Republican efforts to destroy science continue apace..

[giblets]

Yep, pretty sure we'd still get by. I'm not quite sure why you guys seem to think the rest of the world is utterly dependent on your existence.

No one thinks the UK would perish if not for the US. It would just be poorer than it already is.

[Dinner]

The Republican War on Science never ends

Both sides do have some anti-science people in their ranks but the big difference is the anti-science folks control the Republican Party while the anti-science hippies on the left get laughed at for babbling about homopathy and new age crystals. This is a great article you should check out:

http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2012/10/scientific-american-republican-antiscien

Name the issue wrt to science and Republicans will just about always be on the anti-science side. Evolution, climate change, EPA, toxic chemicals, air pollution, water quality, attempting to reduce spending on basic science, attempting to remove peer review because they don't like the factual results which come out of the peer review process, anything medical related, anything to do with modern biology, use of stem cells, babbling nonsense about vaccines causing autism despite massive volumes of studies which say it doesn't, attempts to force creationism into science classrooms... Just about any science related topic you can imagine or think up will have an official Republican Party position and it will almost always be anti-science.

It's just an attempt to make a false equivalency to deny that basic reality.

[kentonio]

Yep just as your country would still "get by" without American pharmaceutical R&D.

Yep, pretty sure we'd still get by. I'm not quite sure why you guys seem to think the rest of the world is utterly dependent on your existence.

[giblets]

I'm sure we'll get by.

Yep just as your country would still "get by" without American pharmaceutical R&D.

[Dinner]

The Young Turks had a video on this recently.



Lamar Smith is a Republican in the pocket of big oil and big polluters like the Koch brothers are upset that their anti-science denier crap isn't gaining any traction outside of the far right and worse, from their point of view, scientists use tax money to do real science which debunks most of their anti-science claims. Thus Lamar wants to change the rules about peer review needed to get science funding from the government so that Koch brothers' denier nonsense can be pushed as "science" even though none of it would ever make it through the real peer review process. Lamar Smith also wants to make it illegal, yes, illegal, for scientists to use public money to verify other people's results mostly because the actual scientists keep debunking their agenda. Thus they want that to stop.

The rest of us, the ones who are interested in the actual truth, should not be trying to under mine actual scientific research. This is just more of the Republican war on science which they've been waging for decades now.

[kentonio]

Substantially limiting American breadth and depth research would cripple science worldwide.

I'm sure we'll get by.

[snoopy369]

Hmm, while I agree with a good portion of this. Your comment because some of our greatest advances come from completely unexpected research. relates well back to the original OP.
Does it really matter then who is in charge of deciding what research is done? Our greatest advance can come from anywhere. So as long as the government is funding research, we're doing all that we can.

I think you misunderstand the bill. The bill doesn't give Congress power to decide on grants, or anything like that. It requires the NSF to only fund "research that is groundbreaking, important, and original". That's the sticking point. "Important" and "Groundbreaking" suggest that only specific things should be covered - not basic research that is still 'important' to the general advancement of science, and leads to unexpected advances, but isn't "Important" capital-I or "Groundbreaking".

And "Original"? That's the worst of all. Science advances because people duplicate each others' work. One person showing something is interesting. Four other groups showing it as well is science. So those other four groups shouldn't be funded? Bah. Smith is just showing he doesn't understand science here, nothing more.

And MikeH, this is awful for the rest of the developed world. A lot of your advances come because of American advances - science knows no borders, sir. Substantially limiting American breadth and depth research would cripple science worldwide.

[snoopy369]

I think it is reasonable for the government to consider whether the NSF is doing a good job, and if not, appoint someone else. And it's certainly in the purview of congress to tell an agency what's more important than others.

The real problem with this here, though, is that the point of government grants is exactly what Ben doesn't understand: to fund science that does NOT have direct market application, but has indirect benefits. Merck funds science that very likely directly yields cancer treatments. NIH funds science that leads to a better understanding of science such that Merck can fund science that yields cancer treatments. NSF plays that same role - funding science that does NOT necessarily lead directly to 'landmark advances', but leads to an incremental advance that eventually leads to landmark advances.

Requiring the NSF to certify that every grant goes to something big is exactly the opposite of how it should work. The big things are taken care of by the market. The small things are what's important, and the breadth of research so we have knowledge we can later build on (and perhaps find some things by accident). We can _have_ the alzheimers research Obama wants, because we did lots of 'pointless' research five or ten years ago that means we now know a lot more about the brain than we did before.

[MikeH]

This is FANTASTIC for the rest of the developed world.

If the US gets it's Gov't Science funding tied up in knots by having anything Republican religious and big business backers don't want researched blocked it means we can all jump ahead of them.

Basically massive economic growth areas in things like genetics and renewable energy will be ruined.

[rah]

Don't be ****ing stupid, science is why we don't live as cavemen, eating what we could kill with our hands or grub up out of the mud and trying to avoid being eaten by bears.

As for funding it, private enterprise is a ****ing terrible way of ensuring you get a good balance of advances, because some of our greatest advances come from completely unexpected research. If you only fund things that sound promising before you start, then you miss out on a range of potential technology that often later has a vast economic impact.

This is yet another reason why thinking markets are the answer to everything makes people stupid.

Hmm, while I agree with a good portion of this. Your comment because some of our greatest advances come from completely unexpected research. relates well back to the original OP.
Does it really matter then who is in charge of deciding what research is done? Our greatest advance can come from anywhere. So as long as the government is funding research, we're doing all that we can.

[kentonio]

Kentonio - if one sincerely believes that scientific research is a net market benefit - then government support for it is unnecessary.

If one believes that scientific research does not provide a market advantage, then it is clear you would support government financing.

So which is it? Does science provide a true benefit to the world or does it not?

Don't be ****ing stupid, science is why we don't live as cavemen, eating what we could kill with our hands or grub up out of the mud and trying to avoid being eaten by bears.

As for funding it, private enterprise is a ****ing terrible way of ensuring you get a good balance of advances, because some of our greatest advances come from completely unexpected research. If you only fund things that sound promising before you start, then you miss out on a range of potential technology that often later has a vast economic impact.

This is yet another reason why thinking markets are the answer to everything makes people stupid.

[Ben Kenobi]

Brilliant, why not let some radical old guys who believe that jesus rode into Bethlehem on a velociraptor be the ones who determine which scientific research gets funded. No way this could possibly go wrong.

Why not let the richest people around like Rihanna and Oprah decide?

[Ben Kenobi]

Kentonio - if one sincerely believes that scientific research is a net market benefit - then government support for it is unnecessary.

If one believes that scientific research does not provide a market advantage, then it is clear you would support government financing.

So which is it? Does science provide a true benefit to the world or does it not?

[rah]

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not a big fan of Government fingers in most places. Politics usually means not the best solution but compromise. And in the case of this OP, I'm not saying that the government deciding is necessarily better, but that politics would be involved regardless of the process so I doubt it would be that much worse.

And kentino, the military isn't always right about what it needs. Those decisions are also heavily impacted by politics. I'll admit that that it's probably more likely that they have better information to base their decisions on, but that doesn't mean that it's an absolute or that politics results in not necessarily the best decision.

Congress is tasked to determine spending, (even if that means outsourcing). Politics will influence those decisions, and possible corruption also. I just wish the general population could be trusted to vote in politicians that could be trusted.

[Sava]

I don't think I said that sava. What I said was that it's the role of congress to determine how public funds are spent and that politics plays a role regardless of alternative methods. Its the nature of the beast. I don't see how you're going to take politics out of it.

And yeah Ogie, I agree, but unfortunately the Government hasn't exactly shined in those areas either.

I was paraphrasing.

Your statements in this regard are certainly much more tame (or apologetic) with regards to the role of government versus your statements about government funded services.