Science Debate 2008 has just prepared an awesome summary of how science will be impacted if the Senate version, rather than the House version, of the science budgets proposed in the stimulus package, makes it into the conference bill.
Now, I know most people here are fond of education and thinking and empirical evidence and all that, but as a scientist, I just want to review for you some of the reasons that you might want to call the 10 guys (and let me tell you, harrumph, where are the women on this conference committee, but I digress) listed below and give them some what-for about how badly the Senate treated science. Here's a convenient summary you can look at online:
http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/...
It's been noted in talking point after talking point that scientific research at American institutions (much funded by federal programs) has produced 50% of America's economic growth since WWII. But if that's not enough to get your immediate focus onto getting science back in this stimulus bill, let's look at the educational and jobs impact.
First of all, science is educational stimulus.
When a federal research grant is received in an academic or nonprofit laboratory, here's what it pays for:
Direct costs: Researchers' salaries, laboratory supplies, equipment upgrades, costs of presenting research to the public at conferences and in journals, and other costs that the scientist proposing the project has identified as necessary to do the work.
Indirect costs: a layer of "padding" that helps the university maintain the support infrastructure that allows the work to be performed. This rate is negotiated between each institution and the funding agencies.
Most of the salaries paid for by the research grants I've reviewed in my time are graduate student salaries and postdoc salaries. Ph.D. students get paid a sad pittance by many standards, but unlike graduate students in the humanities and other disciplines, they do get paid and their tuition is covered. This allows someone like me (born into a low-middle-income academic family) to go to graduate school and become a scientist without incurring a mountain of debt that would prohibit me from taking a not exactly massively lucrative faculty position. Postdocs are recent Ph.Ds who are receiving additional training in a new skill area before taking on a faculty position. This training is nearly 100% necessary for success in academia.
When senior researchers' salaries are paid, it is usually for a month or two to patch us through our (unpaid) summer months on 9-month faculty appointments, or it is because we're in a job that we can't keep unless we pay part of our own salary with research funding.
In other words, this funding directly pays for required education or allows scientist/educators to sustain employment.
Materials, modern equipment, and being active in publishing and presenting to your peers are all components of successful academic science, and are absolutely required to provide up-to-date scientific training to budding scientists.
Science funding also provides graduate students and postdocs with fellowships directly or through institutional training grant programs. It provides undergraduate students with research experiences.
WITHOUT SCIENCE FUNDING, research in programs like the one I'm part of slows down. We can't accept as many Ph.D. students as we would if we had ways to pay them, and at a time like now when many people are out of work and are looking to re-train, that's unfortunate. The students we do accept don't always have the best resources to do their work.
Secondly, science is workforce "stimulus".
Not only does it create jobs (for technicians, postdocs, and researchers who rely on federal funding -- soft money -- for their salaries) but it preserves talented people that we have already invested in heavily, in the workforce. WITHOUT reasonable rates of SCIENCE FUNDING, assistant professors don't get tenure and senior professors end up as bean counters or overloaded instructors. Sure, you can't fund everyone and not every project is worth funding. But when funding rates get very low, the science research machine as we know it grinds to a halt, and talented people become discouraged and are lost from the system.
When an assistant professor, who by that time has been invested in (usually with federal money) for 6+ years in Ph.D. training and 2-4 additional years of postdoctoral training, and for 5 years as faculty, gets bumped out of the independent research workforce because they can't get a grant, that's a bit of a tragedy.
But when that person gets bumped out of the workforce NOT for lack of talent, but because funding rates are 3% and at that point you might as well be applying to win the lottery, that's a HUGE tragedy. I'm seeing my very talented junior colleagues now receiving reviews back from federal programs. They'll get four "Excellent" reviews and maybe one "Very Good" and yet somehow the grant doesn't get funded. And when the reviewers have all uniformly said "this project is great", they don't offer any advice that will help that person improve the grant proposal so that instead of being in the fourth percentile from the top next time, it's in the third.
I was up at a federal agency that shall remain nameless last month reviewing grant applications in a program that shall remain nameless (we're not supposed to reveal our identities). The director of the wing of the agency that manages that program plus many other programs came in and told us what the stimulus package would do for the agency and why.
First of all, the number in the House package for this agency was reached based on direct discussion between Representatives' staffs and the agency staff. The amount proposed will allow them to clear out a backlog of good proposals that they have not been able to fund simply because the last few years of the Bush Administration have left them high and dry.
Secondly, longer term plans to sustain funding from this agency at historical rates (i.e. more like 20% instead of, say, 3-6%) will actually come when the Congress revises the fiscal '09 budget (which is currently on "continuation") and when the Obama Administration begins proposing a fiscal '10 budget.
i.e., the stimulus is only part of what the Obama Administration proposes for science and is only designed to get "shovel ready" (or shall we say "lab ready") projects moving immediately. It is not meant to replace a longer-term strategy for building science.
Call or e-mail the conference committee and tell them that SCIENCE IS STIMULUS:
HOUSE
David Obey (D-WI)
Phone: (202) 225-3365
Email form http://www.obey.house.gov/...
Charles Rangel (D-NY)
Phone: (202) 225-4365
Fax: (202) 225-0816
Email form* http://www.house.gov/...
Henry Waxman (D-CA)
Phone: (202) 225-3976
Fax: (202) 225-4099
Email form* http://www.henrywaxman.house.gov/...
Dave Camp (R-MI)
Phone: (202) 225-3561
Fax: (202) 225-9679
Email form* http://camp.house.gov/...
Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
Phone: (202) 225-5861
Fax: (202) 225-6498
Email form http://www.house.gov/...
*This Member only accepts email if you live in the district
SENATE
Harry Reid (D-NV)
Phone: (202) 224-3542
Fax: (202) 224-7327
Email form http://reid.senate.gov/...
Max Baucus (D-MT)
Phone: (202) 224-2651
Fax: (202) 224-9412
Email form http://baucus.senate.gov/...
Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
Phone: (202) 224-3934
Fax: (202) 224-6747
Email form http://inouye.senate.gov/...
Thad Cochran (R-MS)
Phone: (202) 224-5054
Email form http://cochran.senate.gov/...
Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Phone: (202) 224-3744
Email form http://grassley.senate.gov/...