MIT Used Lobbying, Influence To Restore Nuclear Fusion Dream

An anonymous reader writes in with the story of how MIT's fusion energy experiment is alive and well even though its federal funding was axed. "'In the end, it is about picking a winner and a parochial effort to direct money to MIT,' said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based watchdog group. 'It's certainly a case of lawmakers bucking the president and putting their thumb on the scale for a particular project.' MIT enlisted the support of a wealthy Democratic donor from Concord and the help of an influential Washington think-tank co-founded by John Kerry. These efforts were backed by lobbyists, including a former congressman from Massachusetts, with connections to the right lawmakers on the right committees. The cast also included an alliance of universities, industry and national labs, all invested in the fusion dream. 'It's ground-breaking research that could lead an energy revolution,' [Senator Elizabeth] Warren said. 'This was not about politics. This was about good science.' The revival of MIT's project, whatever its merits, clearly demonstrated what the combination of old-fashioned Washington horse-trading and new-fangled power — both nuclear and political — can do."

Comments

R & D in America

[Anonymous Coward]

I read a report 2 years ago that said the R&D funding in America has fallen, while at the same time R&D fundings in Korea, Japan, Singapore and in China have gone up

The report also stated that the number of patents awarded to America has plateaued while patents awarded to other countries, especially those from East Asia, have skyrocketed

Most importantly the report stated that of the patents awarded to American companies, more and more are not directly resulted from technological advancement, but rather, based on "usage" and/or "methodology", such as the patent as described in following article -

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/11/scheduling_paradigm/

Re:Article doesn't go into details about quality

[phantomfive]

The program is doing useful research.

What useful research is it doing? This is the topic I'm really interested in.

1) dollar-for-dollar the MIT reactor produced more papers

Eh, I'm too aware of the quality of academic papers to really care about raw numbers. Let's hear about the details of their important discoveries (or more interestingly, what research they are working on now that could give us important results in the future).