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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.
He's not entirely wrong, especially when some projects like these get government funding...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
The Golden Fleece awards were mostly a load of anti-intellectual bullshit that had no comprehension of how mug applied science relies on basic science.
So.. let's mod the idiot +4 insightful, because we're apparently dumbfucks who believe stupid-conspiracy theories about science funding.
So here's the Actual breakdown of NSF research funding(which is about 80% of their total funding, with the rest allocated to science education and overhead).
Now, back to that first link. About 1.75% of research funding goes to environmental research of any sort, which is the umbrella category for climate change research among a fuck-ton of others. half goes to defense research.
So if you want an "easy target" for money, there's your answer. Not paranoia about evil climate change researchers. Next is health, with a good 25%ish, which is the thing that this article whines about. So, yeah, change from an area that gets 25% of national research spending, to one that gets 2. Good job.
Seriously?
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
The Koch' brothers also funded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatur project, which started out with key people being sceptical about global warming. But the data convinced them otherwise:
http://www.theguardian.com/sci...
The obvious solution is to return to traditional methods: establish an independent income, then take up scientific research as a hobby.
The problem though is that a lot of the big scientific problems require more capital than any ordinary person would ever be able to amass on their own. My PhD project consumed supplies at the rate of tens of thousands of dollars per year, and that is ignoring the cost of time, utilities, physical space, and standard lab supplies that our lab kept around for general consumption. That also is ignoring the cost of the instrumentation that we used to do the work.
If someone did fund something like it independently, then they would run in to the cost of publishing the results; the main paper from my graduate work cost somewhere around $1,500 to publish in an open access journal. Without budgets set up for that purpose, why would someone do this on their own?
Sure, there are interesting projects that can be self-funded, but not many of them. And the two people described in the NPR story were both working on projects that were way beyond that level of resource requirements.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
In fact, the conspiracy theory that the government is funding climate scientists who say that global warming is real and caused by human activity with the purpose to strengthen the government's authoritarian grip on society is a myth. But also the more plausible idea that scientists exaggerate their findings to get more funding does not seem to be true:
http://arstechnica.com/science...
"Assuming that oil companies fund studies that disprove man-made global warming and governments fund studies that prove it, "
There are no studies that disprove it. Their are papers that cherry pick one thing and then go on about it being a reason to doubt AGW.
Fact of the matter, AGW is EASY science, and easy to test. AGWs exact impact on climate is harder science.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No. No it is not.
You are lying.
You are spreading myths.
Assuming that oil companies fund studies that disprove man-made global warming and governments fund studies that prove it, you would expect to see a 10-to-1 ratio in the number of studies published for AGW versus against. And that's pretty much what you see out there.
No it is not what you see out there.
Your statement belies a belief that who pays determines the outcome. Believe it or not, most scientists have a tremendous amount of integrity and follow the rigor required by the scientific method. That's why you dont see many of them working for oil companies. Some scientists have worked for oil companies (or any company) and gotten the "wrong results" and ceased to work for those companies. The gentleman who did research on herbicides re: frogs is one such. Other scientists found themselves massaging data and keeping their jobs. They are in the minority however. And among government funded scientists you can find both flavors of scientist, those for and against. The key difference is, no one has had funding cut off due to results.
In short: you are full of it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
As an academic from the EU, I don't think we pose much of a threat. We face the same problems of declining funding, increasing competitiveness, the spreading plague of "excellentism", and risk-averse research. Combined with that our research professor salaries are not even half of those at the top universitities in the US.