Science Policy
purepedantry | July 20, 2006In an earlier post about Bush's stem cell veto, I mentioned that I am a libertarian. One of the comments got me thinking, and I want to answer it in detail. Posted by Quitter:
Libertarian? And you're a scientist? Where do you think your funding comes from?
Usually big "L" Libertarian is defined as believing government's only job is defense and law enforcement. When you find one of these guys under a rock they usually bitch about the department of education, say the FDA has killed more people than Hitler and then proceed to tell you how a oregano suspension cured their strep throat.
Maybe…
purepedantry | July 19, 2006AP is reporting that Bush has indeed vetoed the stem cell bill:
President Bush cast the first veto of his 5 1/2-year presidency Wednesday, saying legislation easing limits on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research "crosses a moral boundary" and is wrong.
"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life of the hope of finding medical benefits for others," Bush said at a White House event where he was surrounded by 18 families who "adopted" frozen embryos not used by other couples, and then used those leftover embryos to have children.
"Each of these children was still…
purepedantry | July 18, 2006We have all been talking about this to death, but I figured I would add my two cents. Ben Barres wrote an editorial in the most recent issue of Nature about the issue of gender disparity in science. He mentions the comments of Larry Summers among others things and that he felt that those comments were out of line.
What happens at Harvard and other universities serves as a model for many other institutions, so it would be good to get it right. To anyone who is upset at the thought that free speech is not fully protected on university campuses, I would like to ask, as did third-year Harvard…
evolgen | July 17, 2006Click here to send an e-mail to your Senator telling him or her to support biomedical research by voting YES on H.R. 810.
scientificactivist | July 17, 2006As debate begins today on HR 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, this post from the archives describes how some states have had to find their own solutions for supporting embryonic stem cell research in the face of a ban on federal funding. Hopefully tomorrow's vote will make these unnecessary.
(12 May 2006) As the federal government continues to hold on to a restrictive embryonic stem cell research funding scheme--one that prevents the use of federal funds for any research associated with new embryonic stem cell lines--others are having to take up the slack. Chris Gabrieli, a…
purepedantry | July 14, 2006I had wanted to avoid being an activist with this blog, but I think it is important enough when it relates to a directly scientific issue to break that rule.
The Society for Neuroscience has issued a petition request via email asking its members to petition their Senators to vote YES for the current Senate resolution reauthorizing stem cell research. Here is the email:
Support Stem Cell Research Legislation!
On Monday and Tuesday of next week, the Senate will consider bipartisan legislation, called The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (H.R. 810). This bill would expand federally funded…
purepedantry | July 12, 2006Ronald Bailey from Reason Magazine has an article covering one of the more pernicious arguments against genetically modified foods:
Long time anti-biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin has come out in favor of a biotechnology technique. Should beleaguered biotechnologists break out the champagne and start celebrating? Not hardly. Earlier this week, Rifkin wrote an op/ed in the Washington Post in which he declared his support for marker assisted selection (MAS) for use in plant breeding. So far, so good.
MAS is a molecular technique in which researchers identify sections of DNA in a plant or animal…
purepedantry | July 10, 2006A study in the newest PNAS seeks to quantify the efficiency and resource utilization for various types of biofuels:
The first comprehensive analysis of the full life cycles of soybean biodiesel and corn grain ethanol shows that biodiesel has much less of an impact on the environment and a much higher net energy benefit than corn ethanol, but that neither can do much to meet U.S. energy demand.
The study will be published in the July 11 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers tracked all the energy used for growing corn and soybeans and converting the crops into…
purepedantry | July 9, 2006Several bloggers and columnists have been expressing skepticism as to the concept of energy independence, and I think they make some good arguments.
John Fialka in the WSJ:
The allure of energy independence is easy to see. It reinforces the belief that Americans can control their own economic destiny and appeals to a "deep-seated cultural feeling that we are Fortress America and we will not be vulnerable to unstable regimes," says David Jhirad, a former Clinton administration energy official who is vice president at World Resources Institute, an environmental-research group.
In fact, experts…
scientificactivist | July 8, 2006On the 29th of June, the Senate finally announced an upcoming vote on HR 810, a bill which would overturn President Bush's current prohibitions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. As I reported before, the announcement has been anticipated for some time, and many were disappointed when the one year anniversary of the passage of HR 810 in the House of Representatives (on May 24th) came and went without any progress in the Senate.
The media coverage of this event has mostly been unexceptional, not particularly good or bad, although probably overly optimistic considering the…
purepedantry | July 2, 2006When you get in a conversation about pharmaceuticals, everyone always asks me: "Why can't they just give them away? Drug companies make so much money anyway. Why do we even have patents?"
Well, the reason is that piracy stifles innovation. If people can't make any money off what they make, then they can't afford to design anything new. Don't believe me...read this:
Kingsoft Corp.'s English-Chinese dictionary program is used on most of China's 60 million PCs. That's the good news. The bad news: Kingsoft doesn't make any money from it, because 90 percent of those copies are pirated.
One…
purepedantry | June 26, 2006This could be very interesting:
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide to combat global warming, setting up what could be one of the court's most important decisions on the environment.
The decision means the court will address whether the administration's decision to rely on voluntary measures to combat climate change are legal under federal clean air laws.
...
The administration maintains that carbon dioxide -- unlike other chemicals that must be controlled to assure healthy air -- is not a pollutant under the federal clean…
purepedantry | June 26, 2006Keith Burgess-Jackson questions in his TCS column whether we should listen to people like Noam Chomsky's opinions on politics -- a realm notably outside their stated occupational expertise. I must admit that I haven't read what Noam Chomsky's opinions are lately -- although it is my suspicion that with respect to the present administration, they are hardly complimentary. To whit:
Noam Chomsky is, by all accounts, a brilliant linguist. Let me stipulate that this is the case, since I'm not a linguist myself. Let me also stipulate that he is a competent philosopher of language, although he has…
purepedantry | June 21, 2006We have all (meaning Scienceblogs) been talking about this whole free access model for publishing papers. Nick and I even had a nice little debate about it.
Not to belabor the issue to much, but this news story in Nature does relate:
The Public Library of Science (PLoS), the flagship publisher for the open-access publishing movement, faces a looming financial crisis. An analysis of the company's accounts, obtained by Nature, shows that the company falls far short of its stated goal of quickly breaking even. In an attempt to redress its finances, PLoS will next month hike the charge for…
purepedantry | June 21, 2006Will Jake be doing all these posts from this issue of Nature? Perhaps...
This issue of Nature also has an editorial related to some Asian countries' recent decision to pay researchers for publishing papers:
South Korea has become the latest country to offer scientists cash prizes for publications in top-level international journals (see page 792). Other nations, including China and Pakistan, already have such programmes in place. The thousands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars on offer can be a fat prize for researchers in countries with lean science budgets.
...
Proponents can point to…
purepedantry | June 14, 2006I think that the Miller Amendment is well intentioned, but I have some concerns. If you don't know what the Miller Amendment is Nick is all over that.
Here is my concern. How is such an amendment to be enforced? If the means of enforcement is either by Senate hearings or by judicial prosecution, can members of the political establishment be trusted to distinguish accurate from inaccurate scientific information in an impartial manner? Also, can this amendment be abused?
Consider the following scenario. Congressman A has a problem with a set of scientific results done by a scientific…
purepedantry | June 12, 2006Nick from The Scientific Activist has busted out a salient article from the archives related to the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006. I think he gives a fair treatment to the Act and its implications. As he is giving it a qualified endorsement, I thought I would chime in on the Con side to give a diversity of opinion.
Though I would read his post, I have tried to faithfully summarize his arguments for and against below (if I have been unfair in my summary I hope he or someone else will let me know):
Pro
1) The public pays for the research making it public property that should…
scientificactivist | June 10, 2006I mentioned earlier this week on my old blog that White House Science Adviser John Marburger would be answering questions from the public via Newsweek, and his answers have now been posted. My reactions are mixed, although he was more open than I had expected. So, what did he say?
Well, I'll start with what he didn't say. He didn't answer any of my questions, which weren't even that hostile, so he loses points for that.
He did answer, though, several questions covering a variety of issues, from alternative fuels to space exploration, from to stem cell funding to the administration's…
evolgen | June 1, 2006The non-deterministic blog has posted a roundup of our responses to their question about justifying science funding to the public.
On a related note, I recently received an update on the status of funding for biomedical research in the United States. In my last report, I pointed out that the House of Representatives approved a $600 million increase for the NIH FY2007 budget. The Senate passed an amendment to provide an additional $7 billion for health, education and labor programs. President Cuckoo Bananas' original budget kept the funding for health programs flat (without even an increase…
evolgen | May 30, 2006Another week, another question from the Seeders. This week they ask us:
Since they're funded by taxpayer dollars (through the NIH, NSF, and so on), should scientists have to justify their research agendas to the public, rather than just grant-making bodies?
My answer is below the fold.
It all depends on how one defines "the public". If you're asking me whether a school teacher, a construction worker, and a street vendor should be evaluating grant proposals and making funding decisions, I say no. It's not that the general public shouldn't have an influence on what research gets funded. They…