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Scientists Stage Funerals To Protest Against Cuts — a New Trend?
ananyo writes "Physicists, chemists and mathematicians in the UK are campaigning against their chief public funder (EPSRC) over reforms that they say threaten blue-skies research, kicking off their protest by toting a coffin to the Prime Minister in Downing Street. The reforms are a response to declining budgets and political pressure to focus science on areas that will produce economic benefits for the UK. Last month, over 2000 Canadian scientists marched to Parliament Hill with a coffin to protest against the Harper government's cuts to basic research and scientific facilities, which they believe undermine the quality of scientific evidence in government. With budget cuts to science expected in the U.S., is it time for scientists in U.S. — and perhaps elsewhere — to think about getting their retaliation in first and ready their coffins?"
Never done that before. Well, if so, let me not be that guy who just posts "first post" and gets everyone annoyed at the lack of actual information, and instead be the guy who posts the obligatory link to Betteridge's Law of Headlines, and then says, "no" to the topic title.
No.
Yes, it is the time.
There is an educated minority who does obviously but big business that can't make use of curiosity based research in the immediate quarter doesn't care, Joe Sixpack who is fearing unemployment due to a massive recession doesn't care. Political powers that are trying to "stabilize" the middle east by shooting at it don't care.
So who, with power, cares?
And they shouldn't be subject to economic downturns eh?
Self important blowhards.
RTFA much? The coffin is not a mock funeral for the respective prime ministers, but rather for the 'death of science'.
"Old man yells at systemd"
This is intentional. They deliberately impoverish the intellectual community so that few will be able to question what government does. If no one has hard data, the government can do what it wants. If hard data is available, the government has to take that into consideration. Behind every anti-intellectual is an authoritarian.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
We can't cut social security because old people will starve in the streets.
We can't cut the drug benefits because old people can't afford their medication.
We can't cut the military, or our enemies will attack us.
We can't cut unemployment benefits, because people are unemployed.
We can't cut benefits to the poor because the poor need help.
We can't cut support to the bank industry because they need help to recover.
And apparently, we also can't cut science funding, or scientists will die.
The government is huge because people never want to give up ANYTHING. It's always "the other guy" who should pay.
Well when you have a massive debt, everyone has to give up something.. and that includes (unfortunately) scientists. Maybe those researching "blue skies" projects that have gone no where should be cut.
Actually, (with the U.S. government at least) we're worse than broke. Broke would imply we at least had nothing. We would actually have to earn about $15 trillion to be broke.
So no, we DON'T have the money. We have these pieces of paper that SAY "money" on them. But they only work because no one has figured out yet that they're worthless.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I wonder how long before they start devouring human flesh?
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Maybe they should use a giant urn instead of a coffin, to represent the result of the giant flaming failure of the future ahead of us under proposed budget cuts to basic scientific research? It would symbolically include the future economy as we fall further and further behind other countries in scientific knowledge and capability.
Then complain about the cutting of research funding. Sciences are getting a tiny fraction of the cuts we're getting.
Man. I didn't RTFA, and I thought it was about staging scientists funerals, or funereal scientists stooges! Why can't the articles be about what I think they're about?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Would be much better if it was though.
If you don't have anything informed to say, you could try saying nothing at all.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I have yet to see a developed western country where political leaders realize that cutting back on research will harm future competitiveness of their country.
Products and services made with cutting edge technology are harder to copy and less likely to have production delocalized to places where workers are cheap and relatively unskilled.
Without strong basic research you won't have discoveries that can be applied to problems and result in the new technology. Interestingly enough, China invests like crazy in research funding - maybe this will bring back jobs and we will be making T-shirts for the far east 40 years from now...
no cuts to science funding needed. Problem solved.
Not even the article was needed or even the summary. Protesting cuts led me to the obvious conclusion that they were cutting their funding. OP is just a grasping troll.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
If there is not enough money to swim in, the motivation for STEM careers goes down the crapper (ant the Gooks, Jeeves and Terrorists will take over!). They need to be SHIELDED from market forces because they were not educated in those fields that MAKE MONEY like MBA's.
Every sheepskin should have the following disclaimer: "This document and the skills and knowledge it represents is not intended to be used to diminish individual sovereignty, private property and voluntary contract rights of other individuals."
We Canadians weren't protesting because of general science funding cuts. Budgets get rearranged. The economy is in shambles. We accept that.
The "Death of evidence" protest formed because cuts were being very carefully targeted: If your research produced results that suggested the Harper Government (tm) might be making a dumb decision, your research was ignored, suppressed, and eventually canned.
Statistics Canada has never lost control of any personal information. Never. So the long-form census gets scrapped, citing "privacy concerns". Now we have huge holes in the data that used to guide policy decisions.
The Experimental Lakes Area costs nearly nothing (~$2m/yr). It taught us what damage various chemicals will do to aquatic ecosystems, how to clean that damage up, and how to prevent it from happening in the first place. So we're spending ~$50m, or 25 years of operating funding, to shut it down.
We have thousands of scientists employed in federal labs. They are now required, apparently under threat of dismissal, to obtain political approval from the Prime Minister's Office before they can talk to the media or release their findings.
There are many, many related examples from all over Canada.
So it's not that funding is being "cut". It's that scientific results are being systematically ignored, dismissed and suppressed, so our policy-making is now based on pure ideology with no evidence to back up decisions. And the institutions that could provide that evidence are quietly being muzzled and gutted.
(Posting AC for obvious reasons...)
ps. Captcha = "Losers".
Scientists might be better advised to realize that the cuts are the product of a string of factors from national decline (the UK) to a morbid economy and the growing demands on federal budgets by entitlements such as welfare and Social Security (US and Canada). They're getting smaller slices of the pie because the pie is shrinking (technically not growing as fast as the population) and other slices that can't easily be cut are growing.
Scientists are themselves to blame for much of that. First, there are the wave of hysterias that sweep over the scientific community every couple of decades. The 'population bomb' hysteria of the late sixties has contributed to an aging population, particularly in Western Europe and Japan, that places increases demands on federal budgets. All those aborted babies, for whom the scientific community has done nothing, aren't around to be working and paying taxes that could be used for basic research. And more recently, the global warming/climate change hysteria is also grabbing money that otherwise would have gone to research. How much science could have been done with the over $500 million that the Obama administration blew on failed Solydra and the idiotic idea to make solar cells in California? A lot.
In addition, the hostility that science, particularly the social sciences display toward "traditional values" about sex and family life has an enormous cost. Single parent households, a relatively new phenomena in all our nation's racial and ethnic groups, place an enormous burden on society that didn't exist half-a-century ago. That takes takes money, tens of billions of dollars, that are then not available available for 'blue skies research." Why is science losing funding? Blame that bug scientists Alfred Kinsey.
It's time the scientific community admitted a few errors, starting with the population explosion hysteria (with its roots in eugenics) and the mockery it makes of the teachings of most religion. It needs to learn more and pontificate less.
Ironically, if we as a society had listened more to churches over the past half-century, we'd have fewer social ills and more resources to fund basic science. But in an environment where the choice is between feeding a kid in a one-parent ghetto household or funding research that's likely to never be of any value, I would hope that our society and our politicians would feed the child and tell that scientist to take a hike.
And there's nothing new about my argument about the misdeeds of science and their social impact. G. K. Chesterton was warning about these problems almost a century ago.
--Michael W. Perry, editor of Eugenics and Other Evils : An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State by G. K. Chesterton
This is intentional. They deliberately impoverish the intellectual community so that few will be able to question what government does. If no one has hard data, the government can do what it wants. If hard data is available, the government has to take that into consideration. Behind every anti-intellectual is an authoritarian.
It's just for the sciences. The intellectuals in the coffee shops and pubs will still be able to think, analyze, pontificate, and question the government.
I can hear them now, screaming at the telly - "What a bloody wanker!" - at least that's what this American thinks it sounds like.
Westboro Baptist will have something new to protest!
Is this really a surprise at all? If these scientists had to raise their own funding via private means, this wouldn't be news at all. This is just wasted time, energy and smart minds rent seeking the government. Move along.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
but the governments already do whatever they want. The one percent isn't the rich, its the politicians. The have deliberately impoverished us all to assert more control over our lives. Then through their near infinite channels of influence they set one group against another all the while offering laws to protect each for each other.
If those UK scientist want to see their budget, I think they can still get tickets. There appear to lots of empty seats
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... it will be picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church.
Piss off too many scientists and they will go back in time and step on the fish that eventually became your entire family tree. Then again this is government cutting back funding....
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Having been in academia, and then subsequently being out in the "real world", I really don't have a lot of respect for these guys. They have a propped-up lifestyle and worldview that only works when there's little to no accountability and a steady stream of cash that they don't have to generate (though grant-writing really does suck). I'll listen to those whose blue-sky research has actually translated into a real-life breakthrough (though usually those types have gotten guaranteed lifetime funding already), but for the others... welcome to reality, where we are currently in a recession. Also, their protesting methodology reminds me of undergrad activist groups, not professionals.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
You can order them online and get them delivered. I'm guessing they're priced reasonably, but I can't say that I've done a comparison.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Research keeps coming up with global warming and other nasty ideas that get in the way of oil and gas exploitation. Canada's government holds Alberta's interests above everyone else's. That won't change until the next election.
Don't be silly, this is /.
are doffing coffins?
(er, sorry. carry on.)
-- Alastair
That assumption doesn't even make sense.
No, they seem to be into consensus these days. If they get enough of them whining that the public feeding trough is going dry they'll have consensus that science is dead. RIP useless studies at the public expense.
WELL DONE HAPRER. Let them eat their own shit. Just like the health insurance, and doctors, and nurses, and their GIGANTIC salaries, these guys needs to learn how to survive as the regular John does. By WORKING HARD. Not by eating for free, and drinking for free (free as a beer, with the annoying detail the we, the people are paying his beer...).
As it was blown some time ago, do you know that one stupid little anesthesiologist makes $400 thousands Canadian dollars??? WTF??? Can you imagine how many patients he must manage in order to justify his salary? I could, but for some strange reason he does not do it.
As of the "scientists", i wonder how many innovations do you happen to know made by them? Zero? Really? Then what is the point!!!
Will progess stop 10 years from now?
Je me souviens.
is Melodramatic. Marching with a coffin? Come on. I guess I would hope that such a group of people wouldn't stoop to that level for attention.
Why do these scientists feel so entitled to my tax dollars? Support yourselves and raise your own research dollars, you fucking leeches.
Most of the posts here seem to be of the "cut this or else cut that" ilk. Why not do the right thing and raise taxes, or in the USA case, return the tax rates on the very rich to what they once were, and change the business tax code to reflect some sort of reality. And then stop taxing capital gains less than "ordinary" income.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Traitorous politicians like Harper and a great many in the USA only care about winning AT ALL COST. The nation and the democracy do not matter they are not actually important, only winning the "war". Anybody who is not "one of us" must be cleansed of the body politic and naturally these lesser people are to be despised. This kind of fanaticism is as old as civilization and it always starts out minor then it grows until it is extreme enough and/or large enough that a majority can see it (usually it has to be really bad before enough slow people wake up and take action.) This does not always result in the extremes you might be imagining because sometimes it can be addressed before it becomes a huge problem; the harm it causes is immeasurable regardless.
The problem is while we can see them as a extremely damaging to democracy or worse and they probably are -- but the question is, are we falling into the same sick twisted mindset as they are? Should we hate them for their hateful vile actions and if so, have we become them or are we them in the 1st place?
Attacking science, news, statics, even truth itself becomes another victim of the paranoia to be eliminated and undermined as if it were no different than the opposition. The predetermined conclusions must be maintained at all cost for the fanatic believer.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
In Russa, the funerals stage the scientists.
To add another thing; debate is a collaboration, a struggle towards answers. We think of it as metaphorical warfare we describe it using war and fight metaphors which creates the wrong attitude. The fanatics take this even further but when the culture has a warped view in the first place the fanatics do not stand out as quickly as they should.
It is not an intellectually honest strategy to kill debate and to undermine the oppositions positions by removing their access to the the truth --- and if you find that science is almost always against you you should start thinking instead of strategically removing science from the debate simply because it is the best way for you to win against the other side.
That is exactly what these fanatics are doing and what is particularly vile about it is how they do it under such dishonest justifications. I don't know what is worse, lying to oneself to do something horrible as a "true believer" or to cynically attack any potential future threat.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Because these scientists are Special And they shouldn't be subject to economic downturns eh?
In the last year or so the British government spent more money bailing out the banks that it has spent on science in the last 1,000 years. Now just pause and think about that for a second. Think about the world 1,000 years ago and where we are today because that difference is due primarily to science. If governments can blow more than 1,000 years worth of their science budget to bail out the very people whose greed created the economic down turn then you might think that they could find the relatively meagre pittance required to continue a program which has transformed our society.
...of course this may be part of the problem: it was far easier for those in power to deal with us troublesome peasants in the dark ages!
Don't be silly, this is /.
Obviously he was under the impression that This Is Sparta!
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I'm planning to write a survey paper on the overall effectiveness of scientists carrying coffins on government funding of science.
So if anyone knows of any papers in this area of research, please let me know. Future science may depend on it!
Yaz
In the USA, where we have "free speech", I bet holding a mock funeral for Barack Obama (or, previously, George W Bush) would be considered a death threat and get the Secret Service knocking at your door. If not, it would at least get you on a list.
Did you never listen to the news or any comedy show from 2000 to 2008? Bush was constantly having death wished upon him in and in rather direct language.
Maybe, just maybe, it's high time that these scientists find another source of funding, outside of the public government. Last I checked, government was about governing, not about researching.
So sorry there isn't a surplus of money in our giant country of few people. You may just need to earn some of your own.
If you look at your list, one of those is punctual & limited in time, the other are actually standard and are always hapenning. Military is definitively punctual, and so far you are in the US the first military of the world with god how many wars where you are the agressor (justified or not), and not really "attacked by the enemy". I am sorry but even in normal time your military is waaaaay overkill and you haven't been attacked by anybody for 60 years, and you can't say with a straight face you will be attacked due to your nuclear aresenal. So your military is definitively over budgeted. The rest, particularly science, not so much.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I applaud the the courageous peoples of Canada against the Evil Despot State of the United Kingdom, i.e. Briton.
Live Canada.
This reminds me of those asshole factory workers who went on strike for some bullshit in my city a couple years ago for basically nothing but the fact that they were getting laid off. They thought they were entitled to a job and none had ever worked a different position ever, for decades in most cases. The average person changes jobs 7 times, welcome to America. Go live in a straight communist country if you want the same job forever.
Let me just remind scientists of something (and musicians, actors, astronauts, and history majors). Your job is never guaranteed! You knew that! YOU FUCKING KNEW THAT! The people who hire you do not have money coming out of their asses. There's a 99% chance your work isn't producing a sell-able product. That is not job security. You're getting fired for that reason and only that reason. If you want job security, you would have to be working in a field that has job security. By the way, I work in IT and even I have 2 fallback positions in different fields. Failing to have a fallback position is not grounds for not getting fired or a protest.
Scientists have an interest in continued funding. They are also in the best position to justify the work that they do. If you actually want to argue about whether these are good cuts are bad, you need to address the substantive arguments they make: not throw around sweeping generalizations.
Intelligent managament is about adjusting and reallocating, not cutting across the board. The programs you list are not all equivalent: not in net economic cost (or benefit), not in social cost (or benefit), not in terms of efficiency, or any number of other things. The idea that no one wants to give up anything so "everyone has to give up something" is ideological claptrap that tars some programs with the perceptions of others. (In any case, the easiest way to achieve it is to raise taxes.)
If you actually look at the context of these cuts in Canada, it's pretty clear that they are not all motivated by cost-savings. They coincide with elimination of the manditory long-form census, seriously damaging the government's ability to masure the impacts of social programs. There are huge cuts in environmental science, including climate change monitoring and a unique experimental lakes study area. The amounts involved are small, but the targets line up perfectly with the politics of a governing party that depicts environmentalists as terrorists and whose economic priority is oil exports. And as it happens, Canada - one of the countries under discussion - does not have "massive" debt - at least not compared to other OECD countries.
For a "blue skies" project, consider the packet switching research carried out in the late 1950s at the National Physics Laboratory in the U.K. The government decided that every project should have a "customer" with an application. Packet switching didn't. It was cut back. The U.S. invented the Internet.
Here's a 20-minute documentary we just released on the death of the Tevatron at Fermilab, which helped hunt for the Higgs, before it was shut down, probably sooner than it should have been. http://www.motherboard.tv/tevatron There's also a bit on the superconducting supercollider. "It's the writing on the wall," Neil deGrasse Tyson says at one point. Hope you like it, and that it sheds some light on the impact of these cuts.
Traitorous politicians like Harper
Canada's official unemployment number is 7.2% and falling. Canada's budget deficit is minuscule and shrinking. Canada's economy is so strong the Canadian dollar is almost at parity with the US dollar.
You can expect to be living under Harper for a while yet.
You malcontents need to figure out how to achieve your various and sundry agendas without ruining prosperity. The fact that most of your dearest wishes (the ones you quietly indulge, as opposed to the ones you publicly advocate) are in direct conflict with growth is the reason folks like Harper are in charge.
Enjoy.
Blessed are those who have something to say yet don't.
Actually the Canadian government INCREASED research funding in many areas, including environmental research.
They did cut funding, or not provide new grants to some projects, so those researchers complained. They're not protesting defunding of scientific research, they're protesting defunding of THEIR research.
The title would make you think 2000 published scientists were giving time to the event. No. More like an assortment of grad students, lab techs (maybe), and various types of youths (high school, street, art students) looking for a party. That was it except for one bona fide prof. The impassioned organizer admitted on radio that the protest was organized without having brought any issues to government attention ie. no attempt at contacting govt officials for a dialogue, etc.
The fact is, scientists are supported pretty nicely by the Canadian governement. The govt has an agenda of pushing the subsidizing of science on to industry ie. make Canadian industry invest in research. That can mean diminishing govt research funding in areas where it is felt industry can do better. In fact, rather than protesting against the easy target (govt), maybe scientists/public should be asking industry to get off their collective cans and start doing serious research.
The scientists who work for the govt have it best and no reason at all to complain. As public servants, they are not subject to 'publish or perish', they can choose between two career streams of management or scienctific management (a boon for scientists who suck at research but are good at organizing things), after competing for and winning a position it is theirs indefinitely if they so choose (and don't commit a crime ... and incompetence isn't a crime), the pay is exceptional, the funding is consistent (there is never a year of zero funds and where univ profs scrabble for $10K here or there, they speak in $100K chunks), and parking is (for most) free. The disgruntled few, coincidentally those who've never worked in industry or academia, bitch about not being able to spout off to the media at will but instead having to go through govt public relations staff (they feel they are 'muzzled') ... ummm, just like the scientists at Microsoft, HP, NASA, etc. have to?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Those same politicians who approved the bailouts might find themselves on the boards of directors for those financial institutions that got bailed out eh?
Up here in Canada, we have the problem that Harper doesn't like scientific research that has any chance of restricting those things he has decided to implement or change. So anything related to the environment is being stiffled as best as he can, because he wants to ensure that the Embridge pipeline goes through and Alberta (his home province) makes its 550b in profits over the next 10 years. It doesn't matter how hazardous Fracking may or may not be, it doesn't matter the risk to the BC environment or the Pacific Coastal regions etc. Its easier to shut down the environmental groups and legislate that scientists must get approval from the PMs office before they can discuss *any* research or findings on anything to do with climate change or environmental issues.
And when he retires (if that ever happens), he will end up on the board of directors for Embridge or similar companies.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid