Funding
catdynamics | December 14, 2009"The controversy over "Climategate" continues to heighten as some Pennsylvania legislators question the continuation of Penn State's current research grants -- and possibly even the appropriations the university has been waiting on since July."
There were two interesting articles late last week in the Penn State student paper, the Collegian.
The first article discusses the University's funding situation. The State appropriation for fiscal year 2009-10, which started July 1st 2009, has still not been approved, the hold-up is legislation on legalising table games, primarily poker.
The…
mikethemadbiologist | December 14, 2009Many people have been discussing the structural impediments to passing legislation, or what is often called legislative gridlock. As Matthew Yglesias put it:
The smarter elements in Washington DC are starting to pick up on the fact that it's not tactical errors on the part of the president that make it hard to get things done, it's the fact that the country has become ungovernable....
We're suffering from an incoherent institutional set-up in the senate. You can have a system in which a defeated minority still gets a share of governing authority and participates constructively in the…
mikethemadbiologist | December 11, 2009One of the major factors leading to political corruption is the revolving door between the private sector and political staffers. It's no accident that many political scandals, not to mention bad policy, can be traced back to former Congressional aides. There's a lot of money to be made lobbying your former boss and friends. One reason why public servants make this jump is poor salaries. There's no incentive to make a career in government service when the financial compensation is very small:
Daniel Schuman notes:
The people who are working on issues worth billions of dollars and…
mikethemadbiologist | December 10, 2009In an otherwise excellent article about the failures of the U.S. collegiate educational system, Kevin Carey makes a common mistake: he assumes that the pressure to publish is primarily about prestige for the university. It's not. It's about revenue.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Carey (italics mine):
Universities like to pretend that great scholars make great instructors, but one indifferent, outdated lecture from a tenured professor is enough to conclude otherwise. Because scholarly outcomes are visible, in the form of publications and citations, while teaching outcomes are currently…
mikethemadbiologist | October 29, 2009Actually, this snake is nicer and cuter than Joe Lieberman
(from here)
What's remarkable in the coverage of healthcare reform is how certain bits of information simply go missing. For example, how often did you read that other developed countries with comparable standards of living can offer better healthcare at half the cost? (Maybe that piece of information got laid off, what with the recession and everything.) If news stories pointed out the obvious every now and then, maybe this whole debate would have worked out a little differently. Which brings us to the subject of political…
mikethemadbiologist | October 25, 2009While I'm glad we will spend more money on medical research in 2010 (although what about basic research? It needs help too.), until he confronts the massive amount of defense spending in the U.S.--$872 billion proposed for 2010 ($133 billion of which is for the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars)--it will be very hard to get funding for other things anything else. Matthew Yglesias explains (italics mine):
Preble says that this enormous expenditure "flows directly from our foreign policy." But it's worth also saying that our foreign policy flows from the vast scope of our defense spending. My…
mikethemadbiologist | September 24, 2009
ScienceBlogling Drugmonkey has some good info about the new shortened NIH R01 proposal. There are a lot of interesting comments over there, so I suggest you head on over and read the whole thing. What I wonder about is if the shorter format will end up 'compressing' the proposal scores, and consequently, result in more 'ties' that have to be broken by the NIH staff.
Let me explain.
In many ways, proposals are like admissions to highly selective colleges and universities. For every one accepted, there are one to three that would be equally qualified. Sure, some are so obviously qualified…
mikethemadbiologist | September 15, 2009My colleagues have all heard of the Mad Biologist's Rule of Base Ten Numbers: when you see too many numbers that end with zero, become skeptical. That's because only one in ten numbers should do should end in zero. So, if you read news reports that routinely say, "Today, American forces blew the crap out of [number that ends with zero] enemy forces" (and with a globe-spanning garrison empire, we do read a lot of those, don't we?), nobody has a good idea what actually happened.
Likewise, if you're reading a grant proposal and each treatment will be done ten times, there probably hasn't been…
mikethemadbiologist | September 9, 2009One problem with the Blue Dog Democrats is that they're corrupt, venial, and cowardly. Sadly, there's not much to be done about that. Another problem, and usually much less noticed, is that many of them are dumber than a fucking sack of hammers, with a good dash of ignorance to boot. Certainly, they have never heard of viral marketing. More about that in a bit.
When thinking about reelection, most Blue Dogs still seem to be focused on traditional fundraising, although a couple probably realize that they could get some money through the intertubes. Let's not be naive about the role of…
mikethemadbiologist | August 22, 2009For a bunch of guys who are supposed to be politically smart, Obama's team sure is stupid. You're probably wondering what the hell the agricultural bill (the bill that gives farmers lots of subsidies) has to do with healthcare. Once upon a time, people always used to joke that Senator Bob Dole could be rolled if you were willing to screw with the ag bill.
Which brings us to healthcare.
One of the obstacles to meaningful healthcare reform in North Dakota senator Kent Conrad who is an ideological deficit hawk. Most of the time (italics mine):
While Conrad hasn't given up his deficit…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2009
One of the frustrating things about health insurance reform is that those opposing meaningful reform are completely beholden to insurance companies. Well, there is something you can do: reward the behavior of the House Democrats who are holding the line on the public option.
Since Tuesday, ActBlue has raised over $100,000 a day in support of the pro-public option House Democrats. If you can afford it, ante up and kick in. We need to castigate those politicians who don't support the 77% of Americans who want a public option, but we also need to help those who do.
mikethemadbiologist | August 3, 2009The CDC's expert committee has released its recommendations for who should receive the swine flu vaccination (TEH SWINEY FLOO!):
1. Pregnant women; household contacts and caretakers of children under 6 months old; health-care workers and emergency medical services workers; children and young adults ages 6 months through 24 years; adults ages 25 through 64 who have underlying medical conditions that put them at higher risk.
2. Healthy adults ages 25 through 64.
3. Healthy adults ages 65 and older.
This is a good list, but I have several concerns, stemming from the apparent lack of recognition…
mikethemadbiologist | July 24, 2009By way of a post about the popularity of healthcare, I came across some polling results from a survey that asked people whether funding for various things should increase, decrease, or stay the same. The results:
(click to embiggen)
I suppose the good news is science funding is middle of the pack. And I suppose the bad news is science funding is middle of the pack. Of course, this has to be taken with a boulder of salt, since it's not clear that respondents have any idea how much is really spent--that is, respondents could be basing their answers on complete false notions of spending…
mikethemadbiologist | July 18, 2009One of the things that I find maddening about the Republicans' sloganeering is that they're never held accountable for the consequences of their slogans ("It's not the government's money, it's your money"--actually, it is the government's money, but that's a separate discussion). Well, the Obama administration called Republican Senator Jon Kyl's bluff, after Sen. Kyl criticized the stimulus package:
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is standing up for his colleague Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., under heavy fire from President Barack Obama's administration and national Democrats for suggesting that…
mikethemadbiologist | July 14, 2009I'm currently working my way through Unscientific America, and I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm going to wind up agreeing with ScienceBlogling Janet's assessment (actually, it will probably be harsher). But speaking of Janet, I want to take exception with one thing in her review: her emphasis on academic science. From her review (italics mine):
In addition to the research, the grant writing, the manuscript drafting, the student training, the classroom teaching, the paper and grant refereeing, and the always rewarding committee work, academic scientists should be working hard to…
mikethemadbiologist | July 10, 2009At least when it comes to transportation, it looks that way. The NY Times had an article yesterday about how cities are getting far less of the stimulus package slated for transportation. From The NY Times, here's the issue in a pretty figure:
(click to embiggen)
The problem--and I say this as a city dweller--is that urban transportation systems, both mass transit and automobile, have reached the breaking point. A while ago, I started receiving email alerts for the Boston T (the subway), largely because I was sick and tired of waiting for 25 minutes for a train to show up after work, when…
mikethemadbiologist | June 29, 2009Yesterday's article by Gina Kolata about cancer research mistakes a symptom--caution due to a perceived lack of funding--for the disease, which is the symbiosis between academia and the NIH. Don't get me wrong, a lot of research should involve academics. But the priorities of NIH have become overwhelmed by the priorities of academia. I think Kolata's dead on target with this part of her article (italics mine):
One major impediment, scientists agree, is the grant system itself. It has become a sort of jobs program, a way to keep research laboratories going year after year with the…
mikethemadbiologist | June 28, 2009I'll have more to say about this tomorrow, but I wanted to draw your attention to an article in today's NY Times that is critical of cancer research by Gina Kolata. Here's a snippet:
Many other grants involve biological research unlikely to break new ground. For example, one project asks whether a laboratory discovery involving colon cancer also applies to breast cancer. But even if it does apply, there is no treatment yet that exploits it.
The cancer institute has spent $105 billion since President Richard M. Nixon declared war on the disease in 1971. The American Cancer Society, the…
mikethemadbiologist | June 21, 2009What was Italy thinking? And, for that matter, NIH? From Science:
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is gearing up to begin a review of about 1,000 biomedical research grant applications for the Italian government, an experimental collaboration that comes at an inconvenient time for the US funding agency.
The outsourcing agreement was made last year at the request of Ferruccio Fazio, now Italy's deputy minister for health in the welfare ministry, who is looking to improve the department's peer-review system for awarding competitive research grants...
Most biomedical research funds…
grrlscientist | June 17, 2009tags: NYC Life, NYPL, public services, public education, public libraries
I just wanted to thank all of you, dear readers, who have joined with me to write letters to Mayor Bloomberg and other elected officials in NYC, asking them to see the light: a bad economy is absolutely no reason to cut funding for our public libraries, the crown jewel of New York City. I just learned this evening that Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn have promised they will preserve essential core resources for fiscal year 2010, including precious funds for libraries (fiscal year 2010…