Doing science for the government
jstemwedel | July 20, 2006I'm working against a deadline today in the three-dimensional world, but the Union of Concerned Scientists has just released the results of a new survey of scientists working for the Food and Drug Administration, and I thought it was worth passing along. I'm never sure what to make of the proportion of the people who get a survey that actually respond to it; UCS sent this survey to almost 6000 FDA scientists and only about 1/6 of them responded. Will the statistics mavens pipe up to tell us whether (and how) this should influence our interpretations of the results?
The UCS press release…
jstemwedel | July 11, 2006While I hope this hurricane season is a lot less eventful than the last one, it's always good to be ready. To that end, I'm brushing off (and bringing together here) two "classic" posts from the 2005 hurricane season.
As we look to the scientists to tell us what nature may have in store for us, we need to remember how scientists think about uncertainties -- and especially, how important it is to a scientist to avoid going with predictions that have a decent chance of being false. Being wrong may seem almost as bad to the scientist as being under 10 feet of water.
Meanwhile, the scientists…
jstemwedel | July 7, 2006Yesterday I blogged a bit about how the rollback of NIH research funding may impact scientists at research universities. In light of those comments, here's another news item worth your attention.
The Boston Globe reports that Yale University may be in some amount of trouble for accepting lots of federal research funds but then not accounting for its use in ways that satisfied the funders:
Federal authorities are investigating how Yale accounts for millions of dollars in government research grants, school officials said Monday.
Yale received three subpoenas last week from the U.S. Department…
jstemwedel | July 6, 2006From Inside Higer Ed, there are reports that the end of regular increases in NIH funding (such that there will soon be a double-digit decline in the purchasing power of the NIH budget) are stressing out university researchers and administrators:
At Case Western Reserve University, a decline in NIH funds contributed to a budget shortfall of $17 million below projections for the 2006 fiscal year. NIH funds are key at Case -- and at many institutions the NIH is the largest outside source of research support.
While NIH officials have touted the fact that the number of new competitive grants will…
jstemwedel | June 11, 2006Wrestling overgrown rose bushes out of the ground may be harder than wrestling gators. (At the very least, it seems to take longer, while provoking less sympathy).
Anyway, while I'm recovering from that, here's a "classic" post from the old location. It was originally posted 5 January 2006, but the ethical issues are still fresh.
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Since I'm in the blessed wee period between semesters, it's time to revisit some "old news" (i.e., stuff that I had to set aside in the end-of-semester crush). Today, a story from about a month ago, wherein the Rick Weiss of the Washington Post reports…
jstemwedel | May 4, 2006Please notice that the title of this post promises a "paranoid response", not a careful analysis. It's one of those unscheduled features of this blog. Kind of like a snow day.
Yesterday's Inside Higher Ed has an article about the U.S. Senate getting kind of testy with the director of the NSF about certain research projects the NSF has seen fit to fund. Regular readers know that I think we can have a reasoned debate about funding priorities (especially when that funding is put up by the public). It does not sound to me like the exchange in the Senate was that kind of reasoned debate.
From…
jstemwedel | March 1, 2006Yesterday I flailed vaguely in the direction of a case we could make for funding basic research with public monies. I was trying to find an alternative to the standard argument usually advanced for funding such research (namely, that basic research frequently brings about all manner of practical applications that were completely unforeseen when the basic research was envisioned and conducted). The standard argument makes a reasonable point -- we can't usually tell ahead of time what basic knowledge will be "good for" -- but it strikes me that this strategy boils down to saying "basic…
jstemwedel | February 28, 2006My ScienceBlogs sibling Kevin Vranes asks an interesting question (and provides some useful facts for thinking about the answer):
Why do we even spend taxpayer money on basic science research? Is it to fund science for discovery's sake alone? Or to meet an array of identified societal needs?
The original post-WWII Vannevar Bush model was that the feds give money to the scientists for basic research, the scientists decide how to allocate that money, and society gets innumerable benefits, even if a direct link can't be made between individual projects and economic growth.
But it turns out that…
jstemwedel | February 26, 2006Yesterday, I discussed what scientists supported by federal funds do, and do not, owe the public. However, that discussion was sufficiently oblique and ironic that the point I was trying to make may not have been clear (and, I may have put some of my male readers at greater risk for heart attack).
So, I'm turning off the irony and giving it another try.
The large question I want to examine is just what publicly-funded scientists owe the public. Clearly, they owe the public something, but is it the thing that Dean Esmay is suggesting that the public is owed?
So as not to present a "flash-…
jstemwedel | February 25, 2006Michael Berube is a noted danger to the youth of America (and has the votes to prove it). He is also, it turns out, blogging about ethical issues in the practice of science.
Which, last time I checked with the Central Committee of Academic Mind-Control, was my turf. I trust that Comrade Berube will reflect upon this, and on the cult of personality that seems to be growing around him, during the weekend self-criticism session.
Interloper or not, he does have some useful observations about the right relationship between the people's scientists and the people's government.
Berube's…
jstemwedel | January 30, 2006[I'm blogging on this at the request of my mom, who also requests that I try not to blog so blue.]
As Chris, among others, has noted, there's a piece in the Washington Post about global warming. The piece includes an all-too-familiar feature: the government scientist (here James E. Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies) whose bosses are trying to get him to settle down and not say so much about what he thinks the science says. Deja vu all over again.
Because I know others will attend the the specifics of the global warming science and policy issues here, I'm going to restrict…