the simple and accurate answer would have been that the number of papers that are written is diminishing because scientists are able to spend less time writing papers! Instead, we spend ever-more time on the increasingly burdensome administrative requirements of conducting science legally, and on writing, rewriting, and re-rewriting grant applications as the NIH's pay line drops to catastrophically low levels. As the number of hours in a day is finite and unchanging, something has to give. If I didn't have to spend the rest of this month ignoring various half-complete manuscripts and rewriting a grant application, I'd be able to explain in more detail.
John P. Moore
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Weill Medical College
Cornell University
New York, NY 10065, USA
I wish I were old enough to put "Computer" on my resume.
Something that requires a fixed width font. Graphic says gnaa. What that means is in plain text in original.
So you think its somehow okay to entitle the guys with funny hats to steal from your neighbor to fund unprofitable research which no sane person would fund by their own money? So the government can steal if they give a share of the booty to somebody you prefer? Proxy bastards.
Why is everything always about "products" and "profit" to you people? Do you seriously believe that discoveries that make somebody rich are more important than understanding the Universe in which we live? What happened to science for the sake of science? You may call yourself a nerd, but I'll call you a douchebag.
How do we 'humans stand a chance?'
We, humans, aren't limited to chance at all, we can also apply
knowledge and purpose. After all, we've had the roots/nuts/berries
fuel thing nailed down for millennia, and the sun never HAS burned
those.
We were also first with fission energy, and with less time 'spent' on
the problem than old Sol has had...
Best activation energy for fusion is deuterium-tritium, by the way, and
solar output is straight proton-proton (which is much harder).
Throughout this thread, you've argued that allocating public monies for science and the like is "unconstitutional." What was clearly meant was "Pudge's interpretation is that this is unconstitutional." Until you leave slashdot for the high court, your individual reading won't get you very much!