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U.S. Science Agencies Get Some Relief In 2014 Budget
sciencehabit writes "The ghost of former President George W. Bush permeates the 2014 budget that Congress released this week. His presence is good news for physical scientists, but less cheery for biomedical researchers, as Congress reserved some of the biggest spending increases for NASA and the Department of Energy. The National Institutes of Health, meanwhile, got a $1 billion increase that is drawing mixed reviews from research advocates."
Yeah, agree. I may be wrong, but I feel like NASA has a much better ROI than the NIH.
Only if you're willing to put 0% of increases in disease treat-ability down to NIH research. It's hard to look at a person who survived cancer due to an experimental treatment and say "if we let 20 people like you die, we could have gotten an extra satellite in orbit." That's not to say I think NASA doesn't need funding, it does! It's just that NIH as useless is staggeringly unreasonable.
I don't think anybody called it "useless". They simply stated that NASA has a better ROI and deserved more of a budget increase.
They didn't DEFUND the NIH. They just gave them less of an increase. The real world isn't binary where it's all or nothing.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Calling it a "spending increase" for NASA is a bit strongly worded. What it is, is that the 2013 sequester is not repeated in the 2014 budget-- it's still a cut from the funding from before the 2013 sequester.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
And give it all to NASA, pls.
Without getting political, if we're going to spend public money on research, energy and space exploration probably make more sense than anything else right now. Oil is eventually going to run out and we will eventually face an extinction threat to the species at some point (yes, true, research into disease might help with the next plague, but there are asteroids, global war, and many other things to consider). A long-term survival strategy is not keeping all of us on this single planet, but rather, spreading out to the stars, and the continuing discovery of earthlike planets is eventually going to lead us to one that is habitable.
I don't think it makes sense to talk about ROI when comparing NASA and NiH. The GP had it correct, how do you balance lives saved over space exploration. It is comparing apples and oranges. One might choose one or the other based on other criteria, but there's no way the units on ROI between NASA and NiH match. Think of it in terms of data types, you couldn't compare an integer and a character unless you coerced one to the other, and you would only do that if one was masquerading as the other.
Ghost of GWB?
How many years has Obama been in office? Eventually you've got to give him some credit... you know, what with the 2nd term and all....
Agile Artisans
Economics tells us that there are only two real things that cause economic growth.
1. Population growth.
2. Technological progress.
We need as much of the latter as possible, and should address that goal with the full intent of the nation starting with generous public support of math and science education as early as possible in the life of our children.
Furthermore any public constraint or impediment towards that end should be uprooted and eradicated with extreme vigor and prejudice.
The motivation is nothing short of the survival of the human species.
Trillions.
There's your budget hole.
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So, you like getting dementia in your 60s then?
Considering we live to our late 80s now, that's going to be fun for you!
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How do you compare survival of the species (NASA) over increased survival of more people (NIH)? In my mind NASA funding is long term benefits while NIH is more about short term benefits. To put is simplistically, nothing the NIH is doing is going to save us from the inevitable death of this planet. But NASA research will. I'm digressing though. We can play a subjective cost/benefit comparison game all day. But that wasn't what I meant by ROI. I meant it in the strict economical sense. For every $1 of investment I get $X of profit. I'm essentially saying I feel like the advances found by NASA produce more economic growth and capital, and by extension more tax revenue for the government, than advances from the NIH does.
I fully recognize that this is a complex answer with varying perspectives. Which is why I qualified my statement as purely opinionated and even explicitly stated I may be wrong. And like others pointed out, I did not mean to say the NIH is useless or more specifically that it doesn't deserve funding. I was merely implying that NASA deserves more funding than the NIH.
Actually, they did defund NIH. Our rents and other costs went up, so this is below sustaining level.
But that's in the real world, where cybersecurity gets Trillions that goes unremarked while real science gets fractions of pennies on the dollar.
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Get back to me after a disease kills off or renders ineffective half of your population.
A lot what we do keeps people from dying from non-rare diseases. The exotic diseases just get more press.
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No, I loved dementia in my teens. But the doctor is old and tired now.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Technically, you can't have dementia in your teens.
Early onset is usually in the 40s.
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Yes, because no one will spend money to save a kid from cancer...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Hey they had to come up with the Sebelius Sneeze didn't they?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Yes, it's too bad that the government printing money to pay for science programs creates inflation that reduces the net spending on science programs.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Yeah that hurts if 100% of your population is living together. But if the population is segmented into 10-20% semi-isolated groups, that would help mitigate the effects of a pandemic wouldn't it?
The black plague killed something like 30-60% of Europe's population. But the world only lost an estimated 15-25% of the population. If early man had not explorer for new land and places to live the world population might've looked closer to Europe's loss wouldn't it?
And no moral authority to confiscate wealth from hard working Americans to fund it.
Retirement is between 62-67 in the US and 55-70 worldwide. Society has already decided it's probably best to throw in the towel at that point. So it's not a huge deal if my brain decides to. By then my kids would probably be grown up, I won't be having anymore, entertainment activities will probably start to diminish at that point as well. Most everything past 60 is gravy in my mind, heck if I die at 60, my kids will get more of my retirement. Not saying I'd kill myself or advocate for someone killing me when I retire, or to go out and do that to others. Let's be honest after retirement you're just chilling in the waiting room while you wait for death to call your number.
Taking the really long view, if we don't spread out into space we will become extinct the next time there is a planet wide catastrophe, whether of our own making(climate change, nuclear war) or some natural event (supervolcano, giant asteroid, gamma ray burst etc
And any other research is just equivalent to deckchairs on the Titanic
I am not sure what the NIH does. I thought it stood for Not Invented Here
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
In providing for the common defence you may need to establish R&D operations to find better versions of guns and other arms. In promoting the general welfare the government may need establish R&D to operations to find better cures for diseases, find better ways to facilitate transportation of goods and materials.
I guess you're also against the Louisiana Purchase.
Funny how a majority of people on this site wants to believe we're going to cure aging and live forever, but doesn't want to pay for the fundamental research that would help us move in that direction. (Although the goal is unattainable, NIH research directly contributes to increases in life expectancy.)
Not taking sides here, just making an observation. My opinion is that, while fighting for immortality is a futile endeavor, the NIH should be funded nevertheless because the fundamental research they perform also has application in fighting multiresistant bacteria and potentially pandemic viruses, which might start causing trouble sooner than a giant asteroid or gamma ray burst. To a lesser extent, the NIH should also be funded just to avoid the inconsistency of nobody wanting to get heart disease or cancer but nobody wanting to fund the quest for better cures, not to mention the inconsistency of everyone whining about America losing economic competitiveness while at the same time snubbing its one strong source of economic competitiveness: fundamental research. That said, NASA should also be funded for the reasons parent cited. And don't forget to give those fusion researchers something too; they're working on a potential solution to a lot of huge problems, on a shoe-string budget. Where to get the money? The military and the pointless-wars-fund can do with a few % less. And those oil industry subsidies should be consigned to history, where they belong.
Let's be honest after retirement you're just chilling in the waiting room while you wait for death to call your number.
I'll tell that to my dad who became a professor in his 60s
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2013 NIH budget: $31.3 billion
2007 NIH budget: $30.3 billion
Far from doubling the NIH budget hasn't kept pace with inflation and has been declining in real dollars since 2003. The $8.2 billion (not 10) stimulus largely went to fund existing projects that the previous decade of NIH budgets were too miserly to properly fund. Scientists have become accustomed to having the NIH whack 10% (or more) off of a successful grant application, and when only 18% (officially, though I know of no field getting anywhere near that high) of grant applications get funded there's no end of worthy research that isn't being properly funded.
He's not retired now is he?
course, those 20 people are all over 80 years old and have numerous other problems besides cancer....
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!