The End of Public Funded Research
republicanwhip.house.gov
republicanwhip.house.gov
It's actually quite interesting. The real question is how do you judge the merits of individuals in a team where there aren't a lot of individual measures. That is, in basketball there are a lot of individual measure, rebounds/assists/points/steals/blocks/turnovers. But in soccer far fewer (and occur with less frequency). So the question is, how do you model this sparse data. Pretty interesting IMO.
The second research, sound effects, is just downright interesting: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0905...
It really is how do you model the sounds amoung interaction in a 3D modeled space. I think this is darn near basic computational science, although one that I've never really seen anyone study before.
If these are the two shining examples of poor research funded by the NSF then the NSF has done an incredible job.
Add to the fact that, as said in other comments, the contribution to NSF is marginal when looking at the entire budget, and I feel downsizing can be found elsewhere and save our scientific research.
As far as I know, HHS and the Office of Minority and Women's Businesses don't have a publicly available list of projects. The NSF does.
Quite a disincentive for good management, no?
This is an attempt to crowdsource the process of finding wasteful spending within a government agency. I.e., instead of saying "hey, the NSF has too much money, lets cut the total budget", Congressman Smith wants to cut specific wasteful items from the NSF budget (presumably while preserving the useful ones).
I suspect this is an effort to head off claims like "the end of publicly funded research." If this project is successful, Smith can point out that he doesn't oppose publicly funded research, only items like "$750,000 to develop computer models to analyze the on-field contributions of soccer players".
I also suspect that the main reason he is targeting the NSF is that it's an easy target. To find items to cut, anyone can just go to the NSF's website ( http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/reset.do?dispatch=2&FormR... ). As far as I know, bigger and more wasteful agencies (e.g., DOJ, DOE, Homeland Security) don't have similar websites.
[edit: to clarify, I'm not arguing it's a good idea. I'm just pointing out that it is nothing whatsoever like what the HN title suggests.]
The problem with research (including much of my own work) is that it is difficult to explain quickly and in simple terms. Science tends to make crappy sound bites, but an unpoliticized research establishment is almost certainly good policy.
He has no particular expertise whatsoever at deciding whether project Y is more useful to society as a whole than other possible uses of the money. In a democracy, that decision is left up to our elected leaders.
To give a specific example, it's quite possible that within the field of comparing minorities to caucasians, this is a great project:
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1004...
If the public as a whole doesn't care about comparisons between minorities or caucasians, or doesn't believe that information is particularly valuable (e.g., perhaps there is no legitimate way to act on that information), this project is a waste of money. If enough people flag this project, it might suggest to Congressman Smith that it is a worthy project to cut.
That is not and never has been how science is funded in the United States or in any other developed economy. In the case of the US, Congress provides funding to and defines the overall mission of various funding agencies. The beaurocracies of those agencies supply funding to researchers, usually on the advice and recommendation of peer review panels. It is no accident that every time Congress created a new funding agency, it followed that same basic model. NSF works that way. DOE works that way. NIH works that way. DOD works that way.
The only case in which our elected leaders have a direct say in decisions of funding research are ear marks. In all other cases, Congress explicitly distanced itself from the quotidian chore of deciding on specific research programs.
Your assertion of how decisions about specific research programs should be made in our democracy is not well supported either by history or by the actual structure of our government. It sounds, instead, like a statement of personal opinion. Indeed, that fine-grained control over the quotidian role of government is something Representative Cantor and his party have campaigned against in the form of ear marks.
In any case, reforming 10^5 dollars worth of NSF funding in the presence of a 10^11 dolar budget deficit is clearly political grandstanding and not a sincere attempt to address structural budgetary problems.
That said, the two he listed do sound pretty ridiculous. And I'm sure there are more that need cutting. It's the idea of having your grant judged by people who know jack shit about the science involved -- or are even actively hostile to it.
2. Look those colleges up in the NSF Database he supplies.
3. Report them to his little program.
4. For more fun do it for all of Virginia.
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/trtot08p.pdf
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/trres08p.pdf
Don't know about the house and senate.
For example, a huge amount of computational E&M is funded by the military. Most of it is published in non-classified (though paywalled) journals and is directly useful to anyone building E&M communication or sensor devices. (I cite computational E&M specifically because I used to work in that field.)
Long story short: Republicans go along with the minimum budget increase possible.
Luckily for researchers, black-ops research is also publicly funded, and the budget for that is increasing every time.
This may be the second grant "$1.2 million to model the sound of objects breaking for use by the video game industry." http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/Sound/ (although the dollar value isn't the same as cited on the House Whip site)
[edited to include 2nd grant, suggested from Science Blogs @ http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2010/12/congress_critters...]
I posted the source and some other stats at http://www.bendmorris.com/2010/12/sciences-worst-nightmare.h...
Thanks to everyone who posted links of the actual studies he named...they're a perfect example of how your average citizen (or Congressman) doesn't understand the value of basic research.
Perhaps, we could set up a large research foundation funded ordinary people like you and me everyday. For example, if there are 20,000 people paying 5 bucks a month, that's 100,000. By the end of the year, that's 12 million.
Technologies are making it easier to reduce our administrative costs and allow volunteers to collaborate over the internet.
(Not advocating this, just imagining how you could game the system)
One person that disagrees with something (for whatever reason) probably won't be enough to abandon research on it. I'm cool with taking a look at what is there.
The whole situation is really upsetting. The public has no idea how research in "pointless" X, "grant-begging" Y and "wasteful" Z could, through their combined research and perhaps a couple surprises along the way, yield W, something new and outstandingly useful.
For an example of this, look at the Four Coloring Problem. Microsoft permitted one of their employees to work on that and, through the research required found a way to make their systems crash less often. Yes, Microsoft themselves funded the research, but did you or I see "more stable OS" from "Graph Coloring"? I know I didn't.
Also, when you think of research to explore space, do you think of: high efficiency foam insulation, "Portable X-ray machines, programmable pacemakers", "concentrated baby foods", "freeze-dried instant mixes" and "surgical tools"[2]? I don't. If you have, you have vastly more foresight than me, and I'm sure I'm not alone in my narrow-mindedness when it comes to the usefulness of some science projects.
In all, I believe the normal citizen has no idea what's useful in regard to research and what's not.* Is there even such a thing as useless research?
[1] I'm having a bit of trouble locating the citation for this one. Unfortunately, it is still one of my favorite, obscure discoveries. If anyone can remember more of the Hacker News post that made reference to it and could help me find it, I'd be most grateful and change my post right away.
[2] http://space.balettie.com/Lovell.html
* I do admit that there is an opportunity for scientists to begin to do unethical things and this should be controlled, (perhaps not by the people, perhaps so), but this is not decided what to research so much as what/how not to research.