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Accountability of the Scientific Stimulus Funding
eldavojohn writes "A blog tipped me off to a government site that allows me to see where my tax dollars went when the nebulous 'scientific stimulus' was granted. You might be able to find this information in a bill, but you can click on your state in this interactive site to see what has happened locally to you. Perhaps it's a sign of more government transparency in regards to spending or just more propaganda."
Exclusive: Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jobs-saved-created-congressional-districts-exist/story?id=9097853
The primary problem with the science stimulus funding is not it going to non-science issues. The real issue is that much of the funding is going to projects which aren't going to be completed before the funding runs out. Many if not most of those projects will then be scrambling for funding and a lot of good science will likely get lost because they can't complete them. The stimulus funding should have been directed to more shorter term studies.
Looking over various lists of projects, I am thinking there is not a lot of stimulating going on - a lot of this cash is going to be hoarded by projects, eeked out over a few years.
R&D spending is important, but it should be in it's own bill covering scientific advancement - not a giant bill covering everything everywhere, with very little thought into what the best projects are to actually get funding.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They bitch about the stimulus money, but the trillion in corporate welfare that Bush 43 handed out is JUST FINE.
Seriously, these people are represented by Palin and Beck now. That Psalms 109:8 paraphernalia they wear around? That's a veiled threat of violence against Obama (hint : read Psalms 109:9) ... when are we going to wake up to the danger that the right wing represents?
Perhaps it's a sign of more government transparency in regards to spending or just more propaganda.
Do you think the government expected to be indirectly stimulating the tinfoil hat industry?
A perfect use for cloud computing.
Possibly to be renamed fog computing in the case of government transparency.
"Perhaps it's a sign of more government transparency in regards to spending"
ROTFLMAO..... with tears streaming from my eyes
is very transparent. Most of it is published. Budgets are public.
While we always need more transparency, I am surprised how many people don't even know that budgets are published and kept in libraries.
What is better is letting people know where this data is, and also getting it online.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This isn't a gov site. from the about us page:
ScienceWorksForUS is a joint effort of the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and The Science Coalition (TSC) to demonstrate the impact of stimulus-funded university research activities across the country.
These are trade/lobbying organizations, not government agencies.
that story? it's about people not correctly reporting their district.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's important to note that this stimulus funding (they're also called 'Recovery Act' grants) were under a very short submission cycle.
Essentially, we only had a few months to prepare and submit a proposal to get funded, which isn't a lot of time -- unless you already had a proposal ready (or nearly ready) in the wings. What this means in a practical sense is that a lot of what the stimulus funds would have ended up going to is work that's in-progress, or stuff that larger labs want to do as pilot projects.
Also: someone in here suggested shorter-term studies. That's not how real science is done. We try to encapsulate some specific aims in the grant time-frame, but what really happens fundamentally is that we end up using the grant funds to answer enough questions that we can go and apply for another grant.
It's a much-less cohesive and efficient system than many people realize.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
What I want to know is where all the money (millions, I hear) that supposedly went to Utah's 4th Congressional District (Utah only has 3 Congressional Districts)...
--E--
Sorry, I can't trust any web site with that much obvious bias. hotair.com has obviously decided that Obama sucks, and they will do anything to prove it. I've yet to see anything logical or factual from the Obama haters. Not that I've had any high expectations for Obama, but these loons seem to think he kills old people by throwing babies at them, holds seances to talk to Lenin's ghost, and farts demons. It's hilarious to watch loons like you writhe about in abject terror over the coming End of America.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I can tell you, as someone who works at a higher education institution, that if this money is appropriated as Contracts & Grants monies or "Sponsored Research", which it most likely has if given to any Universities/Colleges, then there is A LOT of accounting going on with each dollar spent. The first portion of stimulus money given to my institution was first reported only a couple weeks back.
What people fail to understand is that this money takes time to find it's final recipients to be spent. There's still a significant portion of stimulus money at my institution that is awaiting to be spent by its deadline: June 30th, 2010.
The main problem is with public perceptions over what the science-specific portion of the spending was meant to achieve. It was not intended to create jobs immediately, but rather serve the long-term goal of putting America back in the lead for the world's research and development. The website referenced in this post does a great job of stressing this fact, and a survey of the impressive list of projects being funded by the stimulus bill further illustrates the surge in innovation we should be experiencing from this work a few years down the road.
Science funding isn’t the "stimulus" part of the bill, it's the "reinvestment" part.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
All it told me about my state was the number of grants given and the dollar amount of grants in total. It didn't tell me anything at all about what they were given FOR or whom they were given TO. Not very useful in determining if any of it was money well spent, or money wasted.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
A quick look at the site, and I found this: http://www.scienceworksforus.org/virginia/u-va-receives-grant-to-study-effect-of-federal-stimulus-on-science-and-engineering-jobs
Stimulus money to study the effect of stimulus money!
Sure let's just keep printing money! I am sure the value of the dollar won't go down.
My boy, my boy!
More than half a trillion dollars goes to 'grants'. Do these grants include making secret weapons of mass destruction? I think so.
Has the old saint in his forest not yet heard of it? That God is dead?
So the state of Wisconsin gets $81,000,000 for scientific research, but $2,700,000,000 to build more trucks for a pointless war?
Not sure why you'd bother to think that it's going to anything real, since the Fed seems to be ok with saving jobs and dumping money into DISTRICTS THAT DON'T EXIST.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jobs-saved-created-congressional-districts-exist/story?id=9097853
Guessed to be to the tune of $70+ BILLION so far.
"Change!" indeed. I think Boss Tweed would find that amusing. Daley might even be impressed.
-Styopa
from the we-blew-it-on-bubblegum dept.
Well clearly it wasn't spent on kicking ass.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
So, I checked out my state quickly, and noticed that my university was listed, for a grant I'd heard about a couple months ago. However, the link to my university's home page was incorrect; it was to a domain that wasn't even registered.
So I used the easily found feedback form to quickly point it out, figuring I'd forget about it later today and never find out or really care if the link was fixed. 18 minutes later I got an email thanking me and saying they'd fix it today. Then 4 minutes later I got another email from a different person saying it was fixed. I refreshed the page, and the link was good.
I know this is one, small incident. But I think it's evidence of a highly responsive, competent, and organized team (technical or support, I'm not sure). I think this indicates that if the upper people and committees allow for it, this web site can do Good Things.
Back in February after the Stimulus Bill was passed, I was flying from Washington DC to Raleigh Durham. Onboard the plane were two congressmen, one so myopic that he literally had to read things two inches from his nose. This is with glasses too. You couldn't help but overhear how proud they were of passing the legislation but what was funny is that both of them were commenting on specific parts of it and each passing back pages of the legislation back and forth.
"Did you know that was in there?"
"Hey, what about this? What's that for?"
Mind you both of these idiots, er uhm, illustrious members of the house voted yes and they didn't read it through.
Sad Really..
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I firmly believe that government funding stifles scientific progress. The way the government chooses to allocate funds, is just a stimulus for its friends and an obstacle for its enemies. The government consistently funds scientific programs designed to uphold mainstream scientific interpretations of data, and they rarely fund projects that would challenge or overthrow the mainstream interpretation. Consider how little funding the Plasma Cosmologists have gotten, in comparison to the huge amount of money that has gone to astrophysicists who tell us that the universe is almost entirely invisible and virtually undetectable. This is like the medieval Catholic church funding mathematicians to produce increasingly elegant papers on epicycles while ignoring the research of heliocentrists. I, for one, would like to see the government out of science and Natural Philosophy returned to the realm of dilettantes and other assorted rabble who actually base their theories on observed data instead of mathematical conjecture.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
No, they'd rather huff and puff about big gubbermint and how since they never go to the library they shouldn't have to pay taxes.
Facebook for scientist! http://www.scienceworksforus.org/missouri/stimulus-grant-establishes-facebook-for-scientists
"Science has become increasingly complex, and that's leading to diverse research collaborations that often fall outside of traditional lines," says Kristi Holmes, Ph.D., bioinformaticist at Washington University's Bernard Becker Medical Library. "This new network will help researchers find one another and explore potential avenues of collaboration that they might not have considered before."
Wow! What a discovery!
It turns out that the most efficient type of stimulus spending is spending on studies of stimulus spending.
I've been employed within the environmental industry, and there is a marked improvement in availability of information from the Federal government since Obama in terms of both what is available on their websites and the implementation of email updates on regulatory changes, proposals, research, etc.
Just the improved information availability is a significant improvement.
... in there about research on flying cars.
Have gnu, will travel.
How many scientists do they claim to have saved or created?
1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
Yes
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work
Yes
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection
Yes
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal
N/A
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries
N/A
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation
No, but the group id becoming smaller and more isolated as motre data continues to show them wrong.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation
Yes.
With that many warning signs, you need some really good data , or at least a good model that fits with what we currently know.
Plasma cosmology as no data and there model has been show to be flawed. By flawed I man contradicting what we have shown to be true.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nobody is TAKING your money. You have engaged in a voluntary trade. You pay money, you get services. If you don't like it, you can leave, or attempt, through voting and public discourse to have your ideas enacted. No one is forcing you to remain a citizen of the United States, so quite whining. It makes you sound like a spoiled princess who doesn't appreciate how good she has it.
In Germany, the richest citizens just demanded they pay MORE in taxes. And they already pay more than we do. But they are not whiny babies who want everything for free like you do. They are responsible citizens who love their country and want what's best for all citizens. Your princess act just doesn't fly with me.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton