Did you catch the "Nancy Reagan and millions of others... " somethin' somethin' "...tear down this scientific wall.." comment? Dude ain't right.

--scott

i'm confused. from kerry? in his speech or what? or from the nobel prize winners?

do you have anything that actually says why this scientific research will compromise our future if it is not endorsed? of course someone working as a scientist, in that position will feel that way. i'm not sure i'll be convinced merely by his word that his work is important.

i understand Nancy Reagan's position as far as medical science is concerned, but medical science and regular science are not always related.

Do you really mean to make the argument that the progress of science isn't vital to humanity's future? People need to be healed, fed, sheltered, and -- if at all possible -- moved around and entertained without causing ecological catastrophe. Sucking up to Ralph Reed is not going to help us with any of these things.

The modern process of peer-reviewed science is one of humanity's greatest achievements. When this administration belittles the significance of this process's conclusions, as it has regarding climate change, or -- worse -- when it politicizes the process, as it did with the recent FDA Plan B ruling, we are all done a disservice.

I think folks are welcome to subscribe to whatever ideology they want, and, although I don't have to like it, even to pursue their beliefs toward negative ends like the current war when doing so within the context of society's laws and procedures. But when the ideologues start using their personal beliefs to interfere with my ability to seek objective truths -- truths that could better the lives of everyone on this planet -- well, that, to me, is a bit much.

Besides, I want my flying car, goddammit.

'He told a crowd that Nancy Reagan's pleas for stem cell research reinforces "the need to tear down every wall today that keeps us from finding the cures of tomorrow."'

See? Reagan...tear down that wall. Clever, so clever.

The government never funds everything every scientist ever wants, regardless of the merits. I don't doubt that in the next administration I could put together such a group.

I would like to see a more specific outline of what it is that Kerry would fund differently and by how much. I understand he's all for stem cell research, and that might be fine, but that's not the only thing these scientists are talking about.

--s

Tom, the future is now. --s

jillyn, if you mean that non-medicinal science is not important to our future (and by the way, the people who endorsed kerry were recipients of the nobel prizes in chemistry [like mr. agre, who made an important medical discovery], physics and medicine) then that is kind of dumb, no offense. also, you get your tv, car, microwave, internet, plastic products, birth control pills, electricity and nuclear weapons taken away from you.

anyway the nobel group said it was this administration in particular that worried them, not like all republican administrations ever. they cited the fact that past administrations, both republicans and democrats, have always supported science to an acceptable extent.

"Unlike previous administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, the Bush administration has ignored unbiased scientific advice in the policy-making that is so important to our collective welfare."

And Scott, unfortunately, it's not just a question of not funding certain projects, which is hardly going to be earth-shattering news to grant-writing scientists. It's a practice of manipulation and suppression of scientific findings that may be construed as ideologically motivated. Stem cells, EPA reports being altered, reproductive health information suppressed. Unlikely that Kerry would follow suit - why should he?

The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report which concluded, among other things:

There is a well-established pattern of suppression and distortion of scientific findings by high-ranking Bush administration political appointees across numerous federal agencies. These actions have consequences for human health, public safety, and community well-being. Incidents involve air pollutants, heat-trapping emissions, reproductive health, drug resistant bacteria, endangered species, forest health, and military intelligence.

ok, i still haven't heard what type of research was denied. that's really what i'm asking.

i also feel like there is always something to bitch about. if the administration was putting loads of money into research, people would say it was a waste (because probably nothing would come of the research for 2 decades, and then that President would receive the benefits of the results). i don't really have any opinion on whether or not money should be spent on science - i mean, look at the private space shuttle. if the public really feels like the country will benefit from specific scientific research, then the public will react by privately funding the research. maybe that's a poor way to look at it, but it just worked yesterday.

and as for technology - that is also researched on a private level. we don't need the government paying anyone to advance technology - it's being done everywhere. obviously private companies are trying to do it everyday, because of the extreme amounts of money they will make from consumers like us.

mostly i'm just trying to spread another opinion, because so far i think all of catherine's other friends are pretty liberal.

jillyn, dangit, agreeing with these scientists has NOTHING to do with being liberal or hating bush or whatever you think our alterior motives are. time and again, the administration has ignored research by any number of scientists only because it doesn't suit the policy they want to implement. these people don't have individual grudges against the administration because they didn't get some grant they wanted.

take a look here for an enumeration of specific instances, if you can overlook the fact that this summary is written by an admitted liberal.

---

scott, are you advocating that the government get out of the research game completely? isn't that just a bit ridiculous and unproductive? after all, that recent private research "success" actually lost money — they spent $20 billion to win a $10 billion prize, i heard. there's just no way any institution but the government could gather the resources for some of these huge projects. also, there's no other institution that would have the means or the impetus to do some of the large-scale data collection that is necessary for a government to efficiently conduct its business. are there some wasteful programs? i'm sure, but that doesn't mean we just leave it all up the private sphere.

of course, there's also a lot of progress that comes from private research and this should only be encouraged. one of the reasons our country is (or was) at the forefront of innovation is that we combined private and government research to create an atmosphere conducive to invention throughout the country. manipulating or ignoring scientific findings to serve some ideological means doesn't do much of any good, as far as i can see.

I'd like to flex a little industry knowledge and curb this meme that the private sector can outperform the government for any scientific function. Cancer and AIDS data, two examples that i work with, data confidential. Not only are the data confidential, it's condfidential to different degrees, since this sort of research is organized at the state level. The state is the only local authority that can organize the varying datasets from variuos substate bodies; the federal government is the only body with the authority to orchestrate datasets into a uniform dataset regarding language and confidentiality. There's no better option for processing this data. The government then assigns much of the data processing to private firms as necessary, but the real data collection effort is best orchestrated by the feds.

Apply all that I just said to sex and women's health research, and then have the Bush administration just ignore the results, and you have all sorts of justifiable cause for complaint.

Does anybody think think that any administration will support warehouses of comatose human clones to be used for organ farms and brain research? because I'm totally for that (seriously.)

I think all Jillyn was asking for was clarification of what exactly was cut so that she could decide if she actually deemed that area as important as other areas. I was saddened to see that no one on the blog was able to provide that information.

This link http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/nsf.html

Shows the presidents proposal for the National Science Foundation and it is very detailed about what is deemed important to this administration and what they plan to INCREASE SCIENCE SPENDING ON.

This link
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/nasa.html

Shows the plans for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I'll just let everyone read for themselves.

Even with these reports of obvious increased spending when it comes to certain research and development, I am sure increases in one area means decreases in another...you may still not agree with what the president chooses to increase and/or decrease. However, it would be helpful for you to KNOW what it is exactly that he is increasing and what it is exactly that he is decreasing.

So far this is what I have found in the realm of decreases and what is being reported about why these prize winners are upset.

"Unwarranted restrictions on stem cell research" are hurting medical advances and new immigration rules have kept foreign scientists from traveling to the United States, they wrote.

So with all this information you can at least have an opportunity to decide what it is you deem most important.

Bush is not the only one to have opposition from Nobel Prize winners...only Kerry's opposition is from the Nobel Prize Economists.

http://ww3.komotv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1952499

Again, this is an opportunity to decide which issue is most important to you.

I would still, like Jillyn, be interested in getting a more detailed report on what specific spending is being cut in the scientific world. I have been searching around the internet but I pretty much only keep seeing the above quote which doesn't site exact numbers from what a program was funded before and how he wants to fund it now.

Maybe someone out there can shed some light in this area??

Sandra

Sandra and Jillyn, I don't think you're properly appreciating what people describe as the postmodern way that President Bush approaches science. For Bush, science is a narrative like any other: Its authority depends very much on its conclusions. Bush sees science as having the capacity to be partisan. For example, if a study is done that, say, concludes that teens taught about sex and contraception early are less likely to become pregnant or catch STDs, Bush—because he favors abstinence—might say that these researchers have an agenda, or point to another opinion (regardless of whether that opinion carries any scientific merit whatsoever) that suggests otherwise. Or he might just remove the data from government sites. And he might strike funding for said research, and say that certain words in future proposals should be considered "stop orders."

In effect, he is suggesting that scientific results that he does not like are not science. Scientific research that isn't Republican enough—regardless of the fact that it's science or data or the truth—is stricken from the books, met with the same regard as if Bush were dismissing a partisan left argument that women should have the rights to their bodies just because. As the Daily Show put it, "The facts are biased, Jon." Like Jillyn, we all think that evaluating research direction is a good idea, but that's not what Bush is doing, and it's not an argument his administration is really even considering.

Catherine said:
"also, you get your tv, car, microwave, internet, plastic products, birth control pills, electricity and nuclear weapons taken away from you."

Nothing gets taken away. You just don't make forward progress.

Jillyn said:
"and as for technology - that is also researched on a private level. we don't need the government paying anyone to advance technology - it's being done everywhere."

That's not entirely true. Often the private sector creates technology in response to government needs. Even the space shuttle was in response to a contest, not some person's brilliant idea out of the blue.

Kriston was just talking about how the Bush administration would not publish results of a sex education study that did not favor their stance. (That study isn't really scientific advancement, so is a bit unrelated to the discussion.) But people who pay for studies show the results most favorable to them. Drug companies do this all the time by publishing the part of their study that supports sale of the drug, rather than all the good and bad results.

There is an excellent article about this by Bruce Sterling in the current issue of Wired. Here's the link.

I'm hearing a lot of carping about what specifically is getting funded. That's only one of the 4 points brought up by the open letter. Here's the full list, complete with the listed consequence (in parentheses):

1. decreased funding ("undermining foundation of America's future")
2. stem cells ("impeding medical advances")
3. immigration policies ("turning critical scientific talent away from our shores")
4. ignoring scientific consensus on critical issues ("threatening the earth's future")

I think you guys are taking the wrong tack by implying these scientists are acting out of self interest. Nobel laureates don't have a terrifically hard time finding a university to pay for their research, you know. Of course, the field of science in general will stick up for itself, and you may really strongly believe that flying to the moon and tax cuts for the rich are more important than funding the broader traditional mandates of public science. Fair enough. Let's forego the budget debate.

The stem cell debate hasn't been raised here, although we hashed it out a bit on Kriston's blog a little while ago. I'll just interject that I think conservatives' beef logically seems to be with IVF, which would be an unpopular political tack to take, so instead the administration decided to pick on scientists. But if you feel strongly pro-life I can understand feeling you need to do something, and stem cell research is a relatively easy target.

We may differ on the broader questions of immigration, but immigration for purposes of higher education is something that I think everyone generally supports. Obviously security concerns need to be balanced with that consensus. I don't doubt that there's room for improvement, or that the current system was implemented with the best of intentions.

So I think that point 4 is the meat of the complaint. The others are byproducts of the economy, arguably justifiable ideological differences, and security concerns. The last is the result of a willful stupidity and a desire to disregard objective truth in order to serve the forces of cronyism and venal politics. I don't know about you, but I think it's completely inexcusable. We've been hearing conservatives tell us we need more research on climate change for 25 years now. During that time the scientific consensus has not changed. We've got a drug approval process that has made our country the international standard for determining the safety and efficacy of medicines, and has nearly doubled human life expectancy. Now that process has been perverted by political pressure. And we've built a space program that, coupled with world-class physicists, has expanded human knowledge to the point where we understand how the basic forces of the universe unfolded to within seconds of time's beginning. Now we're going back to the moon, because hey, it worked for JFK.

Boo-yah.

Matty:

We're spending...lots of your money.

http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf03308/start.htm

I'm all for it. Tell me what percentage of the goverment's funding should be allocated...I'll probably agree with you.

Tom: "Stem Cell"? Is that the only example of point 2 you can find?

Can you elaborate on "threatening the earth's future", you can't possibly mean Kyoto, which was rejected by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Kriston: Shouting "Boo-yah" becomes you.

--s

just for concrete stuff if people are going to keep demanding it:

"Although the space exploration programs at NASA will benefit from large funding increases, all other R&D areas will decline dramatically over the next five years, including Earth Science (down 15.9 percent), aeronautics (down 16.2 percent), and Biological and Physical Research (down 11.8 percent).

AAAS analysis shows that even a past favorite like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is susceptible to cuts. Over the next five years, NIH's $27 billion portfolio will see a modest rise due to increases in biodefense research. But funding for non-biodefense programs will fall by seven percent.

Many R&D funding programs face steep cuts over the next five years:

Department of Energy (DOE) programs will see dramatic decreases such as: energy R&D (down 21 percent by FY2009), fossil energy R&D (down 22 percent), and energy conservation (down 26 percent).

Department of Agriculture (USDA) intramural research will decline by 19 percent and extramural research grants will see a 28 percent cut. At the Department of Commerce, the Bush Administration would eliminate the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), as well as cut the budgets of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) by 10.5 percent and 17.3 percent respectively by FY 2009."

of course, i agree with most of the opinions here in that it sucks that stuff is getting cut but the most worrisome thing is that bush is putting his ideology above scientific progress.

Scott, point 2 of the letter is specifically about the restriction of stem cell research. So I'm not sure what other examples I should be using.

Kyoto is a flawed treaty. I'm referring to Bush's dismissal of the findings of a cabinet-level commission on global warming that he himself put together. This unassailable mindset has led to failures to reform CAFE standards and repeal the 6000 lb truck tax break. Then there's the revision of drinking water purity standards, the gutting of the EPA, the "streamlining" of Clean Air Act standards -- all decisions shaped by a willingness to adapt scientific conclusions to ideology, rather than the other way around.

I'm glad hydrogen research is getting some money, but there is much more to be done -- and realistically, that money could probably be better spent on tax rebates for fuel efficient conventional vehicles or improving public transport.

(incidentally Scott, those quotes are not mine, they're from the letter)

(also, thanks for the Moller Merlin link. I remember reading about his prototypes in Popular Science when I was 12 or so, though... so I'm not holding my breath for a MM Skycar.)

Kyoto accords were a plan to address global warming, and were rejected due to unrealistic restrictions placed on signatories.

Kyoto was not a scientific study, and Tom is likely referring to the White House forcing the EPA to drop findings on global climate change from a draft report that was the result of a scientific study.

It's the willful ignoring or suppression of scientific facts because of their political inconvenience that disturbs all those who have a respect for science.

okay, so Tom and Catherine wrote like 5 posts before I was able to respond. damn, people!

"also, you get your tv, car, microwave, internet, plastic products, birth control pills, electricity and nuclear weapons taken away from you."

Nothing gets taken away. You just don't make forward progress.

okay well that wasn't like i was seriously going to go to jillyn's house and remove all evidence of science. i was just responding to her statement that non-medicinal science wasn't that important by mentioning, well, really important stuff that has come about because of science.

But people who pay for studies show the results most favorable to them. Drug companies do this all the time by publishing the part of their study that supports sale of the drug, rather than all the good and bad results.

but the freaking federal government shouldn't do that, especially if a study that doesn't meet their ideological standards is important for the good of the public.

you can't just say that the "federal government shouldn't do that", it's what everyone does. i work in the field of law. why is it that a plaintiff has a scientific expert and a defendant has a scientific expert and they say the exact same thing? because most scientific data can be analyzed two different ways. there is no "truth" to scientific research. obviously, just like anyone else, the federal government is going to choose the scientific research that supports their opinions. do you think clinton didn't? people will use research that supports their viewpoint.

so what are we discussing? i think i got lost somewhere up there.

what i meant to say is that the two scientific experts say the exact opposite things - it's been a long day.

But Jillyn, the White House isn't bringing up alternate expert testimony in the examples above. They're taking the scientific conclusions from a panel of experts and saying "Nah, we don't think so."

Not based on contrary findings, based on the unpleasantness of the findings they are presented.

These panels exist to advise the government on the best findings science can provide, and the White House overrides their own panels, not with contrary evidence, but with a big delete button.

But... that's just not true. I mean, your legal example certainly is accurate, as you know better than me. But that's because you're interviewing one person, and because lawyers, judges and juries frequently aren't qualified to identify when an alleged expert knows what they're talking about.

Science isn't a bunch of papers produced in isolation, though. It's a collaborative, evolutionary process. When something can't be verified experimentally it's discarded. Paired with the principles of statistics, you end up being able to create theories and test them by comparing them to the empirical record. I don't mean to get all seventh grade science project-y on you, but that's the meat of it. When the vast majority of the scientific establishment agrees on something, you should consider the burden of proof shifted. They don't just sit around and make this stuff up.

You should check out that Sterling link. I guess it's possible to find someone to take the con side of any scientific position, but as the Lysenko example shows, it's not a road you want to take.

Jillyn, science's defenders (this is so 16th century) know that science does not present objective truth insomuch as objective truth is unfeasible. But the Bush administration does not respond to scientific findings with an opposing dataset, or similarly qualified finding, etc. Instead, they have deleted links, discontinued research funding, or politicized scientific arenas as partisan. That science cannot present all of data as Laws does not mean that all data should be treated as opinions!

I see we are all equally bored at work. Excellent.