Funding
mikethemadbiologist | April 26, 2011I've written before about the problem of the Ph.D. glut, so I was pleasantly surprised (shocked, actually) to read several articles in a recent edition of Nature hitting the same themes. For those who don't think there's a Ph.D. glut, here are some data for you:
Post-doc numbers shouldn't be increasing, unless there's a glut. While Nature accurately identifies the problem, they fall short in explaining what's driving it. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Cyranoski et alia:
The proportion of people with science PhDs who get tenured academic positions in the sciences has been dropping…
mikethemadbiologist | April 22, 2011Noahpinion recognizes a problem that probably familiar to readers with kids in high school--the high cost of college:
While college enrollment rates are up a little over 50% since 1980, the price of college is up by over 1000%.
What this points to is a supply shortage...
More people want to go to college (probably because of the higher college wage premium), but the supply of high-quality colleges simply isn't that big. People are flocking to for-profit colleges because there just isn't room at public ones. And since there are good theoretical as well as empirical reasons to believe that for-…
mikethemadbiologist | April 20, 2011ScienceBlogling Tara Smith has a great summary of the recent paper reporting high frequencies of multi-drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus in uncooked meat products (S. aureus is the "SA" in MRSA--methicillin resistant S. aureus, so I won't go through the whole paper here (and Maryn McKenna, as usual, had the best early report). But there are two issues I want to raise, the first being that the agricultural system can serve as a 'reservoir' of antibiotic resistance genes and resistant organisms. That is, unlike Las Vegas, what happens on the farm doesn't always stay on the farm. Tara:…
mikethemadbiologist | April 14, 2011A while ago, I made the following observation in "A Nation of Deluded Dependents" about how many who receive government assistance don't even realize (or perhaps admit) that it's government assistance:
This seems a case of willful ignorance by definition. Government aid is for lazy slackers, for 'welfare queens', and, in some people's minds, for those people. Decent, hard-working people don't receive government aid, even when they do. In other words, any program that helps middle-class people, people like themselves, is, by definition, not aid, because government aid is inherently…
mikethemadbiologist | April 11, 2011Comrade Physioprof raises a point I've always wondered about:
...this old saw has been brandished:
Innovation is, and always was, higher in smaller/younger labs[.]
There is never any fucken evidence marshalled in support of this claim.
I'll admit that smaller labs can be quick and nimble, especially in comparison to large research centers. On the other hand, larger groups often have the infrastructure and financial security to pursue high risk ideas without serious risk of being derailed.
Data would be nice. I would like to think that, were it available, someone would have cited it by now.…
mikethemadbiologist | March 28, 2011Matthew Yglesias makes a good point about budget negotiations--their intransigence on tax increases means that, at least in the House, the budget is entirely up to the Republicans:
Under these circumstances, there's nothing to negotiate about and nothing presidential leadership can achieve. If Republican leaders don't want to agree to any revenue increases, that's their prerogative, but willingness to compromise on revenue is the sine qua non of a bipartisan deal. Absent that willingness, there neither can nor will be a bipartisan deal so there's nothing for the president to say or do.
The…
mikethemadbiologist | March 26, 2011It sounds likethe Boston Public Library will be closed year round on Sundays
:
Boston Public Library trustees have signed off on a $39.3 million budget that does not include branch closures or layoffs, but that does call for shuttering the Copley branch on Sundays....
The proposed library budget for fiscal 2012 budget will be included in Mayor Thomas Menino's overall city budget, due to be announced next month and needing the approval of the City Council. If the budget stays the same, funding levels fall to levels that were in place in fiscal year 2000.
Finances remain tight for the cash-…
mikethemadbiologist | March 26, 2011A few weeks ago, Glenn Greenwald gave a speech where he discussed the climate of government intimidation in the U.S.:
I received a lot of comments from people via email, from people in person telling me at my attended events, from people in my comment section, American citizens who said the following: "I understand and agree with the idea that Wikileaks has a lot of potential to do good, but I'm actually afraid of donating money, because I'm afraid that I'm going to end up on some kind of a list somewhere; or that eventually I will be charged with aiding and abetting, or giving material…
mikethemadbiologist | March 15, 2011The Sacramento Bee has a good interactive feature of how to balance California's budget*. It puts all of the realistic proposals on the table (i.e., idiots who want California to stop giving out so much foreign aid, or some other hooey need not apply). What you'll notice two things very quickly:
1) Most of the cuts are vicious and cruel.
2) The only way to get to a balanced budget is by increasing taxes.
Reality is a bitch.
*While I routinely argue that we shouldn't worry about federal budget deficits, especially with underutilized human and industrial capacity, states do have to worry…
mikethemadbiologist | March 10, 2011If you haven't heard, a NPR executive was forced to resign after an undercover recording by the minions of James O'Keefe. I don't see why anyone's getting bent out of shape because said executive called the Tea Party "racist"--some of them are quite bigoted, and other are scary, gun toting people (remember, they brought weapons to townhall meetings about healthcare). But I digress. What seems to have become a talking point is this statement:
Republicans play off the belief among the general population that most of our funding comes from the government. Very little of our funding comes from…
mikethemadbiologist | March 3, 2011Jennifer Rohn describes a dirty secret of academia:
The career structure for scientific research in universities is broken, particularly in the life sciences, my own overcrowded field. In coffee rooms across the world, postdocs commiserate with each other amid rising anxiety about biology's dirty little secret: dwindling opportunity. Fellowships are few, every advertised academic post draws a flood of candidates, and grants fund only a tiny fraction of applicants.
The scientific job market has been tight for decades, but the recent global recession and accompanying austerity measures have…
mikethemadbiologist | February 22, 2011Over at The Washington Post, Nick Johnson by way of Ezra Klein clarifies Wisconsin's budget crisis (italics mine):
- Wisconsin's budget problems are real. The state has a $137 million shortfall in the current fiscal year - after taking into account the need for an additional Medicaid appropriation to get through the end of the year. The state has a $3.6 billion shortfall in the upcoming 2011-13 biennium (the two-year period that starts July 1, 2011). As always, we measure shortfalls as the gap between projected current-law revenues, and the cost of providing a continuing level of services,…
mikethemadbiologist | February 18, 2011Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, has claimed that he needs to bust unions in order to deal with a budget crisis. Well, he's lying, since this is a 'crisis' entirely of his own doing:
The reality is radically different. Unlike true austerity measures -- service rollbacks, furloughs, and other temporary measures that cause pain but save money -- rolling back worker's bargaining rights by itself saves almost nothing on its own. But Walker's doing it anyhow, to knock down a barrier and allow him to cut state employee benefits immediately.
Furthermore, this broadside comes less…
mikethemadbiologist | February 17, 2011If you care about science, then contact your representatives and ask them to oppose the Republican NIH funding cut proposals. As JuniorProf notes, most of the leads in terms of therapeutics are happening in the public sector, not the private sector.
While you're at it, how about mentioning the CDC too?
Thank you.
mikethemadbiologist | February 15, 2011Last week, The National Journal broke the story, since confirmed by other sources, that the Obama administration plans to cut billions of dollars from the LIHEAP program that subsidizes energy costs for the needy (italics mine):
President Obama's proposed 2012 budget will cut several billion dollars from the government's energy assistance fund for poor people, officials briefed on the subject told National Journal....
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, would see funding drop by about $2.5 billion from an authorized 2009 total of $5.1 billion. The proposed cut will not…
mikethemadbiologist | February 14, 2011I've often discussed on this blog how the advantage of having a fiat currency is that one can deficit spend when you need to (think of it as being on the gold standard, except that you can mine as much gold as you need, when you need it)*. Of course, if you deficit spend when there is no idle capacity (human or mechanical) in the real economy, this can lead to inflation. Likewise, if you flood a sector or group of people with dollars when they don't need it, this also will lead to inflation and price distortion, and can result in socially undesirable outcomes (e.g., rampant income…
mikethemadbiologist | February 9, 2011There's been a lot of craziness regarding NIH funding that I haven't been properly able to slam (had a talk to prepare), but now I can. A recent rant left by D. Noonan about the problems with the NIH grant awarding system has led to a spate of responses in the science bloggysphere. I really don't agree with Noonan at all, although I approve of the ranting style (doesn't curse though). My basic disagreement with Noonan is what DrugMonkey highlighted from Noonan's rant: "their piece of the [NIH] pie." That statement arrogantly implies a claim on NIH resources regardless of outcomes.
Last…
mikethemadbiologist | February 4, 2011Over at New Economic Perspectives, William Black makes a good observation about the basic arithmetic skills of the educational reformers--specifically Obama's claim that we will add 100,000 new teachers:
Obama correctly identified a critical need and stated that we must make dramatic changes to meet the need. Are we acting to add 100,000 (net) new teachers in those fields? Obama emphasized in his address that we need to respect teachers. So let's ask the teachers what is happening. On May 27, 2010, the National Education Association warned.
Without $23 billion from Congress to keep public…
mikethemadbiologist | February 1, 2011DrugMonkey asks "Is the NIH trying to get rid of smaller laboratories?" Before I get to my take on the answer, what I'll be talking about is based on private conversations, so I won't be attributing some things to specific people (sorry Ed!). Take this for what it's worth...
I don't think NIH is specifically trying to tank smaller labs. Instead, NIH seems to be reacting to frustration, both within and outside NIH, about the pace (or lack thereof) of translational research. Without viewing the funding situation for independent PI-driven labs in the context of larger NIH-wide moves towards…
mikethemadbiologist | December 16, 2010I've written before about the municipal and state level fiscal crises that are occurring across the U.S. (and, yes, this was not only predictable, it was predicted). Well, now we have a new crisis: no more BABs. BABs is short for Build America Bonds program, and there are two types of BABs:
1) BABs that give the recipient (i.e., the bond purchaser) a federal tax credit--this subsidizes the purchase of the bond, making it cheaper.
2) BABs that give the issuer (the state or local government) a subsidy of 35% of the interest. This lowers the amount the state or local government has to pay…