Funding
mikethemadbiologist | May 25, 2010Genome Biology recently published a review, "The Case for Cloud Computing in Genome Informatics." What is cloud computing? Well:
This is a general term for computation-as-a-service. There are various different types of cloud computing, but the one that is closest to the way that computational biologists currently work depends on the concept of a 'virtual machine'. In the traditional economic model of computation, customers purchase server, storage and networking hardware, configure it the way they need, and run software on it. In computation-as-a-service, customers essentially rent the…
mikethemadbiologist | May 11, 2010ScienceBlogling Revere calls for an open data policy for federally-funded research (italics mine):
We've inveighed often here about the shameful practice that many senior and well-respected flu scientists have of keeping their sequences private until they publish -- if they publish using them. If not, no one gets to see them, even if we paid with tax money to collect them. The motives are often unselfish -- a senior scientist trying to protect post-docs or grad students from being scooped. Very Old School. This is the 21st century. We have our own students and we take mentoring very seriously…
mikethemadbiologist | May 3, 2010For those who haven't heard rightwing extremist Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has subpoenaed all of the documents related to climatologist Michael Mann's state-funded research while Mann was at the University of Virginia (italics mine):
In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli's office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann's receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann-- now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State-- was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.
If Cuccinelli…
mikethemadbiologist | April 9, 2010It's as if funny accounting is second nature for these guys:
The Republican National Committee at the end of last year struck a deal with the Michigan Republican Party that if the state party could raise what turned out to be a half a million dollars for the RNC from its donors, the committee would immediately give the money back, in a scheme apparently devised to increase the RNC's 2009 fundraising numbers.
"It was a known secret that a deal had been struck on the topic," a former RNC official confirmed to The Daily Caller.
"I think the benefit to them was them getting guaranteed money," the…
mikethemadbiologist | April 7, 2010Before I got into genomics, I spent some time in science and health policy. On a couple occasions, I was invited to participate in a round table/white paper thingee where we were supposed to offer suggestions to NIH and other funding agencies. We would make recommendations, program officers would agree with those recommendations, and then reviewers would... fund the same old shit.
That's why I've advocated more specific RFAs that allow NIH to set targeted priorities:
My experience has been that with very targeted calls for proposals, there are far fewer proposals submitted, and it's much…
mikethemadbiologist | March 24, 2010One of the weird things (of many) about using the reconciliation process is that it can only be used once per session. So when the Democrats passed Romneycare, they also had to deal with getting student loan reform past conservative obstruction. From The Washington Post (italics mine):
The student aid initiative, which House Democrats attached to their final amendments to the health-care bill, would overhaul the student loan industry, eliminating a $60 billion program that supports private student loans with federal subsidies and replacing it with government lending to students. The House…
mikethemadbiologist | March 16, 2010Right wing TV bloviators oppose scientific research. And in other news, dog bites man. By way of Bug Girl, I came across this story about Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson opposing the use of $187,632 of stimulus money to buy storage cabinets for Michigan State University's Albert J. Cook Arthropod Research Collection which houses over 1 million insects collected over 143 years:
Fox News host Sean Hannity launched a series of "investigative" reports this week, in which he claims he will reveal oodles of wasteful stimulus spending by the Obama administration. In his first report, Hannity and…
mikethemadbiologist | March 9, 2010I knew when I posted about deficits I would catch some grief (you should see my email. Actually, you probably shouldn't. And why do I get many more emails than comments?). Before I get to addressing some of the comments, I want to bring up why I discuss this stuff (other than I find it interesting):
Context.
I think it's safe to say that most people around these here ScienceBlogs care about scientific research funding and science education funding (both K-12 and collegiate education). But the ability to increase the resources for these areas--or even just prevent them from shrinking--…
mikethemadbiologist | February 23, 2010By way of Elana Schor, we read that the MBTA's Silver Line extension proposal, which would be a "one mile tunnel connection between the existing Silver Line/Washington Street Service (Phase I) and the existing Silver Line/Waterfront Service (Phase II)", is in trouble. According to the Department of Transportation (pdf), the MBTA's proposal isn't measuring up in the following areas: local financial commitment rating, capital plan rating, and the operating plan rating (these are all funding issues).
The extension would be a good thing, and integrate underserved parts of the city (particularly…
mikethemadbiologist | February 9, 2010...the money. Over at Pandagon, Jesse Taylor, on the subject of the Focus on the Family anti-legal and safe abortion ad, asks (italics mine):
The question is instead this: if the anti-choice position is so true, so mainstream and so critical to the future of our nation, why did Focus on the Family spend $2.5 million to avoid saying anything whatsoever about it? Pam Tebow's lines were all oblique references to her choice not to have an abortion, but if FotF felt the need to couch her story in such coded and oblique terms that it could have been an ad for Wii Family, doesn't that say…
mikethemadbiologist | February 8, 2010
(from here)
By way of Maryn McKenna, we find that the Obama Administration has decided to massively cut the funding for the CDC's antimicrobial resistance and vaccination efforts. I thought this was the kind of anti-science bullshit that the Bush Administration did. From the IDSA (pdf):
Under CDC's proposed budget, the agency's already severely strapped Antimicrobial Resistance budget would be cut dramatically by $8.6 million--roughly 50 percent. This vital program is necessary to help combat the rising crisis of drug resistance, a critical medical problem that the agency deems "one of the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 5, 2010There's been some discussion about Joel Kotkin's argument "The War Against Suburbia", kicked off by The NY Times making it their Idea of the Day. Leaving aside whether there should be a 'war against suburbia', it's just not true. First, there has been a decades-long policy of federal subsidization of housing prices through the mortgage interest tax deduction. Since there are far more homeowners in suburbs than in cities, this is a massive wealth transfer to suburbs. Also, Obama's non-cramdown policies which have the effect of (temporarily) keeping housing prices higher than they should be…
mikethemadbiologist | February 2, 2010Once again, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg makes me wonder what the Obama administration was thinking when they nominated him for Commerce Secretary--they must have really believed that post-partisanship bullshit. Gregg's latest eruption:
Judd Gregg just had a meltdown on MSNBC that came out of nowhere. He's been attacking everything Obama, almost from the minute he turned down a Cabinet post offer from the White House, but his performance today was really weird. The conversation was about spending and, as usual, Gregg was acting like the incredible deficit freak that he is.
Melissa Francis is a…
mikethemadbiologist | February 1, 2010Just looked at the White House's proposed HHS budget for 2011, and it seems like the NIH budget will increase from $30.8 billion to $32.1 billion, with over six billion spent on cancer (are you listening Orac?). Other civilian research agencies will be getting bigger increases (Intelligent Designer knows they need it)
I'm feeling hopey and changey!
mikethemadbiologist | January 21, 2010In response to my post about the scientist glut, ScienceBlogling Razib writes:
But that aside, what's the point of funneling more math and physics graduates into math and physics instead of finance if they can't put bread on the table? Or is the issue narrower, specifically the difficulty of getting an academic job? Or perhaps the major dynamic is that science & engineering professions are just really bad at capturing the value they generate for the society as a whole?
One of Razib's commenters hits the nail on the head:
We do not need more scientists, but academic science as practiced…
mikethemadbiologist | January 20, 2010A minor kerfuffle has erupted around healthcare expert and MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, with some fireworks between Glenn Greenwald and Paul Krugman. Gruber has received $392,600 in funding from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to model healthcare outcomes. The argument has arisen because Gruber has been promoted by the Obama administration as "objective" and "independent." At first, I was very sympathetic to Krugman's view:
The truth is that this is no big deal. Gruber's grant is from HHS, not the West Wing; it's basically the same kind of thing as, say, an…
grrlscientist | January 20, 2010tags: The Downfall, Hitler, funny, weird, parody, scientific research paper, peer-review process, scientific publishing, streaming video
OMG, this is the most hilarious scientific research video parody I've seen. It is a fly-on-the-wall view of what happens when a research paper is sent out for peer-review and the mysterious reviewer #3 demands more experiments before the paper is accepted for publication. Unfortunately, it is closer to the truth than the public (and even some scientists) realizes ...
"Or I could write it up for Scientific American."
Hahahaha!
mikethemadbiologist | January 18, 2010If you're in Massachusetts, there's a special election for U.S. Senate tomorrow, and it's much closer than it should be--the Republican Scott Brown (who is horrid--who votes to eliminate tax breaks and aid for 9/11 emergency responders?) might actually win. There are several reasons why I'm voting for Coakley*:
1) Republicans hate science. Massachusetts received $2.25 billion in NIH funding alone in 2008 and another $400 million from NSF. That's equivalent to ten percent of the MA state budget. As someone who works for USDA once told me, "Republicans cut my budget, Democrats increase it…
mikethemadbiologist | January 14, 2010Many grants have what are known as milestones: dates by which certain activities are supposed to occur; with some grants, failure to meet these milestones (or does one pass milestones?) can ultimately result in withdrawal of the grant. There is a lot of grantsmanship involved in milestones. For obvious reasons, you don't want to set lots of impossible-to-reach milestones. Likewise, you want some low hanging fruit in there too (to confuse images and metaphors).
For example, let's say a Mad Biologist were to sequence a bunch of bacterial genomes. Here are three milestones:
1) Get all of…
mikethemadbiologist | December 30, 2009Ever since I was a wee Mad Biologist, I've been told by Very Senior People that 'in five years, there's going to be a massive wave a retirement of older faculty.' This, in my mind, ranks up there with the Friedman Unit (in the next six months, we'll know if we have to leave Iraq, and six months later, we need another six months to know this), and the Samuelson Unit (the length of time to the ULTIMATE DOOOMMM!!! of Social Security is always 30-38 years from the time of prediction). Consequently, we will have a 'science gap' since not enough U.S. students know TEH SCIENTISMZ!!, even though…