Funding
mikethemadbiologist | July 31, 2006Alex at the Daily Transcript has a great post discussing an editorial by Robert A. Weinberg about the consequences of funding priorities. Here's the short version by Weinberg:
The funding policies of the NIH have made it increasingly difficult for young researchers to procure research funds. This threatens to drive a whole generation of young people away from careers in basic biomedical research.
Read Alex's entire post for a very good discussion of the Weinberg editorial.
Unfortunately, all I can add is that things are in fact as bad as Alex claims--or worse. Here's some observations that…
mikethemadbiologist | July 27, 2006In the NSF Strategic Plan, the life sciences (i.e., biology) are not included as an area that needs improvement in infrastructure or translation of research into new products. Is it too cynical to think that the Bush Administration purposely left out biology? After all, this is the same administration that has repeatedly altered or removed sections of scientific reports that offend various political constituencies. (Maybe I should let them know I wasn't serious about the whole Imperial Stormtrooper thing...)
Well, the American Society for Microbiology got honked off and wrote a letter:
Dr…
mikethemadbiologist | July 11, 2006There have been several good posts on the NIH funding crunch here at ScienceBlogs. With that in mind, I bring you a funding estimate from the NIAID Newsletter:
Level budgets continue to loom on the horizon. "For the past couple of years, NIH's budget has been disturbingly flat," NIAID Director Dr. Anthony S. Fauci commented to NIAID's main advisory Council in May, "and this demands difficult choices."
In the President's budget request, the first step in the annual appropriations process, NIAID's FY 2007 allocation would rise to $4.4 billion, just $12 million or 0.3 percent more than this…
mikethemadbiologist | July 8, 2006I suppose the Republicans have concluded that the best way to solve the problem of global warming is to destroy the government agencies that collect the data and fund the research in this area. The latest target: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. For a full report on what the Republicans want to do, the Friends of NOAA has a very helpful pdf; for the short version, this MyDD.com diary has a good summary. Basically, every area of NOAA is slashed, but this particular cut takes the cake for both pettiness and short-sighted idiocy (italics mine):
The House Mark does…
mikethemadbiologist | July 2, 2006If someone else here posted this, my apologies. This cartoon is from Reality Check by David Sipress.