I've been railing for weeks against the short-sighted and downright ignorant attack on science funding from House Majority Whip Eric Cantor -- check out the website where he's inviting the public to help slash projects they don't understand.
Not understanding science leads to silly recommendations, often directly opposing your own goals. For instance, the following examples of wasteful spending provided by Republican Eric Cantor apply directly to defense: (i) computer models to analyze the on-field contributions of soccer players, and (ii) modeling the sound of objects breaking. Automatically determining contributions of soccer players is directly applicable to analyzing and understanding troop movements and battlefield dynamics. A member of my department at the University of Rochester has DARPA funding to understand player coordination in games of Capture the Flag, so the Department of Defense obviously gets the connection. Similar technology is all the rage in prison technology to help understand inmate movements, prevent violence before it happens, and protect guards. I'll leave it to the reader to figure out why scientists are modeling games first before moving on to real battlefield situations.
As for modeling the sound of objects breaking -- that's directly applicable to automatically understanding what's happening during battles, especially the small urban battles characteristic of today's military engagements. The wall above me was hit by a bullet, wouldn't it be great if I knew from the sound of the brick breaking what kind of bullet it was and where it came from?
What makes all of this even more ridiculous is the scale of the funding. Sure, a grant worth several hundeds of thousands of dollars seems like a lot. But, it's likely spread over several years, and provides funding and education to at least 3-4 people over that period. Most of the funding goes to students, who in exchange for their education do advanced work in the national interest for far below the going rate. The annual funding of NSF is less than $8 billion, which amounts to less than a month in Iraq, even by conservative estimates. But then, we got such a good return on investment for the $1 trillion we've spent there and are continuing to spend.
It seems that this backlash on science is part of a broader trend. Somehow the conventional wisdom has become that scientists are out of touch, flitting away tax dollars on meaningless projects. We as scientists may be partly to blame for this and should do more to connect with the broader community, but it doesn't lessen the importance of scientific research. The reality is that science is what made and maintains the dominance of the United States across everything from economics to medicine, and materials to the military. Without research funding for science, the Internet and Google may not exist. But, more likely, they would have been invented slightly later in Europe or China. For more of the historical importance of revving the science engine of the states, see George Will's Op-Ed in the Washington Post.
In closing, my statement to Congress:
"Keep science strong. Keep the U.S. strong. Don't succumb to short-sighted, ignorant pressure to gut innovation by eliminating science funding."
Not understanding science leads to silly recommendations, often directly opposing your own goals. For instance, the following examples of wasteful spending provided by Republican Eric Cantor apply directly to defense: (i) computer models to analyze the on-field contributions of soccer players, and (ii) modeling the sound of objects breaking. Automatically determining contributions of soccer players is directly applicable to analyzing and understanding troop movements and battlefield dynamics. A member of my department at the University of Rochester has DARPA funding to understand player coordination in games of Capture the Flag, so the Department of Defense obviously gets the connection. Similar technology is all the rage in prison technology to help understand inmate movements, prevent violence before it happens, and protect guards. I'll leave it to the reader to figure out why scientists are modeling games first before moving on to real battlefield situations.
As for modeling the sound of objects breaking -- that's directly applicable to automatically understanding what's happening during battles, especially the small urban battles characteristic of today's military engagements. The wall above me was hit by a bullet, wouldn't it be great if I knew from the sound of the brick breaking what kind of bullet it was and where it came from?
What makes all of this even more ridiculous is the scale of the funding. Sure, a grant worth several hundeds of thousands of dollars seems like a lot. But, it's likely spread over several years, and provides funding and education to at least 3-4 people over that period. Most of the funding goes to students, who in exchange for their education do advanced work in the national interest for far below the going rate. The annual funding of NSF is less than $8 billion, which amounts to less than a month in Iraq, even by conservative estimates. But then, we got such a good return on investment for the $1 trillion we've spent there and are continuing to spend.
It seems that this backlash on science is part of a broader trend. Somehow the conventional wisdom has become that scientists are out of touch, flitting away tax dollars on meaningless projects. We as scientists may be partly to blame for this and should do more to connect with the broader community, but it doesn't lessen the importance of scientific research. The reality is that science is what made and maintains the dominance of the United States across everything from economics to medicine, and materials to the military. Without research funding for science, the Internet and Google may not exist. But, more likely, they would have been invented slightly later in Europe or China. For more of the historical importance of revving the science engine of the states, see George Will's Op-Ed in the Washington Post.
In closing, my statement to Congress:
"Keep science strong. Keep the U.S. strong. Don't succumb to short-sighted, ignorant pressure to gut innovation by eliminating science funding."
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