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NSF Accused of Misuse of Funds In Giant Ecological Project
An anonymous reader writes: The National Science Foundation (NSF) and a contractor have been accused by both an audit and by Congress of a significant misuse of funds in a major ecological monitoring project costing almost a half a billion dollars. From the article: "With a construction budget of $433.7 million, NEON is planned to consist of 106 sites across the United States. Arrays of sensors at each site will monitor climate change and human impacts for 30 years, building an unprecedented continental-scale data set. Although some initially doubted its merits, the allure of big-data ecology eventually won over most scientists.
But a 2011 audit of the project's proposed construction budget stalled three times when, according to the independent Defense Contract Audit Agency, NEON's accounting proved so poor that the review could not be completed. Eventually, DCAA issued an adverse ruling, concluding that nearly 36% of NEON's budget proposal was questionable or undocumented.
When the NSF green-lit the project, the agency's inspector-general ordered the audit released on 24 November, which found unallowable expenses including a $25,000 winter holiday party, $11,000 to provide coffee for employees, $3,000 for board-of-directors dinners that included alcohol, $3,000 for t-shirts and other clothes, $83,000 for "business development" and $112,000 for lobbying."
But a 2011 audit of the project's proposed construction budget stalled three times when, according to the independent Defense Contract Audit Agency, NEON's accounting proved so poor that the review could not be completed. Eventually, DCAA issued an adverse ruling, concluding that nearly 36% of NEON's budget proposal was questionable or undocumented.
When the NSF green-lit the project, the agency's inspector-general ordered the audit released on 24 November, which found unallowable expenses including a $25,000 winter holiday party, $11,000 to provide coffee for employees, $3,000 for board-of-directors dinners that included alcohol, $3,000 for t-shirts and other clothes, $83,000 for "business development" and $112,000 for lobbying."
âoeIt is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.â -- Upton Sinclair.
In a project worth half a billion, all the cited "unallowable" expenses are utterly and completely meaningless. Somebody has lost all perspective and all reason and is playing politics here.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is just the usual Republican FUD trying to kill something that might give us some actual numbers about climate change.
Among the bombshells:
- $11,000 for coffee for a $433 Million project... OMG!
- $3,000 for t-shirts... oh, the corruption! what is the world coming to???
Really... is this the best they can come up with???
After the hearing, DCAA director Bales said she was not impressed by the scale of the alleged misconduct. “In the contract world, we do a lot of reports that disallow this kind of thing. So, you know, people do it,” she said. “But then we identify it.”
Also significant was that the project managers were not invited to the hearing, thus insuring that this would be a true kangaroo court.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I've been on a variety of NSF, DOE, NIH, and private non-profit grants over the years. I can tell you that every time one of those were at play the same employer where I was working also had other streams of money coming in, and each stream had its own restrictions. One problem that inevitably comes up is that you have one stream that allows for X, Y, and Z and another only X and Z but you accidentally charge Y to the latter. Depending on the institutional accounting practices, it may take days, weeks, or months to correct that.
Take into account that a project this large likely has thousands of employees scattered around the country, and each group of employees has their own fiscal needs. Making sure that all the billing goes through correctly is not trivial.
I wonder how this stacks up against waste in huge projects at Boeing or blackwater? The waste is bad but no surprise and seems to be a very small percentage. I wonder how much pressure to generate bad press has been applied by vested interests who do not want data like that made available?
Silence is a state of mime.
These are normal things a company would spend it's own money on. They shouldn't be charging it back to the government.
That said, I have to question why the /. editors think this is newsworthy. I suppose they want to keep stirring the Republican anti-science pot to generate page hits.
Every University, business and organization that receives grants has overhead rates. These vary from reasonable to ridiculous based on the organization.
These overhead funds then typically go into a larger, not grant specific, fund that is fungible. The spending out of that fund is then restricted not by grant guidelines, but by the general rules of the institution. Usually that is still somewhat restricted at a University, for example, that usually won't allow alcohol. However, businesses receiving grants generally have fewer restrictions.
If you want to look at how overhead is used out of those general funds, I'm certain you will find this at any recipient organization. I am in fact surprised this is all they found. The fact that they are only looking at NSF and focusing on politically controversial topics for their specific party is very suspect. Should we start looking at how defense contractors spend all of their overhead for DARPA awards? Would they even share that information like NEON did?
Hey, this is how you motivate underworked, undermotivated, low wage government employees with 'perks.'
100% correct.
About being silly.
The difference between weather and climate is temporal, not spatial.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So, a Texas Republican who is a climate change and evolution skeptic that's been put in charge of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has a problem with an ecological project by the NSF. I'm shocked.
You might want to look at this Science article for a little clarification.
http://news.sciencemag.org/pol...
Meanwhile, the defense budget...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Sensors can monitor only weather. They can monitor neither climate nor change. Both must be calculated from series of data points.
Of course it would be difficult to get a $433 million grant to monitor weather.
That doesn't say 2014 is the hottest year on record. It says a report claims it should be the hottest year on recent record if two and a half months end up being similar to previous months in the year and the report actually only claims it will be hotter than the average temp during two different periods of time and blames it on oceanic oscillations like el nino (otherwise known as natural causes).
Neon has been a mess for a long time. Feuds between scientists, notable acts of outright sabotage, shaky data from substandard instrumentation, overhead and management fees that approach two thirds of the entire budget, the list goes on.
The entire enterprise risks entire swaths of ecological science and debate because it has been so incompetent. Chaos.
Anyone who believes we don't have good data because of a lack of money needs to pay attention...the problem is that incompetent institutions are quite literally sucking the air out of the room. Progress is stymied by incompetence from the likes of Neon.
112 kUSD seems cheap lobbying. How many lawyers do you pay with that?
Who are you talking to? Do you have some internal argument going on in your head?
We're talking about a guy, a congressman with actual power, who chairs the House Science & Technology Committee, who believes the earth is 6000 years old, that someone named "Adam & Eve" were the first humans (one of which was fashioned out of the other's spare rib). And who then flips out over an ecology project that costs less than 1/2 that of a single failed fighter/bomber (one that's built in his district by the way). Oh, and that fighter/bomber? It'll never be used and the military says they don't want or need it. He does this of course, after taking shitloads of money from the defense industry.
Now THAT'S integrity.
He's crying about waste in government, while he works exactly 70 four-hour days, drawing a taxpayer-funded salary of $174,000, not to mention a full pension for life, all his expenses paid (a household in DC for those 70 days) and one at home, health care for life and even free postage he can use to write letters asking his constituents for more money.
It's hard to take rightwing, science-hating Bible-humpers seriously when y'all defend such an obvious fraud, not to mention an obvious shitlord who believes governing is basically the publicly-funded version of gamergate. Oh, by the way this fraud supported no less than nine separate House inquiries into Benghazi, even after the first eight found no wrongdoing. Each one of those investigations had a multi-million dollar pricetag.
So you can just walk that climate change denying ass right out of here with that bullshit, parson. Your ass is showing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So your argument is that his bad behavior excuses anything you might do ?
I see you have been well and truly twisted.
Actually in science you judge a statement by its ability to make falsifiable predictions about the universe. How well has climate science been doing ?
are utilizing it faster than it is being discovered/ created.
I just paid $2.38 this afternoon. Seems we have a bit of a glut.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So that is an excuse for cutting funding as I am presuming the committee wants. What about all of those Skunk Works projects in defense. We don't know "where the money went" but it supposedly was put to good use. Cry me a river.
Society use your Sciences
No, my argument is "People who live in glass houses probably shouldn't be smearing their own feces all over the walls."
You are welcome on my lawn.
You have the burden of proof backwards, my "pro-science" friend.