The case of Purdue's Rusi Taleyarkhan, cleared by the university of charges of misconduct in a murky process, has taken another turn. Congress is getting involved, with the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee requesting more details from the university.
On the one hand, I'm not enthusiastic about Congress getting into this (aren't there some drug-using professional athletes that they could investigate?), but then again, Purdue brought it on themselves with their ridiculously cryptic statements about the case. If they hadn't acted like they were covering something up, this all would've gone away months ago.
One ScienceBlogs sort of note:
"There's enough in published reports and in talk in the scientific community to raise questions," said Representative Brad Miller, the North Carolina Democrat who is chairman of the subcommittee.
In view of the billions of dollars the government spends on scientific research, Mr. Miller said, "we need to know we are getting valid sound research and not research that is being manipulated."
Insert Chris Mooney rant about how "sound science" is a Republican code phrase, and nobody left of Limbaugh should ever use it.
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Brad Miller? I had no idea. Wow, what a small world. I smell conflict of interest.
Ken Suslick is the Terran expert on sonoluminescence. He published that matrix boiling point couples to conditions within the imploding bubble. Concentrated sulfuric acid, bp = 290 C, doped with argon foments plasma Hell based on emission spectroscopy. Neat deuteroacetone, bp = 56 C, is expected silly at face value.
Deuterium gas doped in D2SO4 is worth a giggle. (Acetone in sulfuric acid gives mesityl oxide and mesitylene.) Physical reality cannot be legislated.
Actually, I think that the Government does have a clear interest precisely because, as Miller said, they fund so much science, with money taken from taxation (or, you know, borrowing that the taxpayers of the future can repay). That doesn't mean that they will pursue that interest sensibly but we can't take money from the government and expect them to just walk away and leave us to it. That would require a level of trust and high-mindedness unlikely in a democracy, particularly when the sums involved are relatively large.