Gene Sperling in the WaPo points out that holding the NIH budget flat is like a cutting our budgets as inflation forces budget cutbacks. He forgets to mention the wasted expense of the NIH roadmap and the significant portion of the intramural budget devoted to security, but otherwise he's dead-on. The steady ramping of funding led to a lot of people being trained, and the sudden cut-off has led to a lot of people abandoning science.
And I don't usually link Kos, but seeing this quote from Bill Kristol:
There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular.
I couldn't resist. Now, Bill Kristol has not been correct about anything for about a decade now. One wonders two things. Why does anyone persist and asking him his opinions? And second, is there a name for someone who predicts the future and always gets it wrong? I'm thinking a reverse of Cassandra - the myth being she could predict the future but was cursed in that no one would listen to her. Kristol is the exact opposite. He is incapable of accurately predicting the future but for some reason people listen to him. Maybe we can call it a Krissandra? And Anti-Cassandra? Or is there another mythical person that applies?
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Bill Kristol reminds me of a really, really, really demented and dangerous version of "Ed Glosser: Trivial Psychic", in which the title character had the ability to accurately predict meaningless, trivial future events:
If only.
Loki?
It's faith-based punditry; if you say something often enough and try very, very, very hard to believe that it's true then maybe it will turn out as you say it will.
the closest is the boy who cried wolf, which is pretty similar to some of bill kristol's pre-iraq stuff.
The boy who cried wolf would suggest that he's correct about something now. Also, people still interview this guy.
Krissandra it is!
is there a name for someone who predicts the future and always gets it wrong?
"Pundit".
I love Krissandra. Maybe the headline for the blog article I'm writing about this (appearing one of these days) might be a reasonable description of his output: Kristol Meth.
Where Mr. Sperling's (not Spelling) piece is concerned, it would be nice for at least some of the people complaining that the NIH budget is no longer doubling to at least acknowledge the stupidity of planning on perpetual big increases. Blaming only the federal government for the squeezing has a faint whiff of denialism.
The people now happy for the doubling promised for NSF, DOE's Office of Science and the NIST core labs need to look hard at the NIH experience and do their best to avoid the same pitfalls when those budget increases fall back to earth.
It would be one thing to reduce the rate at which funding was increasing, but it has to be planned and implemented gradually. What people don't understand is that this budget jump led to large increase in training of scientists with the idea that if budgets didn't increase, they'd at least keep pace with inflation. Instead, there has been a relative drop in expenditure and funding has not kept up with inflation. Labs are closing, people can't find post-doc positions, a large body of scientists that were trained for the expanded budget are finding themselves looking for jobs in other fields, or switching over to industry.
It would be find if the NIH budget matched inflation, it would still be a bit of a squeeze based on the training issue - there is a glut right now. But cutting funding is having a real impact on many thousands of people's careers. We also resent it a bit, because in the grand scheme of things the US R&D budget is really rather puny relative to things like, well, idiotic wars.
"It would be one thing to reduce the rate at which funding was increasing, but it has to be planned and implemented gradually. What people don't understand is that this budget jump led to large increase in training of scientists with the idea that if budgets didn't increase, they'd at least keep pace with inflation."
A couple of problems with this admittedly reasonable series of assumptions.
1 - It doesn't necessarily fit that rapid increases would be followed by gradual decreases in the rate of increase. Arguably the doubling shouldn't have happened so quickly so that the research community could adjust their planning and budget considerations appropriately, and not go on a binge of building and expanding programs. Funders are going to think 'well, we doubled you, what more do you need?' They aren't thinking long term, and it doesn't look like the biomedical community was either.
2 - Were their assurances given that the future increases would keep up with inflation? If so, why would anyone trust them, given historical funding trends? Yes, federal research and development funding isn't terribly big, or often terribly rational. For researchers to expect otherwise suggests some level of denial.
And again, those looking fondly at the doubling of the other science agencies should be looking at the NIH doubling with caution and care. Otherwise this story could easily repeat itself.