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Subscribe to RSSMiles O'Brien reports on the towel-folding robot for "Innovation Nation."
The latest in a series of critical reports on the National Science Foundation takes aim at science that's seemingly silly but really isn't.
U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., issued today's 73-page report, "The National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope," after months of signals from GOP leaders that the agency's programs would be targeted.
Some of the report's criticisms are clearly justified and have been the subject of investigation for years. Examples include the scandal over staff members' porn-surfing, Jell-O-wrestling at an Antarctic research station and questions about mixing business travel with romance. The report also cites concerns about $1.7 billion in unspent funds that are lying in a budgetary limbo, as well as examples of mismanagement already identified by the agency's inspector general.
But the headline-grabbers are "questionable" research projects that are portrayed in an unflattering light. "Are these projects the best possible use of our tax dollars, particularly in our current fiscal crisis?" the report asks.
Here are a few examples:
- A robot that was designed to fold towels and do other chores. The project at the University of California at Berkeley received a $1.5 million NSF grant.
- Experiments at Indiana University aimed at finding out whether an analysis of Twitter updates could predict the mood on the stock market. The $25,000 grant was provided to Indiana University researchers under a program that was actually set up to respond to the Haiti earthquake.
- A Duke University study focusing on why the same teams tend to dominate March Madness basketball brackets, which received a $79,998 NSF grant.
- A study of marine locomotion that involved putting shrimp on an underwater treadmill and comparing how sickness impaired their movement. That particular study was supported by a $559,681 award from NSF, and the research group at the College of Charleston's Grice Marine Laboratory received 12 grants totaling over $3 million during the past decade, Coburn reported. The scientists also received a lot of publicity, including a spot on NBC's TODAY show.
NBC's TODAY talks with biologists David Scholnick and Lou Burnett about their shrimp research.
It's easy to stir up some outrage or squeeze out a laugh over these types of science projects ... and they're the kinds of projects that we journalists like to write about, precisely because they seem so silly. That's why Coburn's report quotes so extensively from news articles about the research, rather than the findings themselves.
But in all these cases, there's a serious point behind the silliness.
The towel-folding robot, for example, is part of a project to see what it would take for robots to handle relatively unstructured tasks ranging from cooking to surgery. The Twitter prediction study is aimed at seeing whether social media can be factored into new types of prediction models (such as the long-running Iowa Electronic Markets). The "March Madness" study looks at whether the principles of evolutionary biology can be applied to hierarchies ranging from sports dynasties to academia and business. And the shrimp-on-a-treadmill study served as a way to gauge the health of marine organisms in a laboratory setting.
Some scientists said Coburn's report contained a distorted description of their research. "Good Lord! The summary of the funded research is very inaccurate," LiveScience's Stephanie Pappas quoted Texas A&M psychologist Gerianne Alexander as saying.
Traditional target
Coburn's report is the latest example of a tradition going back at least to the 1970s, to the late Sen. William Proxmire and his "Golden Fleece Awards." Proxmire was a Democrat, but more recently it's been Republicans who have been taking shots at science spending. Remember Sen. John McCain's campaign against the Adler Planetarium's newfangled projector? The assault on fruit-fly research by his 2008 running mate, Sarah Palin? Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's attack on volcano monitoring?
"There's a long history of these reports coming out," Patrick Clemins, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told me today. Usually, the reports prey on studies that have a "poorly picked title" or focus on a research area that seems frivolous at first blush.
The National Science Foundation's grant selection process isn't perfect, and there's a chance that some clunkers may end up getting funded. But Clemins said the process works better than any alternative.
"We have a peer-review process that incorporates the viewpoints of a panel of experts, not just a single expert but a panel," Clemins said. "Just as we rely on legislators to make legislative decisions, we should rely on scientific experts to make the scientific decisions on where the next big innovation might occur."
Cut whole categories of research?
To a degree, Coburn and his staff would agree with that: "Ultimately, the decision as to what constitutes 'transformative' or 'potentially transformative' [research] should be left to the scientific community rather than Congress," the report says.
NSF is already working on some of the steps recommended in the report, such as coming up with better ways to measure the impact of federally funded research. But Coburn's recommendations go farther, calling on whole categories of NSF funding (for social studies and science education) to be cut off or consolidated with other federal programs.
Coburn talks quite a bit about the country's budget crisis, but there's an innovation crisis going on as well. Would he really want to axe research into "cross-cultural understanding of others' emotions," knowing that such research has been used to fight terrorists and keep U.S. troops safer in Iraq and Afghanistan? For more about that study, check out this issue of Scientific Enquirer from the Association of American Universities.
The AAU, in fact, has a great Web page that pulls together lots of examples showing how basic research can fuel transformative technologies. The next time politicians take aim at fruit-fly studies and other seemingly silly science, wave this printout in their faces.
The NSF's own studies suggest that the American public is strongly supportive of research that advances the frontiers of knowledge, even if it brings no immediate benefits. Do you agree? As always, feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
Update for 9:30 p.m. ET: ScienceInsider's Jeffrey Mervis says Rep. Ralph Hall, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Science Committee, has signaled that NSF isn't the right place to start cutting the budget. In an email, he told Mervis that he has "long supported NSF and believes that their mission supports U.S. scientific discovery and fuels innovation."
Mervis also quotes NSF officials as saying that Coburn's concern about $1.7 billion in unspent funds is based on a misreading of federal statutes. "It's being used for exactly the purpose for which it was intended," an unnamed budget official is quoted as saying.
It sounds as if Coburn's report will end up being little more than a blip on the budget radar screen, and justifiably so. But stay tuned for further developments. The senator's communication director, John Hart, is quoted as saying that future reports will examine the policies and practices of other research agencies.
Update for 11:10 p.m. ET: Among the scientists who feel dissed by Coburn's report is a Twitter pal o' mine, SETI Institute astronomer Franck Marchis. "He is attacking my research on multiple asteroids, stating that I am looking for aliens since it is hosted by the SETI Institute," Marchis writes.
Update for 2:20 a.m. ET May 27: In a blog posting, medical researcher Greg Crowther, the co-leader of SingAboutScience.org, responds to the criticism leveled against his project in Coburn's report. "What's most important here ... is not the senator's misconceptions about our particular project but rather his broader implication that music has no place in the realm of science," Crowther writes. "I emphatically disagree." So do I.
More on science and politics:
- Scientists criticize idea of citizen review of funding
- How politics will spin science
- Will our 'Sputnik moment' fizzle out?
You can connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. Also, give a look to "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Shocking a Republican trashing science education and learning. I'm sure he's god fearing though.
I wish your post would've been more like CJ's below - I get so tired of reading the religious trash talk around here. I'm both scientific and religious, and I don't want to see either side bashing each other.
On a more on-topic matter, I live in Oklahoma, and I can safely assure you that not only is Coburn a complete jackass, but so is Inhofe. And I can't wait for both of them to be out of office. Sadly, they'll probably just be replaced by other inept buffoons, we did, after all, elect Mary Fallon as governor.
I think one of the bigger problems with the national perception of science is that is practiced by dull, stuffy, untalented, antisocial nerds. I think showcasing these creative (and useful!) experiments does science a favor. Imagine telling your 8 year-old kid about anawesome robot he might be able to build one day that will not only fold his clothes but play frisbee with him too. And sports and twitter can be about science, too? Awesome!
Good point and positive spin. I think people often forget that science can be used not just for useful ends but also entertaining and fun ones.
The internet was built with government funding but if you phrased it as "a place where people go to complain" instead of "a generation changing, communication tool" people probably would have worked to cut it as well.
The national perception of science is actually self-fulfilling, though. I've recently watched a few episodes of "Nova" on PBS, and they were really intriguing to watch. However, with thousands of TV channels and countless streaming alternatives that cater explicitly to what a viewer *wants* to watch at a given moment, why would anyone watch "Nova" who didn't already view science positively? Non-science and non-research people (most of America) tend to eschew this kind of information. Unfortunately, this failure to deliberately learn about this stuff leads to ignorance, which in turn means there's not much outcry when someone mentions funding cuts to critical programs.
Here's a thought, the viewer would want to watch NOVA to be better educated and have new ideas and knowledge presented to them. The viewers would want to watch Dancing with the Stars to escape the mundane world they survive in.
NOVA is great but there is not enough shows like that on the boob tube.
OK ... we have this senator fussing about science .... I wonder if he is one of those 'reasonable and faithful' types who believes that the planet earth is 6,000 years old and that humans used to ride dinosaurs .. on saddles *shaking my head* .. if any real (by that I mean unbiased) research going on in this country, I am most pleased to hear it.
republicans will distort and lie about anything and everything. they want to cut funding for anything that they dont have interest in or their supporters. why not stop paying haliburton to do work for the government? that would never happen... after all, that was what the iraq war was about anyway. even powell knew there were no wmd and that is why he quit rather than be remembered in history for being an idiot like bush. too bad he didnt have enough integrity to blow the whistle on bush and cheneys plan of greed and destruction of the US image and standing in the world.
Coburn would consider money spent on Doppler radar a waste of money. I'm surprised he hasn't run the National Weather Service out of Oklahoma, after all, tornadoes are God's creation, why do we need science ;-)
Jake,
Let's be fair.
First of all, I'm not a Coburn fan. I believe he is an embarrassment to our state and should go back to practicing medicine (He's a doctor you know).
But, Coburn would never mess with Doppler or any other kind of weather predicting radar or sonar device. Doppler saves lives. We depend on it here in Oklahoma during Tornado season. By studying the Doppler and other readouts provided to us by our local television stations we can determine the path of a storm and take appropriate action.
Perhaps I am a little sensitive on this subject since the large-scale tornado outbreaks in Tuscaloosa, Joplin and here just this week.
Tag Coburn for his many shortcomings and innane comments, you don't need to reach to do so, they are legion. But be sensitive to the fact that Doppler radar saves lives and is not a joking matter here in Tornado Alley.
Then I recommend that Tornado Alley fix their problem anti-science Senators and Congressmen. Let's face it, we need science more than we need polititians.
The amounts granted seem somewhat out-of-line with either the difficulty or the value of the research. I would be more interested, though, to find out what kind of special relationships the grantees had with the NSF decision makers.
The figures seem out-of-line with the difficulty of the research? How do you know? How much do *you* think it should cost to solve major hurdles in robotics?
(As someone who has been awarded some of these national grants, by the way, the implication that the grant awarding system is corrupt is a bit insulting. The grant awarding process is open and transparent in exactly the way that Washington politics is not.)
OK Re solving "major hurdles in robotics": Dante II was a 10-ft.-tall, 1,700-lb., eight-legged robot that descended into the Mount Spurr volcano and accomplished detailed study of the crater floor 300 ft. below the rim that included a 3-D survey of the hellish terrain and an analysis of gases issuing from belching vents. The entire project, including transportation costs was $1.7M. Kind of impressive compared with folding towels, huh?
Yep, 17 years ago too.
Kannin,that statement right there shows you have no understanding at all of robotics or the challenges that researchers are trying to overcome. Its not ABOUT folding towels. Its about handling challenges that are not clearly structured. Dante II was a totally different kind of robot. Those kinds of robots are remote controlled. The controller for them is a human that can easily deal with such challenges. The towel folding is about making a computer handle the task autonomously. Its useful for things like the mars rovers,autonomous combat drone aircraft or other situations where the situation may not be clearly structured and remote control by humans is not practical.
The task of folding towels was simply chose because certain aspects of it were difficult for an autonomous robot to do effectively. In fact,it might even be the case that towels are EASY to fold by machine,with a proper design of the machine,but such a machine would not properly model the unstructured task that they are examining.
Rather than being about getting a pile of folder towels,its an exercise in robots and computer science.
I do however find it humorous to see people sit there,smug in their imagined superiority,mouthing off about something they know nothing about and looking like complete idiots.
I often serve as a reviewer for NSF grants and I can say that the process is one of the most stringent and detailed selection processes that I've seen. It's not perfect, but it's as good as I think it can get while still being objective. I can say that if any proposal came to the table whose only purpose was to create a robot that folded towels it would never make it past the 1st reviewer much less the 2nd, or 3rd! These proposals are highly competitive, very detailed, and are reviewed with a fine-tooth comb by multiple peers. Often the best projects or ideas are the ones that seem on the surface to be simple or even mundane because the goal of science is to explore what we often take for granted or think is not worthy of our time and resources. In a country that ranks as one of the lowest in science comprehension (as illustrated by Sen. Tom Coburn) the NSF does a phenomenal job at trying to correct this problem…
Really? How would you know. Have you programmed much AI software that can handle autonomous tasks of real world situations where the situation did not conform to any tightly defined parameters? I didnt think so,because people who with such things understand that its a very difficult thing to do. Just look at the DARPA grand challenge where the entrants were trying to get a vehicle (usually an suv) to navigate a predetermined course. The algorithms from this research will be useful for such things. As the grand challenge showed,you cant just decide to make an autonomous robot and just go ahead and build one. You have to simplify the problem down to its essential elements,and the challenge that you work on may bear no resemblence to what it will finally be used for,especially to people whose entire knowledge of computer science and robotics comes from what they see on CSI or NCIS. (I wish I could but a twig in MY mass spec and get a answer in 15 minutes that tells me where it came from,what it is and the path it too to get to its final location. In fact,If I tried to jam a twig or leaf or rock into my instrument,it would break it and far from getting any useful information,I would be stuck with 1000s of dollars in repairs)
Joshua. You seem to know what you are talking about, so I will yield on the subject of NSF grants.
Michael M. - You are an arrogant insulting jerk. I have programmed guidance and decision-making systems that operate with incomplete and even inaccurate inputs. The task described is one I am familiar with (and you, apparently, are not) and $1.5M is somewhat higher than the task deserves.
Kannin: "The amounts granted seem somewhat out-of-line with either the difficulty or the value of the research." -- That's because the report is very misleading about what the money is actually used for. I think the $559,000 went to a program set up to teach students how to do science. The implication that it all went to watching shrimp on a treadmill is clearly false.
I too, have had experience (although not with NSF) with NASA grants and DoD SBIR's (Small Business Innovative Research). 60% to 80% of the time these are "wired". It's a well-understood process. An executive of an organization, often a retired general, with "contacts" will arrange for briefings to be presented in his old command. The officers in the command will suggest that the organization write an "unsolicited proposal" which is then used to justify the award.
That's not how NSF works, but by all means cut the fat at the DoD, there's plenty.
NSF grants are highly competitive, and it can take a month just to write a proposal. I'm sure that questionable projects still get funded sometimes, but without knowing the full scope and intent of these studies, we really can't say whether they are worthwhile or not.
Thank you Alan. ABC ran this story by basically publishing Coburn's press release as if it were fact. It's nice to see a journalist who actually takes the time to put it into context.
Yes, let us question scientific research projects because we aren't scientists and do not understand the research nor its potential implications. Ah people are so stupid. You know, I bet when Galileo spent hundreds of nights on end staring at space through his stupid little toy known as the telescope, people thought he was being silly and ridiculed him. The result of that silly science project and silly research fundamentally changed our perception of the solar system and our place in the universe. This is why I do not care what politicians think about science because I imagine none of them are scientists. Frankly I trust the findings of science FAR more than the words of a politician. Scientists have integrity and their lives are guided by the search for truth and understanding. A scientist that even tries to make a claim with false or shoddy research (evidence) is immediately called out and their career is over. Go science!
But they are scientists! Political Scientists... In other words, they make a sceince out of distorting facts, telling outright lies, and brainwashing dumb sheep....
Also political scientists use cause celebre to gather supporters so they win campaigns. It doesn't matter if the cause celebre is truthful or not. Remember, California Legislature almost banned DiHydrogen Monoxide.
That's water to the non-chemistry person.
Thanks for the article, Alan!
I'm glad somebody is casting a reasonable amount of criticism on the GOP's headlong assault on science.
Discouraging basic research in this way cannot have any positive outcomes. Even if our balance sheet is slightly less red, we cannot afford to stifle innovation by tarring the reputations and funding sources of our nation's best and brightest.
hey, fold towels, ok, look, all I want is to make the robot land on the moon, pick up a few samples, juant around a bit and send back some vids before the BIG guys do it under the guise of the google xprize...500 million would go a long way for me!! but the calif university is a BIG player, politically connected, with lotsa well liked celebs and overpaid celebrated sci notables signed on board to teach a few classes, write a few books, and overall make the campus look even more important, dare I say, an intergal part of the milsciind complex.....why they really NEED the money!..after all, that paltry sum they charge the students(cough,cough), called, tuition, taken TOGETHER will ALL those simple gifts and MINOR endowments (cough) and all those MEAGER football seat sales (cough) and gosh how much can they make selling those hot dogs and beers in the stadium at damn near cost (cough, again)...yea, they need the 1.5 milion, sure they do, whilst us edisons out here on our own, well, were good at making do with what we got, naw, we don't need no stinking grant money, time and time again we proven it, time and time again we scoop them with everything from the first aeroplanes to the first phones to even the first aeorgels, and heck, the BIG guys don't even bother trying to STEAL it from us till it gets BIG!!....yea they need the money, keep telling yourselves that and forget that after world war 2 alaska airlines made it because they were able to buy surplus airplanes cheap while public law kept the bigger players away from them and the surplus planes, and a million more reasons, but what the heck, mike m and crew kept on lopping away individual brevity, sure, were all taxed too death, what a terrible time to invest in the little guy.......................................turn the page. Stop pandering to instituitionalization and party. From now on 95 percent of the little guys should get the grants!!...that'll save our country, AND really provide the cash turn the economy needs, cut the heck out of profs pay and make college affordable, not grant dependant. You want science? quit squezeing out the little guys and gals, the real inventors, the ones with gusto to flip ya all off!!! cause ya all deserve it. The real americans, brave proud and god damn independant. Sure another politician carved up one of his own for the sake of himself, is he gonna cut the nsf? is he gonna see that more little guys have a shot? or is he gonna take money from BIG interests, get more grants for institutions that can donate more to his re-election?.....the bigger picture is at stake, I hope you can see it. I can, everyday, at the gas pump, at the supermarket, at the chinamarket. Anyone here know what IEEE charges for membership???..ain't that a crime? or know about the monopoly of a nature subscription?...how about a grant for that?? I would almost shut up for that!!..allmost, the denigration of the individual in america is too much of a crime for me to ever shut up at this point. I thank the senator, whatever his motives, the point he makes is valid.
Wilco tango foxtrot?????
Yes collages charge WAY too much, but the money doesn't go to the science department. It goes to the athletic department.
Central Washington University (I'm sure you've all heard about it, sarcasm) just awarded a $500,000 bonus to it's president. That's obscene, when every employee is taking 3% pay cut, with more pay cuts to follow.
That's politics.
all that being said, pr2 looks like a cool robot, it needs press coverage as a robot here at the cosmic log!! (and maybe the developers could leak a couple of his alogarithms back to the taxpayer in the form of ai open script or even just plain ole aida code if that's all they got).
I find it hard to take Coburn at his word that he's interested in 'saving the government money' with respect to his attacks on research funding. The scale of funding is simply too small, and as a 'deficit hawk' the good Senator ought to know those numbers. Put it this way: You could fund NSF for 8-10 years with the amount of money in ONE of the supplemental war-funding bills we regularly, and nearly unanimously, approve to keep the simultaneous, endless war efforts abroad going. Never mind the actual economic *return* on our research investment, which is considerable... there's really no percentage in attacking $25K grants (esp. ones that *use existing technology to improve prediction of stock market movements*- no, there's no way to make money off of that, of course not) unless you're trying to make some sort of social/religious anti-science 'point.'
Coburn and his ilk are not coming from a Christian perspective. No, they are "Christianists". Whereas both the Old and New Testament talk about caring for the poor and suffering and welcoming the stranger, these "Christianists" hiding behind their Bibles want to stick it to the poor and suffering and hate the stranger. Meanwhile, Coburn lived in the "Christianist" C Street with former Senator Ensign and was directly involved in Ensign's liaison with his employee, the wife of his Chief of Staff and best friend. Coburn is a self-righteous liar, a hypocrite, and ignorant to boot. Its really quite sad that Oklahomans are more interested in phony "Family Values" than in intelligence or compassion.
I'd rather waste my money on science than on Congress.
It seems like the biggest problem many politicians have with science is that true science isn't politically motivated; a condition they can neither understand nor, in their ignorance, tolerate.
True peer review is immune to the pork-barrel mentality of "if you vote for this I'll vote for that", and of consequence, the overwhelming majority of those projects that get funded DO have the goal of increasing our understanding and/or answering the research question.
And something that congress fails miserably at understanding is the concept that well-structured research that actually disproves a previously stated position is still good science.
The average american has no understanding of what is required of a robot to fold a towel neatly. That would be a major advance in AI. I can't fold a towel neatly. Once a robot can do that the market implications can expand on a major level. Why can't people see that ?
I know people fear 'science' because it challenges dearly held beliefs but come on, no one is developing a robot that can do abortions.
I remember a quote from "Murphy's law" book:
It is always easier to do research when you know the resut in advance....
Fundamental research seems often useless; but its result can often be use later for practical purpose, in fields that seems to be so far away from these researches...
it was that research about the plankton in the Atlantic... a waste of moneys according to some... it did allow to have a tri-dimensional view of the oceanic currents, and the Navy is certainly using these data to determine & optimize the underwater route of its submarines...
Without fundamental research, we would not have computers, the banks would still have huge rooms filled with office clerks computing everything "manually", with a sheet of paper, a pencil and an eraser...
and yet several years ago, the researches that led to the discovery of the transistor or the laser (the core of our digital world) were considered as futile....
Some would like to finance only applied research. Applied research is useful for immediate needs, improving something; but applied research will never revolutionize the world.
Beware of "news", reports etc, from media people or politicians who are scientifically illiterate, they just want to get an audience...
One word.......... serendipity
Look folks, I'm all in favor of R&D. I would in fact rather see a lot of other money spent on things like "Cowboy Poetry" and see it spend on research, but bottom line....right now we need to cut spending, period. That means R&D funding takes a cut too and that means 1) cutting administrative staff (always should be step one in a cut) and 2) greater scrutiny of what is being funded and what the possible applications might be.
Could a lot of other studies have implications for "things" of course, but it may be time to focus on things that will lead to a better...okay, a new...economy since our manufacturing economy is (and has been) on its way overseas.
I'm fine with re-assessing reseacrh priorities, but it should be done by scientists not politicians. But shifting priorities is not an excuse for cutting. No, R&D does NOT have to take a cut too. R&D is our investment in the future. Right now we spend a pathetically small amount on it, for a country as large and supposedly innovative as ours. Cut the budget to make little old ladies fend for themselves if you must, but I will defend investment in science no matter what.
Okay, we outsourced our manufacturing, now let's outsource our R&D... If only we can outsource our politicians...
Shrimp project is relevant. Part of the ability of an ecosystem to recuperate after oils spills (like the BP incident) involves the ability of species to perform under environmental stresses. Shrimp are important to the gulf economy. Without a real metric to test what happens, it is hard to plan for the real impact in $'s until it shows up maybe several years down the road.
It is one thing to use robotics to solder/spot-weld fixed plans, test tolerances, and things like that. Folding floppy towels requires continuous adjustments to objects that don't tend to hold a shape or fixed points of reference -- much harder feedback/response system to program. However, it would be a necessary problem to solve before a real surgical robot could be designed (not just remote surgical tools).
Fruit flies are great - they have a lot of the same enzymatic and genetic structure as all animals, a well understood genetic code, and they have short life-cycles and rapid breeding cycles, allowing for generation-by-generation genetic studies. Biological studies that identify new biochemical cycles important to human diseases often start in these biological 'model' organisms... and there's a whole slew of them that people work with (C. elegans - microscopic roundworms; black-belly fruit flies; mice; chickens; etc). There are whole technologies developed around doing complex biochemical studies in these specific organisms -- and it is often very hard to try to extend studies to other organisms not on these lists.
I look at the problem of extending technology to answer how animals lap up water. Its simple enough that it gets a lot of press. The technology is tricky, and has broader application to understanding other complex issues that impact human lives -- some of this may show up in new diagnostic applications that may help save lives (spotting tumors, or failures for peristalsis to work right, etc).
Look at IBM's machine to play Jeopardy: it never came from that. The technical problem was to be able to codify medical records into a uniform standard so they can be compared and studied to identify hidden signals that may cost insurance companies lots of $'s, track drug study and other epidemiological analyses fr diseases where the raw data is often massive, and full of free text with millions of different ways to say the same thing. The hardest part is that, when establishing a new method, you have to show it gives a meaningful result. The resulting studies often get criticized for showing obvious things... Then the next time you see it, it is used in a novel way that showed something entirely unexpected. The people who did both studies know the connection. But news articles just like to see the apparent waste.
The statements you use to justify the funny science are every bit as funny as the science. Too much funny money from the government leads to stupid, inadvisable, unjustifiable science project approval. The niniscule develompments, undefined discoveries, and marginal improvements, even the implied quantum leaps in technology border on worthless when the cost of realizing them are at the cost of the financial well being of the society they are supposedly intended to help. For centuries innovation took place without federal funding. Reducing that funding will only sharpen the minds of the scientist and blunt the inexcusable waste. You need to lend your voice to the effort of reclaiming our solvency not pretending that all is well. You need to be critical of rather than appologetic for funny science.
I am in favor of any congressman that scrutinizes the expenditure of federal dollars whether they are tax dollars confiscated from the public, the monopoly money printed by the treasury, or the Federal reserves's monitizing of the debt.
What we really need is to cut money that will have no return EVER, such as keeping the troops in the middle east. This WILL return money down the road. We just can't see it because we only think in the short term. We expect the return in 6 days, not 6 years...
This article talks about grants of hundreds of thousands up to a few million.
I noticed the senator did not jump on the BILLIONS being spent on pork barrel projects in his state and other states all introduced and approved by the senator and his associates. Nor does he attack the HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS spent of military projects like the new jet fighter which the Pentagon and Air Force does not want. Of course Oklahoma will receive a substantial amount for their aircraft industry to supply materials needed to build the unwanted fighter.
I do not support ANY government spending by any government agency which is not needed. It has long since been time to get our financial house in order. All this unneeded spending has resulted in a voters revolt which has now put a bunch of crackpots in office who want to shut down all government spending and eliminate all taxes.
Wake up you people. It's not the end of the world but it is the end of our country as a major power.
Coburn is a grandstanding knownothing (with an M.D., no less). There's always a segment of the population outraged at research that they would never have thought of, and will never understand. "It's them egghead fellas wastin' my money!" Yeah, yeah, yeah...