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Governmental funding of science is fundamentally important to our economic future.
First let's look at funding for the National Institutes of Health, the main source of money for biomedical research in the US:
Joseph j7uy5 @ Corpus Callosum points out:
I can't help but notice that the funding leveled off the same year that the Iraq War started.
How about the Physical Sciences, Engineering, Math & Computer Sciences? They have all flat-lined since GWB came to power:
On the biggest issues of our time, energy, the story is no better. Money for alternative energy research has been flat through both Democrat and Republican Administrations. You would think that after 9/11 there would be a push for this type of research. Here's the data:
One of the most ambitious ideas is to develop fusion power, but is it being done in the US? Try Southern France. So if our future relies on a strong support for Science, who do you trust?
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If our future relies on a strong support for Science, we are all DOOMED. I don't even trust France with that one.
If our future can squeak by on a very healthy respect for rationality, recongition that science plays a key role in our modern world, and some reasonable level of funding increases in key areas (i.e. energy), then I trust Barack Obama.
Posted by: Becca | September 19, 2008 8:10 PM
What about funding through other venues: National Science Foundation, Centers for Disease Control, Dept of Energy, Pentagon, etc?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 20, 2008 11:13 AM
"So if our future relies on a strong support for Science"
I would hope not. The irony of trusting in science to combat the environmental effects of the Industrial Revolution is precious.
Posted by: kdon | September 20, 2008 4:15 PM
The US is a partner in ITER. It shouldn't really matter too much in which country the actual physical experiment is built.
Posted by: crf | September 20, 2008 10:21 PM
cfr,
Sure we're helping ITER, but we are not the leader. We first pulled out of ITER then rejoined. I've touched on this before at my own blog.
Posted by: Alex Palazzo | September 21, 2008 9:26 AM
To be fair we'll have to include the National Science Foundation as well. The NSF budget has increased by a factor of 55% during GWB's two terms.
Posted by: Matt Springer | September 21, 2008 11:32 AM
And to be fair we'll also need to acknowledge that the "flatlines" are in 2006 dollars, indicating that they stalled at record levels-- that is, that the Bush administration is funding those fields at the same levels, adjusted for inflation, that the Clinton administration did.
Preserving inflation-adjusted funding at record levels simply doesn't sound as bad to me as "flatlining", and the echoes of stopped heartbeats. And that NIH graph-- are we really insisting that exponential growth be continued in perpetuity?
I'm a scientist and a centrist (I have a low-level hatred for both parties). Many of the posters I see on this site seem to work hard to wrestle data into the form most calculated to back one's own ideological bent. Or simply to omit inconvenient data. I hoped for more from scientists, but these arguments are no more evenhanded than those on DailyKos or Powerline.
Posted by: Mike | September 26, 2008 7:43 PM
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Posted by: Blockbuster | January 7, 2010 4:47 AM