When Scientists Give Up

New submitter ferespo sends a report from All Things Considered about the struggle for scientific funding in today's political and economic environment. "Federal funding for biomedical research has declined by more than 20 percent in the past decade. There are far more scientists competing for grants than there is money to support them." It's a tough situation for new scientists trying to set up labs. In addition to all of the scientific work they do, it's essentially a full-time job in addition to that to maintain funding. The reviewers who decide which projects receive funding are risk-averse to the point where innovative research is all but off the table. The consequences of this are two-fold: not only are we giving up on the types of research that led to so many of today's marvels, but many promising young scientists are giving up on the field altogether.

Comments

Re:Easy solution

[DiamondGeezer]

Name any scientist who has been funded "up the Wazoo" by Exxon or any other fossil fuel company to disprove global warming/climate change.

With actual evidence of receipts and bursaries.

You can't?

I can name quite a few environmental groups and universities who have taken millions of dollars including Stanford University which got $500 million from Exxon Mobil.

That's the problem with fairy tales and urban myths - they're near impossible to disprove to the gullible and easily misled.