How the U.S. Sequester Will Hurt Science and Tech

Later today, the U.S. government will enter the sequestration process, a series of across-the-board budget cuts put into place automatically because U.S. politicians are bad at agreeing on things. "At that moment, somewhere in the bowels of the Treasury Department, officials will take offline the computers that process payments for school construction and clean energy bonds to reprogram them for reduced rates. Payments will be delayed while they are made manually for the next six weeks." The cuts will directly affect science- and tech-related spending throughout the country. Tom Levenson writes, '[s]equester cuts will strike bluntly across the scientific community. The illustrious can move a bit of money around, but even in large labs, a predictable result will be a reduction in the number of graduate student and post – doc slots available — and as those junior and early-stage researchers do a whole lot of the at-the-bench level research, such cuts will have an immediate effect on research productivity. The longer term risk is obvious too: fewer students and post-docs mean on an ongoing drop from baseline in the amount of work to be done year over year.' The former director of the National Institute of Health says it will set back medical science for a generation. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has laid out how the cuts will affect the U.S. space program. He said, "The Congress wasn’t able to do what they were supposed to do, so we’re going to suffer." The sequester will also prevent billions of dollars from flowing into the tech industry. This comes at a time when there's a pressing need in the tech sector for professionals versed in the use of Linux, and salaries for those workers are on the rise.

Comments

And still...

[msauve]

the federal government will spend $14,000,000,000 more this year than last, even with these "cuts."

Bullshit

[Weezul]

Colin Macilwain. Science should be ready to jump off ‘the cliff’. Nature 491, 639 (29 November 2012) doi:10.1038/491639a

These aren't real scientists asking that government money stick around, but lobbyists for companies that feed upon science funding. Scientists love more government money of course, but many scientists understand that far must be cut, especially in military spending.

Sequestration merely provides an opportunity to re-evaluate what is important. Our question should be : Do we decide "important" by consulting lobbyists or by looking at the work that gets done.