Private Donor Saves Fermilab

sciencehabit writes "In what has to be an embarrasment for the U.S. Department of Energy, an anonymous donor has ponied up $5 million to keep the country's only remaining particle physics laboratory operating efficiently."

Comments

The sad thing...

[nebaz]

is that it's probably no embarrassment at all.

Re:The sad thing...

[mrbluze]

[The sad thing..] is that it's probably no embarrassment at all. Even sadder is that the DOE has no sense of embarrassment.

Re:The sad thing...

[TubeSteak]

Even sadder is that the DOE has no sense of embarrassment. It's not the DOE's fault.
The Congress and Senate slashed the budget, not the DOE.

Maybe you can say "well they didn't lobby hard enough to maintain or grow their funding...
but it's pretty obvious that science has not been a USA priority for quite some time now.

Re:The sad thing...

[Cairnarvon]

Compared to Iraq, the Mars missions are pretty much free (and incalculably more useful). They don't even make a dent in the annual federal budget.

Re:The sad thing...

[mrbluze]

An article in an Australian newspaper pointed out that it's costing us more to build a new ticketing system for public transport in Melbourne than it cost to send the Pheonix Lander to mars. I read somewhere that it costs more to put (and maintain) ticket machines + inspectors on the trams than the combined wages and benefits of all the former tram inspectors that were laid off. It was (and probably still is) costing more to maintain the damned ticketing system than the ticketing revenue. It would have been cheaper to make public transport free of cost. What a change that would have to Melbourne's smog cloud!

Re:The sad thing...

[Cairnarvon]

Some perspective: all of NASA gets about half of a percent of the US federal budget.
Said federal budget is $2.7 trillion in 2008, while Phoenix and MRO combined barely break a billion, and both are invaluable in terms of knowledge we get from them (have already gotten and are still getting from the MRO mission, and expect to get from Phoenix).

And a final bit of perspective: the $5 million Fermilab gets from this private donor is less than what half an hour of Iraq is costing the US.

Re:The sad thing...

[story645]

To be more fair, NASA's also about a lot more than just space exploration these days. It's spawned/pays for all sorts of research in weather and climate that's got very real applications, and it's shiny satellites are used by tons of universities/researchers.

(disclaimer: I play with NASA images for a stipend.)

Re:The sad thing...

[porcupine8]

They don't make the greatest pay (but not the worst, and in some areas high-demand math and science teachers do pretty well), BUT:

a) Once they get tenure, they are nearly impossible to fire for even the most egregious misconduct. Tenure generally requires 3-5 years of teaching in the same district and little else, it's not like in higher ed where you have to jump through a million hoops to prove yourself worthy.

b) Pay raises are based entirely on seniority, and in most places CANNOT be based on actual achievement, evaluations, good work, etc. The only exception is raises for getting an advanced degree.

Yes, teachers get the short end of the stick in a lot of ways, but the union is not really helping things - it's hell-bent on securing the jobs of the worst teachers out there to the detriment of the average teachers, the decent teachers, the great teachers, and the students. There's no other job where you could do shitty work and not only not get fired for it, but continue to get the same raises as your colleagues who are doing far better work. Even if your boss wants to fire you and doesn't want to give you raises.

Umm, both houses are (D) - cuts are from congress

[Ada_Rules]

Ignoring for a moment the argument about whether or not the government should be funding this lets just talk about the full article v.s. your post... From the full article "Fermilab's financial crisis began in December, when the U.S. Congress passed a last-minute budget for the 2008 fiscal year (ScienceNOW, 19 December 2007). Legislators whacked Fermilab's budget from the $372 million requested by the Department of Energy (DOE) to $320 million, $22 million less than the lab had received in 2007. To balance the books, lab officials said they would have to cut about 200 of the lab's then-1950 employees." You have gotten so used to bashing Republicans that you really are missing the point that both parties are corrupt and extending government beyond the constitutionally defined limits. Then each side argues about how they don't like the cuts and/or spending that was pushed from the other side and we all end up so worked up that we miss the point that the government should not be doing any of this stuff.

Re:Umm, both houses are (D) - cuts are from congre

[afidel]

Hmm, government has basically always funded basic science research, whether that be a strong central government or the local lord. There isn't a huge amount of incentive for businesses to fund basic science research as it infrequently leads to a positive ROI in the nearterm. That doesn't mean that there isn't a societal good from basic science research, the last 100 years of technological advances are proof to the contrary, but the private sector just doesn't have the right conditions to do it so the only place left are private foundations and government and private foundations don't have nearly the resources to do it (I guess you can argue that the foundations would have more resources if the government took less but I don't buy it).

Re:Why Is That Embarassing??!!

[jaxtherat]

Sorry for feeding a troll, but two points:

1. Research (even esoteric) can have completely unexpected practical applications. Remember the steam engine? For hundreds of years it was nothing but a novelty, and then whammo! Industrial revolution. Just because something has no clear immediate practical applications now, doesn't mean squat for the future.
2. Compared to how big a proportion of your 'tax dollars' goes to funding despotic regimes, terrorist cells we use against 'other' terror cells, and kickbacks to the arms industry, I think you can wear the tiny percentage that goes to 'esoteric' research.

I'm sorry, but I wish people had a bit more perspective on these things :(

Re:No, this is what's great about the US

[Iguanadon]

Yes, it's awesome that there are extremely generous rich people in the US, however, that person who donated $5 million dollars won't see any sort of personal return on it. You know who will though? Everyone else. No matter how indirect, basic research benefits everyone. Better products are created, new jobs are created, society as a whole advances. Why shouldn't the government fund it?

And before someone says it, corporations have no incentive to do basic research, there is no profit motivation for them to do it. Try telling GE 100 years ago to do basic atomic research, at that time there were no known applications for that research. However, after government funded nuclear research, GE now has a nuclear energy division, making a developing better nuclear reactors.

ugh, what spin.

[SuperBanana]

"Saved" Fermilab? Give me a break.

They might have had to lay off 200 employees. Out of TWO THOUSAND. Because their budget was "slashed" by just 22M (less than 10% of the budget.) Christ. It's not embarrassing, and the lab was in no danger of being "lost."

This is an apolitical issue

[kungfoolery]

This isn't a Republican or Democratic issue, it is a societal one. Year after year, administration after administration, we as a society have been saying "we don't really consider science/education/research all that important."

Just look at the trends: companies are increasingly seeking out technical professionals overseas because they're churning out greater and greater number of graduates with science/engineering degrees with China pushing out 600,000 such graduates compared to the US' 70,000 per year; and how can we compete in biotech when the majority of our citizens can't grasp genetics nor do they even believe in evolution (we beat Turkey though!)?

With the way we've been funding education and paying our teachers, we collectively give educators the big middle finger tipped with stinky poo every year. We're making these choices as individuals so we all have a hand in this appalling state of affairs.

Re:SCIENCE? Who needs that shit?

[OMNIpotusCOM]

This is what happens when you give people mod points and say you have 3 or 5 or however many days to spend them. It's like giving an 8 year-old $10 and turning them lose in the candy store. You're not going to get any change back, and they sure as hell didn't think most of their decisions through, but you can really only blame yourself for being dumb enough to give the kid the money in the first place.

Re:Taxes

[TheGratefulNet]

I used this quote before in another forum today and it applies here, now, as well:

democracy is 2 foxes and 1 chicken voting on what's for dinner.