Obama And Mccain On Science

[vbnautilus 48]

I dont think anyone disagrees in principle. What they disagree on is who's pork you fund. Given that the poor don't pay taxes any longer (15% of all returns filed pay no taxes, and some of those get credits, and another 5% pay less than $300 in income taxes), they are not a tax issue. They are an income redistribution issue (which I thought you were against).

That's right. We are discussing what is actually worth paying for. Which is why I made a case for why the research henry ridiculed may actually be important. But if he just keeps insisting that its ridiculous with no reasoning, the discussion cannot move forward.

[hblask 1]

That's right. We are discussing what is actually worth paying for. Which is why I made a case for why the research henry ridiculed may actually be important. But if he just keeps insisting that its ridiculous with no reasoning, the discussion cannot move forward.

It's ridiculous because only a few people care about it or will ever be affected by any outcome of it. It's one of those ridiculous things that academia thinks is vital to our future, but in reality is just fluff that will be forgotten as soon as the ink is dry.

[vbnautilus 48]

It's ridiculous because only a few people care about it or will ever be affected by any outcome of it. It's one of those ridiculous things that academia thinks is vital to our future, but in reality is just fluff that will be forgotten as soon as the ink is dry.

How do you know that? Electronic collaboration is becoming an essential part of industry and commerce. If we learn how to do it better we can do almost everything we do better.

[copernicus 0]

That's right. We are discussing what is actually worth paying for. Which is why I made a case for why the research henry ridiculed may actually be important. But if he just keeps insisting that its ridiculous with no reasoning, the discussion cannot move forward.

I have no clue what the WoW research is all about, but I certainly agree that there are projects that should be funded for the public good that have no obvious profit potential. I also think, though, that profitable by-products of research that is substantially funded by the public should be freely available and not protected by IP laws, and the profits returned to the public.

[vbnautilus 48]

I also think, though, that profitable by-products of research that is substantially funded by the public should be freely available and not protected by IP laws, and the profits returned to the public.

I agree. Unfortunately, this week NIH's new requirement for open-access to research funded by NIH grants is being challenged by congress, probably due to backlash from publishers:http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/op...ess-science.ars

[hblask 1]

How do you know that?

You are asking the federal govt to take money from me so that someone can do a lame-ass study that 0.000001% of the population will ever care about. The question is not "how do I know there is no chance that it will ever be used for something useful?", but "where is the preponderance of evidence that justifies taking money from hard-working families to support a study that they will never, ever care about?" And remember, once you justify "science", you are now justifying corporate welfare of all stripes, so not only do you have to justify why Joe Schmoe at the garage should have to pay for *this* crap, but also the millions/billions in corporate welfare that is also justified as "basic science".

[vbnautilus 48]

You are asking the federal govt to take money from me so that someone can do a lame-ass study that 0.000001% of the population will ever care about.

Well you're just making things up, see. That's what makes it hard to discuss this with you. You have to come to a place where you recognize that you are not able to accurately assess the impact or utility of this study. Because you aren't.

And remember, once you justify "science", you are now justifying corporate welfare of all stripes, so not only do you have to justify why Joe Schmoe at the garage should have to pay for *this* crap, but also the millions/billions in corporate welfare that is also justified as "basic science".

It seems that your only tactic is to generate a smear campaign. Put it in scare quotes, call it crap, call it ridiculous, label it corporate welfare. There is no substance here to even respond to. Remember you're not only smearing the WoW study, but these twenty other federally funded pieces of "crap" from this week's Science and Nature: NATUREStructural insights into the evolutionary paths of oxylipin biosynthetic enzymes NIH, Robert Welch Foundation, American Heart Association Unusual magnetic order in the pseudogap region of the superconductor HgBa2CuO4+ US Dept of Energy, NSF Three-dimensional optical metamaterial with a negative refractive index US Army Research Office, NSF, US DOE Prolonged suppression of ecosystem carbon dioxide uptake after an anomalously warm year NSFRegulatory networks define phenotypic classes of human stem cell lines NIH A paracrine requirement for hedgehog signalling in cancer NIH Prolyl 4-hydroxylation regulates Argonaute 2 stability NIH SCIENCEEnhanced Sensitivity of Photodetection via Quantum Illumination Keck foundation, Hewlett Packard, DARPA reCAPTCHA: Human-Based Character Recognition via Web Security Measures Heinz Endowment, Intel Corp. Army Research Office Imaging of Transient Structures Using Nanosecond in Situ TEM US Dept Of Energy Postseismic Relaxation Along the San Andreas Fault at Parkfield from Continuous Seismological Observations US Geological Survey Atmospheric Warming and the Amplification of Precipitation Extremes National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Climate Prediction OfficeNiche Partitioning Increases Resource Exploitation by Diverse Communities US Dept. of Agriculture Degradation of microRNAs by a Family of Exoribonucleases in Arabidopsis NSF, NIH Activation of Aldehyde Dehydrogenase-2 Reduces Ischemic Damage to the Heart NIH FBXW7 Targets mTOR for Degradation and Cooperates with PTEN in Tumor Suppression National Cancer Institute, USDoE Unsupervised Natural Experience Rapidly Alters Invariant Object Representation in Visual Cortex NIH Conformational Switch of Syntaxin-1 Controls Synaptic Vesicle Fusion NIHOh, and Joe Shmoe at the garage has a pretty good chance of being among the 87% of the public who say they want to fund basic science with their public funds. Please go tell Joe you have a better idea of how to spend his money.

[hblask 1]

You can pretend that that is what you are buying, but this is what allowing the federal govt in the science funding business really buys:Congress is back, and the GOP has promised to. put taxes at the top of its agenda. But rather than simplify and lower tax rates, Republicans plan to expand tax preferences for their business friends, including ethanol producers such as Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., the poster company for corporate welfare today.At least 43% of ADM's profits come from products subsidized by the taxpayers. Most of ADM's fortunes come from ethanol, produced through the distillation of corn into grain alcohol. Ethanol can either be mixed with gasoline to yield gasohol or be turned into gin.Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of "The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington."Over the years, ethanol has benefited from a host of taxpayer supports. The Carter administration provided hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidized loans to a dozen gasohol producers and imposed a tariff on imported ethanol. The Reagan administration provided surplus corn to gasohol producers, including $29 million worth to ADM. And the Clinton administration ordered, on dubious environmental grounds, inclusion of small amounts of ethanol in gasoline.Most expensive is Washington's 54 cent-per-gallon tax break for gasohol. This special-interest loophole accounts for the bulk of the more than $10 billion in subsidies to ADM since 1980. All told, analyst James Bovard estimates that every dollar in profits earned by ADM costs taxpayers $30.This mammoth subsidy benefits ADM (by far the largest gasohol producer), not the public. Ethanol is a poor energy source, costing more than twice as much as the wholesale price of gasoline to produce. Yet gasohol generates less power than gasoline, delivering about 5% fewer miles per gallon.In fact, gasohol is so inefficient, observes Bovard, that "producing ethanol may actually be a net destroyer of energy." Nor is gasohol environment-friendly. It often leads to vapor lock and is more explosive than gasoline. And while ethanol use might reduce carbon-monoxide emissions, it increases hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide output.One curious side effect of the ethanol subsidy is to underwrite ADM's liquor sales. Although Washington does not formally subsidize gin, ADM can use its ethanol production capacity, long funded by Uncle Sam, to make booze. The firm proudly announced last year: "The expansions (in capacity) provide ADM the flexibility to produce beverage or industrial alcohols to maximum capacity, or fuel ethanol depending on market conditions."Also, the diversion of corn into uneconomic gasohol raises corn prices between 22 cents and 40 cents per bushel. This penalizes distilled alcohol producers, which receive no gasohol subsidies. Sugar import quotas, which encourage use of high-cost corn syrup as a substitute for sugar, also artificially inflate corn prices.A program so bereft of public benefit as the ethanol subsidy exists only because it has powerful friends.For years ADM's chairman, Dwayne Andreas, donated generously to Republicans and Democrats alike. His efforts paid off handsomely-- billions in federal subsidies for one company.Robert Dole's departure from the Senate, however, has removed ADM's leading political patron. ADM, too, is weaker: Andreas retired recently; his son and heir apparent, Michael, was indicted in a federal price-fixing investigation and had to resign; and the company paid a record $100 million government fine and nearly $100 million to settle private lawsuits.And earlier this year, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas, attempted to shave the tax preference and speed the planned phase-out of the ethanol subsidy (now set to end in 2000).Archer lost in the face of combined pressure from the White House and Republican congressional leaders, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. But there's no public support for this blatant special interest rip-off, and the GOP needs an issue.If the Republicans are serious about governing-- and if they want to restore their faded political fortunes-- they should start by kicking ADM off the federal dole.

[vbnautilus 48]

You can pretend that that is what you are buying, but this is what allowing the federal govt in the science funding business really buys:

We're talking about increasing the budget of NSF and NIH, the granting agencies that support basic research for university scientists. This article is not relevant; it's about loans from congress to energy companies. I don't even see where any scientific research was funded.

[hblask 1]

We're talking about increasing the budget of NSF and NIH, the granting agencies that support basic research for university scientists. This article is not relevant; it's about loans from congress to energy companies. I don't even see where any scientific research was funded.

Then entire ethanol/synfuels thing is justified as "basic science research". After all, if we can use a few hundred thousand tax dollars on studying video games, certainly we can use a tens of millions to study energy, right? Sure, most of it is going directly to the profit of muilti-billionaire corporations, but so what? Science is science, right?.See, the problem is that no single person controls science funding. It runs through the federal bureaucracy, which is full of perverse incentives that have nothing to do with actual science. You don't get to claim the good science for the claim "federal funding of science is good", while ignoring all the nonsense passed off as science as "not what I mean". It's all the same thing -- a big pool of good intentions spent poorly. In the end, that's why it's inefficient. I personally have been on a couple of multi-million dollar research studies funded by the federal govt that have amounted to zero. Zip. Zilch. At the end, they decided they didn't want it, and it all got thrown away. You have to include that in your cost of projects funded in the name of science research, too. You can't just claim the ones that worked out OK.

[vbnautilus 48]

Then entire ethanol/synfuels thing is justified as "basic science research". After all, if we can use a few hundred thousand tax dollars on studying video games, certainly we can use a tens of millions to study energy, right? Sure, most of it is going directly to the profit of muilti-billionaire corporations, but so what? Science is science, right?.See, the problem is that no single person controls science funding. It runs through the federal bureaucracy, which is full of perverse incentives that have nothing to do with actual science. You don't get to claim the good science for the claim "federal funding of science is good", while ignoring all the nonsense passed off as science as "not what I mean". It's all the same thing -- a big pool of good intentions spent poorly. In the end, that's why it's inefficient.

No, we've made this distinction in the discussion from the beginning, because you claimed that congress was not in a position to decide what science should get funded, and I made it clear we were talking about scientific organizations funded by congress where scientists decided which studies get funded and which ones don't. It's not all the same thing. It was a source of your confusion early in this thread; please read back and see where I had to tell you several times I wasn't talking about congress making scientific decisions. And every time you claim the money was spent poorly I will refer you again to the results we got from it just this week. There's no reason I can't support NSF and not some direct grant by congress to an energy company. And frankly, I don't see where anyone called the ethanol thing "basic science". It's a subsidy on an energy source and a loan to a company that produces it -- what research was funded?

I personally have been on a couple of multi-million dollar research studies funded by the federal govt that have amounted to zero. Zip. Zilch. At the end, they decided they didn't want it, and it all got thrown away. You have to include that in your cost of projects funded in the name of science research, too. You can't just claim the ones that worked out OK.

And this is clearly the source of your bias. Since that project didn't work out, federal funding has never produced anything of value. I'd also encourage you to consider the role of failure in a creative process like science. There must be room for failure, it is part of the process. If we aren't free to do some things that don't work out, we will never do anything that does. If we knew we were going to get good results before performing the experiment, we wouldn't have to do it.

[hblask 1]

There's no reason I can't support NSF and not some direct grant by congress to an energy company.

But this is an extremely naive position. It implies that once you let the federal govt into science that you can control the spending against the onslaught of lobbyists and special interests. You can't. In theory I agree that a few million spent on basic research is relatively harmless. But that's not what you get. What you get is multi-billion dollar companies coming into the offices of congress saying "you know, I could support your campaign if we could get a few tens of millions of dollars for 'basic research'." *You* don't get to pick what all those other things justified as 'science' are. You have to include the price of unintended consequences in your decision-making process.You have to include this in your equation:http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/epa_whistleblower2.htmland this:http://globalwarminghoax.wordpress.com/200...arming-science/and this:http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cf...23891/story.htmand this:http://thinkdrinknewyork.com/?q=node/138You know, I'd like to believe that they can get this one thing right, but the evidence shows otherwise.

[vbnautilus 48]

But this is an extremely naive position. It implies that once you let the federal govt into science that you can control the spending against the onslaught of lobbyists and special interests. You can't. In theory I agree that a few million spent on basic research is relatively harmless. But that's not what you get. What you get is multi-billion dollar companies coming into the offices of congress saying "you know, I could support your campaign if we could get a few tens of millions of dollars for 'basic research'." *You* don't get to pick what all those other things justified as 'science' are. You have to include the price of unintended consequences in your decision-making process.

There's no reason that funding NSF requires congress to fund other science-related projects. A congressperson can be bought by any special interest; this is not a science-specific complaint, and doesn't apply to NSF/NIH.

You have to include this in your equation:http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/epa_whistleblower2.htmland this:http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cf...23891/story.htmand this:http://thinkdrinknewyork.com/?q=node/138

These three links have to do with the Bush administration distorting scientific results. We should not limit the science we do to that which George Bush can understand. This only underscores how important it is to have a president that does understand science.

and this:http://globalwarminghoax.wordpress.com/200...arming-science/

This one is more of a concern. Granting agencies always have to set priorities on what they want to fund, and there are certainly researchers who take the approach of exploiting those priorities.

[hblask 1]

There's no reason that funding NSF requires congress to fund other science-related projects. A congressperson can be bought by any special interest; this is not a science-specific complaint, and doesn't apply to NSF/NIH.

But that's my point... you can't open the door just enough to let in the ones that *you personally* want, while leaving everyone else out. That's the problem with most of the "good intentions" program -- they ignore the way things really work in Washington.

These three links have to do with the Bush administration distorting scientific results. We should not limit the science we do to that which George Bush can understand. This only underscores how important it is to have a president that does understand science.

I think that when deciding how much power to give something as powerful as the federal govt, that we realize that we will get people like Bush in there periodically.

[hblask 1]

BTW, vb, I appreciate the work and honesty you've put into this thread. You didn't let me get away with anything, and were more than fair in all your points. Very nice discussion.

[vbnautilus 48]

But that's my point... you can't open the door just enough to let in the ones that *you personally* want, while leaving everyone else out. That's the problem with most of the "good intentions" program -- they ignore the way things really work in Washington.I think that when deciding how much power to give something as powerful as the federal govt, that we realize that we will get people like Bush in there periodically.

This is why the separation between the broad level financial decisions and the scientific level decisions is important. If congress sets up a scientific institute full of scientists, and gives them a bunch of money to decide which science in the nation to fund, you don't have the lobbying problem. My main gripe with the way science funding works is that it has become too risk-averse. You basically have to show you are going to get good results before getting any funding, so what people end up doing is running a study from their previous grant, calling it "pilot data" to prove to the granting institute that what you are planning to do will work. By the time you get the funds, you have completed the study you proposed to do, and use the funds to produce results to get more funds.... Makes it very hard especially for us poor young faculty to get going.

BTW, vb, I appreciate the work and honesty you've put into this thread. You didn't let me get away with anything, and were more than fair in all your points. Very nice discussion.

Thank you too, it has been very interesting for me as well. <handshake>

[El Guapo 8]

BTW, vb, I appreciate the work and honesty you've put into this thread. You didn't let me get away with anything, and were more than fair in all your points. Very nice discussion.

Thank you too, it has been very interesting for me as well. <handshake>

Yeah you guys both bored the crap out of me together. Congrats.

[hblask 1]

Yeah you guys both bored the crap out of me together. Congrats.

Yeah, me too.

[copernicus 0]

Yeah, me too.

I still want to know about the mating rituals of hedge hogs. Link?

[hblask 1]

I still want to know about the mating rituals of hedge hogs. Link?

[copernicus 0]

Its disturbing that you would even know that exists.

[vbnautilus 48]

Its disturbing that you would even know that exists.

lol. it's disturbing enough that this exists.

[CaneBrain 95]

speaking of something disturbing:http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-0...er_N.htm?csp=34it's like science fiction writers really can see the future sometimes.

[copernicus 0]

speaking of something disturbing:http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-0...er_N.htm?csp=34it's like science fiction writers really can see the future sometimes.

Why is better technology disturbing? Because of this?"The idea, they say, subjects innocent travelers to the intrusion of a medical exam."Horseshit. Hyperbolic slippery slope horseshit. I guarantee you that if such a system is workable, frequent travelers like me will welcome the "intrusion".

[CaneBrain 95]

Why is better technology disturbing? Because of this?"The idea, they say, subjects innocent travelers to the intrusion of a medical exam."Horseshit. Hyperbolic slippery slope horseshit. I guarantee you that if such a system is workable, frequent travelers like me will welcome the "intrusion".

I travel plenty and I think this is a terrible idea. It will surely have tons of bugs and it just adds another layer to our increasingly police state. Where is the line? subcutaneous trackers for ex-cons? for all citizens? this is absolutely a slippery slope issue.