SOPA Creator Now In Charge of NSF Grants

sl4shd0rk writes "Remember SOPA? If not, perhaps the name Lamar Smith will ring a bell. The U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology chose Smith to Chair as an overseer for the National Science Foundation's funding process. Smith is preparing a bill (PDF) which will require that every grant must benefit 'national defense,' be of 'utmost importance to society,' and not be 'duplicative of other research.' Duplicating research seems reasonable until you consider that this could also mean the NSF will not provide funding for research once someone has already provided results — manufactured or otherwise. A strange target since there is a process in place which makes an effort to limit duplicate funding already. The first and second requirements, even when read in context, still miss the point of basic research. If we were absolutely without-a-doubt-certain of the results, there would be little point in doing the research in the first place."

Comments

Learning from History...

[malkavian]

For those that have even a fragment of history, you'll remember that the middle east used to be a center of learning and science.
In the days of the crusades, their scientific knowledge far outstripped that of Europe (there's a reason the numerals we use today are called "arabic numerals".
So, what happened to change that? Did Europe suddenly invest massively in science to go toe to toe? Alas not. Religious zealots got in places of power, and started to dictate that the progress of science was "against the will of god" (as the priesthood didn't understand it, so it scared them, and anything that scares a religious zealot is "against the will of god"). The role of religion in Europe started to lessen, allowing scientific method to progress apace and advancement to occur.

There's a reason ethics committees exist for scientific projects; the lay-people on them are a voice for the average person: They force the people doing pure science to think carefully about ramifications of performing experimentation in a particular fashion (is the experiment ethical? Can the way it's performed in a different way, not affecting the core of the theory, that is ethical?). The professionals are there to ensure the science is actually valid and to pick out the ones sloppily created that are mathematically wrong, or are unable by structure to draw the conclusions they're looking for from the experiments performed.

I'm vaguely hopeful that this incursion of zealotry into the workings of scientific progress can be rooted out and cast aside, but from the path that the US has been following towards a combination between a corporate feudalism headed by a close to a theocracy (what are the chances of an atheist being elected president these days, since the pledge of allegiance was altered in 1954 to include the "under god" segment; no, for you younger ones, that wasn't part of the original, and was tagged on for political ends), it's not a certainty. That's somewhat worrying really.

Re:Learning from History...

[muecksteiner]

You have a point there. Up to a point, that is.

What you write is, by and large, the currently accepted mainstream narrative in Western culture. Two extremely important issues with this are frequently overlooked, though:

a) The scientifically advanced Islamic world of the early middle ages was the result of rapid military conquest of a sizeable chunk of places that were amongst the most advanced regions on the planet: the Hellenistic states, other left-overs from the Roman Empire, as well as various cultures on the Indian sub-continent. All these were conquered by force, and absorbed into the early Islamic states. And for some time, the new Muslim rulers presided over empires that were very technologically and scientifically advanced - because the regions they had conquered had already been very advanced before being absorbed into the new Islamic states.

And crucially, in the first few centuries, the ruling classes, and the clerics, did nothing much to impede the existing culture of science and letters in their new dominions - quite the contrary, they encouraged the spreading of technologies. Point in case: the "arabic numerals" you mention were brought to Europe from India by returning Arab conquerors. The scientific and cultural riches the Muslim rulers presided over were mostly not the product of Islamic culture per se, but they did not hinder the further development of what was there. And in some cases, considerable progress was actually made - there are a number of notable Muslim scholars from this era.

However, at some point, Islamic culture ossified (for reasons that are very complex, and not entirely understood even today), became increasingly hostile towards science, and created the backwards mess that we see today. It is crucial, though, to always bear in mind that the "golden age of Islamic culture" was never entirely a product of the Islamic world to begin with. Far from it, actually. Like everyone else, they heavily built on the foundations their predecessors had built.

b) The second point, that Europe only started to catch up once the influence of religion (read: Christianity) started to wane is simply not tenable, either. Not in a narrow reading, anyway. What happened from the Age of Enlightenment onwards was that the focus of society *and religion* changed in ways that made scientific endeavour possible and fruitful - crucially, without removing Christianity per se from public life, or the culture at large. Far too many scientists over time were Christian clerics for the narrow reading to be true: there are science-averse interpretations of Christian doctrine, but these are by no means exclusive, or dominant.

Re:Unfortunately...

[lcampagn]

I'll start: 1) Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is an essential technique in molecular biology. It is the technique that gave us the human genome project and is a key aprt of virtually every major genetic discovery for the last 20 years. Its beginnings, however, are much more humble: PCR depends on the use of thermostable polymerases to amplify DNA strands. This brings us to 1965, when Thomas Brock was studying Thermus acquaticus bacteria from hydrothermal vents. From these, he isolated Taq polymerase. At the time, nobody had any clue that hydrophilic bacteria were of national interest.

2) The discovery of green fluorescent protein, one of the most widely used tools in molecular biology. From wikipedia: "In the 1960s and 1970s, GFP, along with the separate luminescent protein aequorin, was first purified from Aequorea victoria and its properties studied by Osamu Shimomura. . . However, its utility as a tool for molecular biologists did not begin to be realized until 1992 when Douglas Prasher reported the cloning and nucleotide sequence of wtGFP in Gene.[6] The funding for this project had run out, so Prasher sent cDNA samples to several labs. The lab of Martin Chalfie expressed the coding sequence of wtGFP, with the first few amino acids deleted, in heterologous cells of E. coli and C. elegans, publishing the results in Science in 1994."

Re:idiots, idiots everywhere.

[i kan reed]

"We" didn't. My state voted 54% to 45% for democratic representatives, due to gerrymandering in 2010, that resulted in 9 republican reps and 4 democratic ones.

They have power because they have power, and use that power to maintain power.

Re:ah the anti-NSF crowd again

[Chowderbags]

I could point out that some research on both sides are utterly crap. funding the study of beetles migration habits? yeah I dont think we need to waste money on that one

Unless you care about how it could affect agricultural production. The boll weevil alone does $300 million in damage to cotton crops. The bark beetle and elm leaf beetle carry Dutch elm disease, which has devastated elm trees in both Europe and North America. Another beetle damages potato crops in Idaho. On the other hand, there are beetles that eat pests and the dung beetle saves the cattle industry $380 million every year in dung disposal costs.

Re:ah the anti-NSF crowd again

[anagama]

Except they aren't going to cut NSF funding to do something useful like repair bridges. They'll instead spend $436 million on tanks the Army doesn't want or some other BS.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/04/29/1932931/army-tanks-spending/?mobile=nc

Re:ah the anti-NSF crowd again

[NatasRevol]

Also, the pine beetle is killing off huge swaths of pine forest in the Rocky Mountains.

It does actually matter to some folks.