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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
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
"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."
That's not the way it works. For starters there's rarely, if ever, a definitive "end point" for a study. There's always something more that could be done; it's a piss-poor paper that doesn't bring out new issues to explore. Running out of money or key personnel moving on to a new position often times is the end where whatever you've got is bundled up into a publication(s). If it isn't at the level of a..."least publishable unit" then it might sit around for a year or three until the principal investigator can scrounge up time or more often the case money to get it to that LPU point.
"Many if not most of those projects will then be scrambling for funding..."
This is what academic scientists call "situation normal" or "Wednesday" it's how the game doesn't work for about the last 15 years or so, and getting worse every year. You are constantly scrambling for money, any money, to keep yourself and your staff employed and doing science.
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.