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President Obama addressed the National Academies of Science yesterday. If anyone doubted that change has come, and come to science, they need to watch this video. We’ve been waiting a long, long time for a president to take this kind of interest in furthering the cause of science in our country. His budget calls for a doubling of our nation’s investment in basic research in the coming years:

“No one can predict what new applications will be born of basic research: new treatments in our hospitals; new sources of efficient energy; new building materials; new kinds of crops more resistant to heat and drought.”

“It was basic research in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels. It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The calculations of today’s GPS satellites are based on the equations that Einstein put to paper more than a century ago….”

“We double the budget of key agencies, including the National Science Foundation, a primary source of funding for academic research, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which supports a wide range of pursuits - from improving health information technology to measuring carbon pollution, from testing “smart grid” designs to developing advanced manufacturing processes. And my budget doubles funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science which builds and operates accelerators, colliders, supercomputers, high-energy light sources, and facilities for making nano-materials. Because we know that a nation’s potential for scientific discovery is defined by the tools it makes available to its researchers.”

Words fail me.

From the white house this morning: “Today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation. It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.” - President Barack Obama

Here’s the just released Presidential Memorandum on Scientific Integrity

Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health, protection of the environment, increased efficiency in the use of energy and other resources, mitigation of the threat of climate change, and protection of national security.

The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions. Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public. To the extent permitted by law, there should be transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking. The selection of scientists and technology professionals for positions in the executive branch should be based on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity…

Read the whole thing here.

It’s hard to overstate the degree to which this statement is a departure from the last eight years.

Well, it seems that (influenced by Sean, I’m sure) Maureen Dowd has picked up on John McCain’s twitter feed, and has placed yet another mocking stab at science in the mainstream press. (”Catfish and grape genetics”? Ha ha ha! “Promotion of astronomy”? Bwah!)

The specific line from McCain’s feed is the sarcastic “nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy”. And I think this is the essence of why scientific projects continue to be held up for derision.

Simply, most people assume science has absolutely nothing to do with them. Nobody blinks an eye at massive building projects that funnel money to construction workers, even though construction accounts for only 5% of the non-farm employment in the US. However, even though the “average american” is highly unlikely to work in construction, they at least imagine that they could.

In contrast, science is perceived as something that is done by an elite group of people that “average americans” could never hope to join, or even meet. So, it’s not that the government’s money is going to someone else, it’s that it seems to be going to someone they could never, ever be. I’ve always found it terribly sad that scientists are almost universally cast as a tribe of “others”, so distinct from “average americans” that they cease to be realistic aspirational figures. Pro-basketball players are equally unusual and elite in their physical attributes, training, and skill sets, but that doesn’t stop generation of kids wanting to grow up and play in the NBA. In contrast, scientists often come across as “born that way”, and not as the end products of rigorous training that a large fraction of smarter-than-average people could engage in. (And note that it’s not just the fault of the nebulous “media” — in their quest to climb to the top of the scientific heap, plenty of scientists cultivate an aura of “impressiveness”; while this may be useful for their individual careers, it can be plenty demoralizing for those on the lower rungs, who are questioning if they have what it takes.)

On top of this is a disconnect between what science actually does, and people’s perception of how it affects their own lives. Most “average americans” probably don’t have many gripes with the NIH budget, because they understand that curing disease is something that could potentially help them in the end. Most physical sciences, however, don’t present obvious, immediate connections to people’s day to day life, or to the main engines of the US economy. Those connections are of course there (grape genetics = wine production = millions of dollars in farming economy = tasty beverages produced more cheaply domestically), but they’re not obvious. Science is left playing catchup every time we’re mocked — yes, lots of articles came out pointing out that “volcano monitoring” was in fact useful, but not in time to stop the initial spurt of derision on the national stage.

Sadly, I don’t have any obvious solution to this, except the usual calls for increased outreach and better science teaching.

The astro community virtually shut down a couple of weeks ago. Didn’t you notice?

Every ten years the entire Astronomy and Astrophysics community gets together to decide what to do next. We take stock, and plan out the next decade. Committees are formed, white papers are written, town halls are attended, and at the end of a long process a report is issued, with a ranked list of the priorities of the community. This Decadal Survey helps decide which telescopes are built and which space missions fly, and sets the direction for the major advances of the field in the coming years. I think this process is fairly unique among academic disciplines; a field self-consciously trying to come up with a formal plan for the future. Of course, it can be quite contentious, but at the end the bulk of the community gets behind what is decided, and everyone goes forward from there. The hope is that this process expresses the will of the community, and therefore will impact which projects are pursued and funded (as opposed to leaving it up to politicians and other non-astronomers). In addition, it’s a chance for everyone to get together and learn what’s happening across the field, and see what directions things are moving in.

We are now in the midst of Astro2010, the current decadal review. A panel has been formed, chaired by Roger Blandford. A large portion of the astro community was out-of-commission in mid February, as everyone frantically finished up their science white papers. Over 320 were submitted, all of which will eventually become public on the NRC website (yours truly contributed to four, having to do with coordinated gravitational-wave and electromagnetic observations, gamma-ray bursts, and rapid-cadence surveys.). If you’re impatient, you can take a look at a subset of the white papers on the arXiv. The Panel is now soliciting white papers on the State of the Profession and on Technology Development, as well as on specific mission proposals. Anyone is welcome to submit. If you have particularly strong opinions, and feel your voice must be heard, there will also be a series of Town Hall meetings over the next few months.

The survey should be completed in about a year, with a document summarizing the directions the field is likely to go in for the next decade. The titles of the science white papers makes for interesting reading in its own right. They show the tremendous breadth of the community, ranging from planets to cosmology, and from magnetic fields to first light.

John McCain has a twitter account. Yes, that’s horrifying enough, but then there’s the actual content of what he writes. At least he is using in creative and productive ways! No, he isn’t. Yesterday he announced:

Tmr I am gonna tweet the TOP TEN PORKIEST PROJECTS in theOmnibus Spending bill the Congress is about to pass

Love it when Senators play cool. Love it. So today is the big list, and guess what comes in at number two?

#2. $2 million “for the promotion of astronomy” in Hawaii - because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy

Sure, earmarks are dumb, and it would be nice to have a rational way to decide how best to prioritize federal spending. But don’t deny the obvious: when Republicans hear “science,” they think “something to be mocked in the service of burnishing our just-folks credentials.” Ask Bobby Jindal. Or, for that matter, John McCain.

Like a lot of folks in the science biz, I’ve been wondering about the outcome of the science spending in the stimulus package. The econ crowd argues that an effective stimulus should be both fast acting and temporary. Common sense also dictates that the spending should be something that will eventually either reduce spending in the future, or grow the GDP.

There’s much speculation that some fraction of the NSF and NIH spending will go towards funding recent proposals that were very highly ranked, but fell just below the funding cutoff. Given how ridiculously oversubscribed the individual investigator grant programs are, there will be no lack of worthwhile projects to fund. On the other hand, these types of grants are not necessarily fast acting. Notifications take a while to process, and by the time the funding becomes secure, job “season” for academics would be well over, causing a significant delay before personnel could be hired and money spent.

However, I think there is a pretty obvious use for some of the money that better targets the goals of the stimulus package — fund postdocs directly. In astronomy, there are a number of high prestige fellowships that are awarded to postdocs through the NSF or NASA. These awards offer postdocs complete freedom to direct their own research programs, a high degree of flexibility as to where they go, and a modest budget to support their research. Thus, instead of spending 2-3 years performing labor for a senior PI, the postdocs can develop new lines of research.

I see a lot of benefit to this idea, and not too many drawbacks:

First, postdocs are typically at a very productive stage of their careers. They’ve learned tons of useful tricks in grad school, but are not yet bogged down by teaching, grant writing, and sitting on endless committees. Scientifically, postdocs are a lot of science bang for the buck.

Second, of all of us on the science track, postdocs are possibly getting slammed the hardest. Faculty searches are getting cancelled left and right, so we have an academic generation of highly trained scientists with nowhere to go. In the past, many of these people have successfully transitioned into industry (thus moving the benefits of past investment in their training back into the private sector), but these days that’s not much of an option either. Giving the most promising of these folks a way to tread water for a few years might keep more of them in the scientific pipeline long enough to transfer into a stable position which made use of their skills.

Third, independent postdoctoral fellowships allow one to develop skills that one needs to make a longer term scientific career work — namely, the ability to choose your own scientific questions and then plan and execute your approach. Instead, if the stimulus package gets funneled to postdocs solely through PI grants, then a significant fraction of postdocs are primarily going to learn additional skills in “doing what their advisor suggested”. (While ideally there’s mentoring to support grant-supported postdocs, that doesn’t always occur.) Moreover, the PI has a responsibility to the granting agency to deliver the products supported by the original grant, and cannot legally support the postdoc working on topics that are unrelated, no matter how cool and clever they are. Developing one’s scientific judgement, and prioritizing one’s effort are skills that transcend the particular needs of academic science — thus, even if these postdocs do not eventually wind up on an academic track, the skills they acquire during a truly independent phase would be of huge benefit in the private sector.

Finally, the postdoc applications are ready to go. Committees have met and made prioritized lists for this most recent round of awards, and my past experience suggests that they could probably double the number of awards before having any substantive concern that the money was going to someone who was not yet ready for full scientific independence. The money could then be out there stimulating those postdocs by the fall, but would be over in 3 years — fast acting and temporary, just like it’s supposed to be. If more stimulus is needed next year, they can just increase the number of awards a second time (preferably opening it up to people who are more than three years past their PhD, which is a current limitation on some of the programs).

The main drawbacks I can see are (1) that it takes money out of the hands of PI’s who have a proven track record of making smart scientific judgements and (2) that it adds to the overpopulation of postdocs compared to faculty positions. With regard to the first, there is nothing that says that PI’s can’t lure these independent postdocs to their project (especially if the agencies keep rules in place to keep all the postdocs from bunching up at one or two particularly attractive institutions). If you are doing interesting things, and have a good record for mentoring, some of these people will be more than happy to collaborate with you. Moreover, in many fields postdocs need access to infrastructure that only PIs have (lab space, big fancy science toys, large data sets, etc), in which case the postdocs would be likely to affiliate themselves closely with PIs anyways.

As for the second concern, I’m not quite sure where I come down on the issue. I’ve always thought it was a mistake for people to see a tenure-track faculty position as the only acceptable outcome of PhD level training, and by giving people scientific independence at an early stage of their career, you’re offering them a chance to develop skills they’d need for anything they’d do in the future. These people are stuck in a holding pattern anyways, and it makes more sense to me to let them do their best work while they’re looking for a place to land.

Yesterday President Obama signed the stimulus bill. With the stroke of a pen, $789,500,000,000 has been “spent”. The bill includes roughly $18B for science research, and over $50B for education. The National Science Foundation receives $3B, of which $2B goes directly to peer-reviewed science. Given that the total budget for NSF is $6B a year, this is a significant increase. The Department of Energy Office of Science receives $1.6B, while energy programs at the DOE receive over $30B. NASA receives $1B, of which almost half goes to Earth science climate research.

If you sent email or made phone calls, please take a moment now to thank your Senators and Representatives. Many people worked very, very hard to ensure that science was adequately funded.

This is a lot of money, all of which needs to be spent on a very short timescale. But it sends a clear message that science is important to the future of this Nation, and this Planet.

From ScienceDebate2008.com comes word that funding for science, particularly for NSF and the DOE Office of Science, was largely restored in the House-Senate conference. The relevant passage of the preliminary report is here:

Transform our Economy with Science and Technology:
To secure America’s role as a world leader in a competitive global economy, we are renewing America’s investments in basic research and development, in training students for an innovation economy, and in deploying new technologies into the marketplace. This will help businesses in every community succeed in a global economy.

Investing in Scientific Research (More than $15 Billion)
o Provides $3 billion for the National Science Foundation, for basic research in fundamental science and engineering – which spurs discovery and innovation.
o Provides $1.6 billion for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which funds research in such areas as climate science, biofuels, high-energy physics, nuclear physics and fusion energy sciences – areas crucial to our energy future.
o Provides $400 million for the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to support high-risk, high-payoff research into energy sources and energy efficiency in collaboration with industry.
o Provides $580 million for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, including the Technology Innovation Program and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
o Provides $8.5 billion for NIH, including expanding good jobs in biomedical research to study diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, and heart disease.
o Provides $1 billion for NASA, including $400 million to put more scientists to work doing climate change research.
o Provides $1.5 billion for NIH to renovate university research facilities and help them compete for biomedical research grants.

DOE Office of Science and NSF funds had been zeroed out in one version of the Senate measure proposed last week, and were set to $330 million and $1.2 billion respectively in the bill the Senate passed. This is a huge boost for our scientific infrastructure in this country, and will immediately create large numbers of jobs for a broad range of workers. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event: let’s spend the money wisely!

Our next challenge: the 2009 and 2010 budgets for science. We are still operating under a CR, and without an increase in funding, the national labs and universities will have to shed personnel. Stimulus money will not be used to directly fund scientists and engineers at the labs, or postdocs or graduate students at the universities. That money comes from the yearly budget. Obama has pledged to double funding for the physical sciences in 10 years. Let your congressfolk know you care about this!

There has been much discussion in the comments of our recent posts here and here on the stimulus package, the gist of which seems to be that science shouldn’t be part of the stimulus, since it doesn’t effectively create jobs and boost the economy. I would argue that not only does science funding directly translate into cash infusions into the economy (much more effectively than tax cuts, for example), but it also helps boost the economy over the longer term (which is arguably just as important). Mark Westneat, Pritzker Director of the Biodiversity Synthesis Center at the Field Museum in Chicago, has written a nice piece addressing the immediate stimulus from science funding. As he puts it, “scientific research is basically all about hiring people and buying stuff”.

CV readers may be getting sick and tired of hearing all about the unfolding funding drama in Washington. Unfortunately, the decisions by these 100 individuals will have tremendous repercussions, not only this year, but potentially for the foreseeable future (since they set the tone for science spending in an era of immense budgetary pressure).

Over 100 years ago, Otto von Bismark declared: “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” John has been detailing the development of the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009 (HR 1)” here, here, and here. The bottom line is that the House version of the bill will reinvigorate basic science in this country. The Senate version of the bill is not as encouraging. According to an email alert sent out by the APS, the Senate summary

…did not offer many details about how much funding science would receive in that package. However, we are receiving troubling signs that science may not receive the same levels of funding as in the House package and would even, in some scenarios, be cut or even eliminated. We are therefore urging the Senate to follow the House lead in helping to ensure American competitiveness in the 21st century by making critically needed infrastructure investments.

Science Magazine has compiled a side-by-side comparison. For example, the House bill funds the NSF at $3 Billion, while the Senate version is at $1.4 Billion. The DOE Office of Science (which is the largest source of funding for basic research in the physical sciences in the US) gets $2 Billion from the House, and $430 Million from the Senate. These are huge gaps. And note that all of the CV bloggers are funded, at least in part, by these agencies (for doing science, not for blogging). The AAAS analyzes the differences between the two versions of the bill in some detail here.

A staggering amount of national treasure is about to be spent in an attempt to stimulate our economy. [The picture below is of one billion dollars, in $100 bills (hat tip to commenter Carlos).] Although one can certainly criticize the idiocy that has brought us to this crisis, and second-guess the appropriate dollar amounts, few would question that some sort of action is appropriate. Congress is currently being bombarded with suggestions for how to spend our national treasure. Roads and bridges will most certainly be built. However, I believe a compelling case can be made for funding science, both as a way to create short-term jobs and benefits, but also as an essential path to ensuring the future vitality of our country (both economically and spiritually). Fortunately, this message has already been heard, and Congress is struggling to do the right thing. But scientists are notoriously bad at contacting their representatives, and reminding them that we exist and are worth supporting. This is a participatory democracy, after all.

So, what is to be done? CV readers have had an easy time of it thus far, enjoying the spectacle, chiming in on occasion, and generally basking in the glow of their monitors. But now it’s time to get off your duffs and click a few buttons. (Non-American readers are off the hook.) The APS has made it simple and painless to send emails to your Senators encouraging them to support basic science. Just click on the link, change the subject and a line or two of the form email, and click submit. These emails really do make a difference, especially if there are many of them. This is why the NRA and the AARP have so much clout. Spend a minute on the web form. If you are slightly more ambitious, you can also call your Senators. A friendly young staffer is eagerly awaiting your call, and will jot down another checkmark next to the “fund basic science” entry on their ledger. Every checkmark matters. Then you can rest easy, knowing that you’ve put in your two cents on the way your government spends your hard-earned tax dollars.