Science and Politics
tqa | February 17, 2009
A few days ago, Timothy Sandefur posted his second entry in our ongoing debate on the benefits and pitfalls of government funding for the sciences. I've been a bit busy, and I'm just finding time to respond now - I apologize for the delay. While I was doing other things over the weekend, he also posted a response to an article by Steven Quake that I blogged about earlier. This is my response to his rebuttal to my earlier post. I may or may not find the time to reply to his examination of the Quake article later on.
The Internets:
In my first post in the debate, I pointed out that this…
tqa | February 10, 2009
Tim Sandefur and I don't agree about the proper role of government when it comes to funding scientific research. He fairly strongly believes that there are many reasons why it's wrong for the government to fund scientific research. Tim's provided a number of reasons to support his belief, and I agreed to use my blog as a platform to make my own case for the involvement of government in science.
In the abstract, many of the reasons that the government should not be involved in funding research sound fairly compelling. Unfortunately, those arguments were made on the internet. At the end of…
tqa | February 9, 2009Timothy Sandefur and I recently wound up arguing the pros and cons of government funding for basic scientific research. We've decided to take our discussion from email to our blogs.
Tim is a libertarian, and it's safe to say that he's not the world's largest fan of government funding for most things, including science. He just posted a detailed explanation of his position at his blog Freespace. I'll be posting a response here sometime tomorrow.
If you're convinced that it's obviously good to have the government fund scientific research, I'd suggest that you go read Tim's post.
tqa | February 6, 2009TPM has a list of stimulus cuts that a group of senators led by Democrat Ben Nelson and Republican Susan Collins have proposed. The cuts are at 77.9 billion and growing, and include a great deal of the science-related spending. On the chopping block:
750 million - half the proposed increase - of funding for NASA exploration
1.4 billion - from the NSF line. That's the entire proposed increase
427 million - 1/3 of the proposal - from NOAA
218 million - almost 40% - from NIST
1 billion - 38% - from the DOE Energy Efficiency/Renewable Energy line
100 million - from the DOE office of science line…
tqa | February 5, 2009
Representative Tom Coburn (R-OK) has submitted the following amendment to the stimulus bill:
None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available under this act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, arts center, or highway beautification project, including renovation, remodeling, construction, salaries, furniture, zero-gravity chairs, big-screen televisions, beautification, rotating pastel lights, and dry heat saunas.
This is not a good amendment, even if we completely…
tqa | January 27, 2009
Back at the end of last week, I took a couple of minutes to make fun of House Minority Whip Eric Cantor's rather bizarre assertion that providing money to help poor people weatherize their homes won't stimulate the economy or create jobs. Since then, I've taken a much more detailed look at the program, and I've begun to realize not only just how good an idea this particular part of the stimulus package is, but also just how many different ways this is smart.
Here's the proposal as it stands right now:
$6,200,000,000 shall be for the Weatherization Assistance Program under part A of title…
tqa | January 7, 2009
There are widespread reports out right now suggesting that President-Elect Obama has selected CNN's medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has selected to be the new Surgeon General. The reaction to this seems to be mixed. PZ, Orac, Chris, Paul Krugman and Dr. Val are variously unimpressed and/or opposed. Jake is ambivalent. Revere seems to be cautiously optimistic, while both Dr. Pal and Abel Pharmboy are happy. Personally, I'm a little bit more optimistic than cautious.
Some of the reasons that people are concerned about this choice are legitimate. There have been issues that have come…
tqa | December 11, 2008
Apparently, NASA administrator Mike Griffin is a complete bonehead. There's really no other way to describe his recent interactions with the Obama transition team. From an Orlando Sentinel report:
NASA administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, is obstructing its efforts to get information and has told its leader that she is "not qualified" to judge his rocket program, the Orlando Sentinel has learned.
In a heated 40-minute conversation last week with Lori Garver, a former NASA associate administrator who heads the space transition…
tqa | December 10, 2008
But I really don't know who it could possibly be.
If the latest set of transition leaks are as accurate as the previous few have been, President-Elect Obama will announce the nomination of Steven Chu for Energy Secretary.
And. The. Crowd. Goes. Wild.
Chu's background is a bit light on the politics side - no DC job, no elected political office - but even if you consider that to be a down side, the rest of his resume more than makes up for the lack. He's a career scientist. He's a world-class physicist, one of the 1997 recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics, and has been the director…
tqa | October 31, 2008
I didn't get a chance to post about Rules for Radicals this week - the time that would have been spent on that went to knocking on doors and making phone calls for the Get Out The Vote effort here in the Florida Panhandle instead. It will happen next week, after the election. I promise.
I might not have time for in-depth writing on the topic, but that doesn't mean it's far from my mind. It certainly wasn't when I read the journal Nature's endorsement of Obama. (This appears to be the first time in it's 139 year history that Nature has made such an endorsement, by the way.) One paragraph…
tqa | October 21, 2008
What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.
Saul Alinsky
Rules for Radicals
This is the beginning of a promised (and late) series of posts discussing Saul Alinsky's 1971 book Rules for Radicals. Alinsky started out in community organizing in the 1930s, working in Chicago's infamous "Back of the Yards" neighborhood. Rules for Radicals is a how-to guide for organizing, based on the…
tqa | August 11, 2008
This should come as no surprise, coming as it does on the heels of last week's revelation that the Bush Administration is planning to change the federal definition of abortion in an effort to make it easier for our homegrown religious extremists to deny women their right to good reproductive healthcare: we've just learned that the Bush administration is proposing rule changes that will eviscerate the Endangered Species Act.
This is no joke. The National Wildlife Federation has a pdf of the leaked proposal, and their own analysis of the proposed changes. I've looked at the proposal, and NWF…
tqa | August 8, 2008
As I mentioned earlier, the current issue of Nature has a perspectives article by Donald Berry, a statistician at the MD Anderson Cancer Center that addresses problems with the current system for testing athletes. I more or less agree with the overall conclusion of the article - there needs to be more detailed scientific study of the tests that are used to see if athletes are using banned substances. Unfortunately, I don't think the entire article was as solid, or as well justified, as his conclusion. In particular, I think he seriously overstates the possibility of false positives.
Berry…
tqa | July 31, 2008
Apparently, the Bush administration has come up with another way to attack reproductive rights. The department of Health and Human Services has come up with a draft regulation that changes a number of definitions in an effort to make it easier for people to refuse to provide people with abortions, or birth control, or even with a referral to another provider who would be willing to provide these services.
The regulation is ostensibly intended to ensure that federally funded programs do not discriminate against people or institutions that have religious objections to abortion. This is a…
grrlscientist | July 31, 2008
Everyone knows that the White House has been forcing scientists to only talk about research that conforms with GW's agenda, and the political cartoonists have been busily committing these shameful lies to paper in a form that we all can appreciate. One of those cartoons is pictured above. Thanks to a blog pal of mine, now is your opportunity to choose your favorite cartoon in the Union for Concerned Scientists' Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest. They have 12 cartoons there for you to choose between -- good luck! I am still trying to figure out which one I want to vote for (the…
tqa | July 19, 2008
Yesterday afternoon, Judge Donald Molloy of the Federal District court for Montana issued a preliminary injunction reinstating Endangered Species Act protections for grey wolves in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. This is very good news for the wolves. Although a preliminary injunction will only protect the wolves until the lawsuit is resolved, a judge will only issue one if it appears likely that the party requesting the lawsuit is going to win at trial.
A friend of mine emailed me a copy of the decision. It's forty pages long, and very little of it is kind to the Fish and Wildlife service.…
tqa | February 20, 2008
If you're looking for a better explanation of why it would be good for the presidential candidates to have a debate on science-related topics, the ScienceDebate now has a number of videos available where knowledgeable people talk about why they think the debate is important. Here's former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta on the subject:
tqa | February 18, 2008
Suppose that you are taking a walk through the hills above a town, and you reach the foot of a dam. There's a crack in the dam, and it's getting wider. You run back down to the town, and you knock on doors, and you yell and make a fuss, and you tell everyone that the dam is breaking. They thank you for the news, and go back to bed. What do you do next? Do you grab some tools and do what you can to fix the dam, or do you turn and walk away?
Strangely, a number of people (including ScienceBlogger Matt Nisbet) seem to think that the role of the scientific community in those circumstances…
tqa | January 11, 2008
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of…
tqa | January 7, 2008
Chris Mooney's recently-published article in Seed magazine has stirred a bit of discussion about the role of the Presidential Science Advisor, and just who would be a good choice for that position. Of the two questions, the first is probably the more important, but the second is more fun to argue about - at least for the few people who are more or less fluent in the who's who of the scientific community. Several people (including Chris) have already suggested names. I've got a few to suggest, too.
Of course, it really is necessary to talk about the job description first. The role of the…