"High Quality Research Act"

[strigori]

Who is the bigger moron. The congressmen who have this crap spew from their mouths? Or the droolers who keep voting for them?

[It'sNotAFakeID]

They're both idiots.

[HSKR]

Sounds like we have a couple on here that this would directly affect. Instead of the continual bashing of how stupid these congressmen are, I'd love to hear specifically what you research and how it contributes positively to my tax dollars being spent on you. That would do a lot more to win me over to your side of this debate compared to what I have read so far. Continue on.

[It'sNotAFakeID]

Achievement strategies and their relationship to job satisfaction. Turnover costs organizations a lot of money when employees leave. Turnover is negatively correlated with job satisfaction; low satisfaction, high turnover.

 

Everyone is either a maximizer (want the best possible option), or a satisficer (want an option that is good enough). Research has linked being a maximizer with lower satisfaction levels, but higher performance levels. So companies want to keep maximizers, but they often leave. If I can find a way to change that, that would be a pretty important finding and application.

[It'sNotAFakeID]

Look for: The Best or Good Enough? How Achievement Strategies Influence Job Satisfaction

[Junior]

Sounds like we have a couple on here that this would directly affect. Instead of the continual bashing of how stupid these congressmen are, I'd love to hear specifically what you research and how it contributes positively to my tax dollars being spent on you. That would do a lot more to win me over to your side of this debate compared to what I have read so far. Continue on.

 

 

1. Understanding how methanogenic archaea utilize alternative carbon sources to produce biological methane, in order to apply this to biofuel applications.

2. Understanding the genetics behind how a specialized methanogic archaeon, which is present in the guts of all humans at some level, is linked to obesity in humans.

 

Hopefully that wins you over, but even if it doesn't, that doesn't make it unimportant research. Take a note from this article:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-time-to-get-serious-about-science/2012/09/09/5b5c1472-f129-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html

 

 

Across society, we don’t have to look far for examples of basic research that paid off. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, then a National Science Foundation fellow, did not intend to invent the Google search engine. Originally, they were intrigued by a mathematical challenge, so they developed an algorithm to rank Web pages. Today, Google is one of the world’s most highly valued brands, employing more than 30,000 people.

 

It is human nature to chuckle at a study titled “Acoustic Trauma in the Guinea Pig,” yet this research led to a treatment for hearing loss in infants. Similar examples abound. Transformative technologies such as the Internet, fiber optics, the Global Positioning System, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computer touch-screens and lithium-ion batteries were all products of federally funded research.

 

Yes, “the sex life of the screwworm” sounds funny. But a $250,000 study of this pest, which is lethal to livestock, has, over time, saved the U.S. cattle industry more than $20 billion. Remember: The United States itself is the product of serendipity: Columbus’s voyage was government-funded. Remember, too, that basic science, the seed corn of innovation, is primarily supported by the federal government — not industry, which is typically more interested in applied research and development.

[HSKR]

Thanks for sharing guys. Definitely makes the topic more personal and helps the rest of us relate to the concerns posted. Both of you have interesting fields of research as well.

[knapplc]

More bashing of congresspersons would do a lot more to winning me over to your side compared to what I have read so far. Carry on.

[Junior]

http://www.slate.com...n_the_rise.html

 

In these attacks on the NSF, a few lines of research have been highlighted that sound silly out of context. We’ve seen this before from those on the far right who attack science, from Sarah Palin to the Wall Street Journal. But when you look more deeply into the research you usually find it’s actually quite important, leading to new insights in biology, medicine, and more.

 

While government funds science and should have oversight to make sure that funding is fairly granted, the best people to make the decisions about what constitutes good science are the scientists themselves, not agenda- and ideologically-driven politicians.

 

 

And there’s a bigger picture here as well. The entire endeavor of science must be allowed the freedom to pursue ideas wherever they lead, and must have the flexibility to pursue ideas that may not pan out. From a financial view, the ones that work invariably subsidize the ones that don’t. We can’t know in advance what lines of research will yield results, but the ones that do succeed benefit us, increasing our knowledge vastly and leading to a better understanding of the world. That’s a critical human endeavor, even ignoring the vast, overwhelming material benefit we get from scientific advances. And the huge return on investment we get as well.

[Junior]

Apparently, Canada is ahead of us on this one:

 

http://www.slate.com...nomic_gain.html

 

Over the past few years, the Canadian government has been lurching into antiscience territory. For example, they’ve been muzzling scientists, essentially censoring them from talking about their research. Scientists have fought back against this, though from what I hear with limited success.

 

But a new development makes the situation appear to be far worse. In a stunning announcement, the National Research Council—the Canadian scientific research and development agency—has now said that they will only perform research that has “social or economic gain”.

 

 

 

This is not a joke. I wish it were.

 

 

 

John MacDougal, President of the NRC, literally said, “Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value”. Gary Goodyear, the Canadian Minister of State for Science and Technology, also stated “There is [sic] only two reasons why we do science and technology. First is to create knowledge ... second is to use that knowledge for social and economic benefit. Unfortunately, all too often the knowledge gained is opportunity lost.”

 

 

I had to read the article two or three times to make sure I wasn’t missing something, because I was thinking that no one could possibly utter such colossally ignorant statements. But no, I was reading it correctly. These two men—leaders in the Canadian scientific research community—were saying, out loud and clearly, that the only science worth doing is what lines the pocket of business.

[Junior]

http://talkingpoints...-and-scientists

 

Oct. 1 of this year will mark the beginning of yet another Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but most people will be unaware that it will also mark another year of funding cuts to breast cancer research. While some lawmakers are calling to defund Obamacare, the slow defunding of the American research enterprise has already begun. If the U.S. Congress can even manage to pass a continuing resolution budget to avoid a government shutdown, this will probably lock in the federal budget at current levels. That level of funding includes the now notorious across-the-board cuts known as "the sequester."

...

 

Some types of government spending are crucial and necessary. These investments include not only breast cancer research, but all avenues of basic scientific research funded by agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Private industry rarely funds very basic research because it needs a return on investment within two to five years at the most. The government is the only entity with enough patience and deep enough pockets to fund long-term basic research. Private foundations are not even in the same league in dollar amounts. The entire research budgets of charities such as Komen for the Cure ($75M) and the American Cancer Society ($160M) combined are less than the 5 percent sequester cut to the $4.8 billion National Cancer Institute budget.

 

The biggest breakthroughs, the fundamental advances that enable the development of new cancer drugs for leukemia or melanoma or triple-drug cocktails that keep HIV in check, come from scientists working not in private industry, but at universities, nonprofit research institutions and government labs that are funded by these agencies, and ultimately by the American taxpayer.

...

 

According to one 2012 study, for every federal dollar invested in biomedical research, there is a corresponding increase of $1.7 to $3.2 in economic activity. That is an economic rate of return of 70 to 220 percent. Thus, increased spending on biomedical research actually can reduce the budget deficit over the long term. Moreover, the social value of the increased 10 years of life expectancy between 1950 and 2009 alone is estimated at $61 trillion, or 3.6 times our total national debt, and 16 times our total Federal budget of $3.8 trillion.

[knapplc]

I find the above article so shocking, since our right winger friends are so keen to tell us that we need smaller government so private industry can sweep in and save the day.

 

Where's the private industry funding here? They should be lining up in droves to fund this research. Weird.