Comments on: Science does stimulate

By: Doug A

Doug A — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:39:18 +0000

I’ve repeatedly raised concerns over the last few blog posts about potential pitfalls of the science funding in the economic spending bill. Along with Low Math, Meekly Interacting, and the post above by Ciaobella, my main concern has been what happens to newly funded researchers and projects in two years, when the stimulus money runs out.

Nature this week expresses similar concerns. In this editorial,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7230/full/457635a.html
and the stories linked from there, Nature examines the funding crisis at the N.I.H. that occurred when its budget was quickly doubled, then flat lined in the last decade. It should be noted that if significant portions of any science stimulus package is spent on researchers, included grad students, a parallel outcome of extreme grant competition and many small groups on the brink of collapse will result in two years.

NIH had it lucky; their budget flatlined at the increased level. In contrast, the NSF and DOE budgets will drop back to pre-stimulus levels in two years. We should be careful for what we wish.

By: GNW Wisdom

GNW Wisdom — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:38:09 +0000

I don’t think any of you understand. “The Stimulus” was supposed to prevent the coming economic breakdown of our society. It wasn’t big enough to begin with, it’s probably going to be drastically cut, and the economic breakdown will likely so severe that funding of ANY high-cost physics will be out for the future. Don’t think 1930s Great Depression; think Fall of the Roman Empire.

Like “The Surge”, we’ll be told “The Stimulus” is working. If you are young, take a snapshot of the world now, and when you are 60 (if you survive that long) do a comparison. Roman culture didn’t collapse all at once; it took generations to really get into the Dark Ages. 40 years ought to show the trend.

Remember, you heard it here first.

By: Ciaobella

Ciaobella — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:59:55 +0000

Let’s see, you want more money to hire grad students and postdocs in your field of research, but that money likely won’t create any more PERMANENT jobs within the field for those same grad students and postdocs. I’d call that widening the opening of the “leaky pipeline,” but keeping the other end of the pipeline at the same size. I don’t think I’ll be calling on my senator to support that.

By: ccu

ccu — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:18:38 +0000

i think the bill is ~ 850 billion, here are some questions I am looking to get the answers too:

How soon does the 850 billion have to be paid back? (We are borrowing it I believe.)

What is the total interest that will be paid on it?

What is the goal in terms of the 1st year rise in GDP? (2nd, and third?)
What is the goal in terms of the 1st year rise in employment? (2nd and thrid?)
What will be the impact to inflation over the next year, second and third?

If we don’t borrow all the money, what percentage of it will be printed?

I appreicaite any help in getting the answers. It seems these are important to answer before we can asses wether this bill will have a good or bad effect on anything.

Given that there are some many scientists here, I wonder if one or more would be willing to state the goal of this bill as a hypothesis and then state the measures by which you would judge the falsification of that hypothesis. It is hard, or I can’t find any, rigorous thinking about all this spending. I see alot of excitement, or other emotions like anger and fear, but no one critically thinking about this.

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:40:28 +0000

One more comment: the current $800 billion package is said to provide up to 4 million jobs. That’s $200,000 to provide for one job. Government funded NSF research grants, at least in my area of research, are somewhere around $300,000 on average and create between 3 and 5 jobs each, which makes such grants more than two times as effective with regard to the job market as the overall stimulus package.

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:24:14 +0000

I like the comment by John Phillips that “science funding does is support the super lavish lifestyles of elitist scientists” as it gives me an opportunity to clarify a few things. I am a scientist, made my PhD in 1994. There is no such thing as a”super lavish lifestyle for elitist scientists”, or “elitist scientists”, for that matter. Salaries for scientists are significantly below the salary level of similarly qualified persons in other industries. I am paid $25 an hour, and I am ok with that. With my qualifications, in a science job I could earn probably up to $40 an hour. But such jobs are rare and hard to find. As software programmer, I could earn five times as much as I do know, with significantly less time to spend in getting the appropriate qualifications. On top of that, my pay is for a 35-hour week but I work 50-60 hours on average, so my real pay per hour is actually less that an bus driver. And yet, I love my job and that’s basically why I do it. And I think 95% of my colleagues do it for the same reason. “Lavish lifestyle”? You find that in the business and financial sector, not in science. And by the way, government funding for science in very rare occasions pays salaries for scientists other than postdocs. So I am sorry to say that John Phillips, and apparently many other people, are completely misinformed about the reality of science.

By: Friend of science

Friend of science — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:48:21 +0000

If your program is at the mercy of the whims of two senators, then it does suffer from a lack of strategic planning.

By: jackal

jackal — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:13:43 +0000

Hmm, well here’s a datapoint — budgets for projects are often voted on a year-to-year basis, so some random negotation between two senators can result in your project — for which there’s already been decades of sunk costs and investment — to lose funding before completion. So, you know, have multi-year committments set and not subject to random whims for big projects could be a useful thing.

By: Friend of science

Friend of science — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 02:43:51 +0000

I know how upsetting it is to devote yourself to something only to have it end in disappointment, I certainly wouldn’t want my criticism to be construed as being directed at any one person.

I just feel that their is a dearth of strategic planning within the basic sciences community. This stimulus package is a prime example. I don’t blame any group from trying to figure out how to rob the treasury in these times of need, and I would never advocate any nonsense about taking the moral highground, but are the leaders of the basic science establishment really advocating that they should get a few kickbacks from a temporary spending bill as payment for supporting the democratic ticket?

I have attended a recent PR event where leaders within the basic sciences were trying to convince the public that we should fund basic sciences in hopes of breakthrough technologies that could free us from our carbon based economy. Some questioners wanted to know if it was wrong to advocate a technology based solution when we should instead focus on changing behavior. The esteemed panel basically shrugged and admitted that the questioners had a point. Are these guys really the best you have to throw against the Washington establishment? What’s worse, there were a few chance comments that indicated a slight contempt toward the high energy physics community.

If anything it has become painfully clear that the basic sciences and the portion of the government establishment that supports the civil research programs has been marginalized very effectively. This marginalization has not been through any coordinated effort, but solely by a failure of the community to foster a politically savvy, organized core set of leaders. Who answers for basic science in the US?

If basic science, and in particular high energy physics, wants to relevant, there needs to be much more outreach to leadership in government in order to explain how certain types of research benefits society. I fully believe that high energy physics is really the most critical research area that is at greatest danger, I also fully believe that it benefits society immensely, firstly as an important test of applied mathematics, secondly as a venue to support computer development for data collection and analysis, and thirdly as a benchmark of technical and theoretical standards.

I would also include the following list from CERN as being appropriate:

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/BasicScience3-en.html

By: Brian Mingus

Brian Mingus — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:51:58 +0000

I believe the same logic being advocated in this post is being advocated by the First Lady in another area. I saw a quote today where she emphasized three advantages of the stimulus. One of them was that it would improve military housing. This is presumably because they’ve done the math and realized that the military knows how to turn money into construction jobs. Unfortunately neither she nor the President seem to fully realize that universities know how to do that just as well. They are always building something, and at least at my university (and speaking as ex-military), these are much higher quality buildings than you see in military housing.

Obama set himself up for this kind of criticism – he made Science one of his major campaign promises. Unfortunately he has now changed his goal away from his campaign promises in order to accomodate the economy and he is now optimizing the number of jobs created instead. This has nothing to do with science and so I suppose we should stop expecting anything. Presumably he believes that its an important precedent that this bill gets passed at all costs so that he won’t be considered a lame duck, even if that means cutting science in order to appease the GOP. If this bill gets through, maybe Science will be on his next agenda. But compromising on Science now isn’t a great precedent to set in my opinion – he will just get out-muscled by the GOP next time this issue comes up as well.

For goodness sakes, its nearly a trillion dollars, and how many Americans really want to work a crappy construction job anyway?