21 UPDATE: As always, a day late and a dollar short on my end. As posted in the comments the drastic cuts were reversed and that news was released (to me) very shortly after I posted. The proposed cuts are about 15% of the original increase. Note that this means that science will receive a substantial investment from the feds, just about 15% less than originally requested. For instance, the NSF was to be totally cut out of the stimulus but will be funded an additional 1.2 billion dollars. For your part, good job if you did do your civic duty and contact your senators.
Alright. If you were a good student, you read in C&E News that the stimulus package had a huge windfall for science. This was good – America needs to reinvest in science something fierce after barely keeping funding at inflationary levels. Now, Senator Ben Nelson and Susan Collins want to cut all the non-NIH science funding. This would include cuts for education as well.
The United States needs a reinvestment in education. We can’t just train a better ditch digger with a spending bill to build new roads, we need to train the next level of American scientist. Please, take your cell phones out of your pocket and dial the phone numbers of these people and ask them to stand against the Nelson-Collins cuts:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
That’s right, that’s the phone number for their office! You can call their office and a staffer will talk to you! Live and shit. It’s amazing. If enough people do it, they’ll feel guilty about not telling their boss.
Here is Ben Nelson’s phone numbers:
http://bennelson.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
All of his answering machines are full. If they aren’t full soon, fill them back up.
Here are Susan Collins phone numbers (which are also all full):
It’s your fucking ass. Don’t let me down. You can call them all again and again.
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As I see it, first chance for Obama to make a real difference.
Turn your back, walk away. Zimbabwe expelled every patriarchal historic White Protestant European oppressor of Peoples of Colour. Zimbabwe no longer has to print money at all, nor do its farmers grow anything – all because the rabble was finally ousted. That’s you, fella. Rest easy that Zimbabwean rulers quaff snifters of warmed Henri IV Dudognon Heritage Cognac Grande Champagne without interruption.
I don’t know that I should be upset or not. This is still pretty early in the Obama administration. The economic stimulus package is a one time deal. There is a difference between building a new bridge over the Potomac and a one time shot to NIH. (I am assuming that NIH does not fall under a shovel ready expansion of facilities.)
I am going to assume that this spending package is not the four year Obama budget. If that were true, then I would agree with you. However, I think this still leaves plenty of room to establish longer term goals and funding options. I think I would argue that science spending would be more productive over the long haul if funding is continuous. I would shudder over science that might be done on the order of spend it now or lose it forever.
normal budget items don’t belong in the stimulus bill. Yes, it should be improved, but this is not the time/place. Fund it as a priority in budgeting, not trying to backdoor money into the system in a one-time hail mary where you end up spreading your money too thin by trying to hit every angle.
I think the Republican senators are trying to win this one after losing the general election. Apparently, the president (Barack Obama) is listening, though seemingly impatient. But how far will his patience go? Wherever it goes, can he do anything contrary to what the senate decides (or never decides)? And if Republicans are taking this one for a win, is it in the interests of ordinary Americans?
It is just unbelievable to me the kinds of different education and science funding that is being called “Pork”…
Are you freaking crazy? Funding for the NIH, NASA, the NOAA (monitoring hurricanes), and NIST, among other major federal agencies are not only critical, but they’ve been slashed by Bush for years. Those are good jobs too, BTW.
Here’s a good one for you number crunchers out there: The total annual budget for NASA (including the Mars landers), was $17 Billion in 2008. …Who thinks that they’d like the $25 Billion that went to Citibank back to send some of it to NASA???
Anyone? Anyone?
Disagree with Joe. The idea of the stimulus is to create jobs. 100 million for “wireless for law enforcement” or lets say 200 million to NSF to support American postdocs (as just one example)? Good luck trying to get a non-NIH support domestic position. Obama should veto this bill but he won’t.
They had lots of problems when the NIH budget doubled since NIH has to spend all the money it gets in a given year (really stupid when you stop to think about it). So this stimulus one-time funding could be really bad to NIH in light of that. Do they have to spend it all in one year or five? Regardless, it’s a bad idea since that money will disappear for sure, unlike the budget doubling which people didn’t know really was going to disappear (but should have known since science funding cannot expand exponentially and we can’t have an exponential growth of scientists). All those postdocs that would have been funded would be out of jobs in a few years and there would be no jobs waiting for them later when the stimulus money runs out. The money would be better used by funding start-up, research based companies with loans maybe.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about all this, and I think I’m going to switch fields. I’m going to try for a job after my postdoc (either academia or a good industry job), but I have no illusions about how easy to get an academic job and industry is looking increasingly volatile these days, plus I might end up in some shitty small town for a large part of my life (or be laid off ten times in thirty years). If I was going to do that, might as well be a professor so that I can do things I enjoy like work on my ideas and teach but it’s close to impossible even with a few JCAS and Andjewandte pubs.
So, I’m going to apply for government jobs that are unrelated to chemistry but where a doctorate looks nice in your CV (i.e. foreign service, etc…). I’m going to give chemistry a shot, but I’ve already made peace with the idea that I’m not going to do it anymore after a few years. If more people make decisions like this, then we won’t have to worry about shortages of jobs for chemists I suppose. I’m just going to enjoy these last few years of chemistry because it’s something that I’ve grown to really like. But then, it’s all business.
I actually think the foreign service is a great idea. You might also try CIA — they always seem to be recruiting scientists, although one wonders if they actually hire them. If you have experience in foreign lands and foreign languages, they’d be really interested…
Yes, I do have experience with foreign lands and languages, including some of interest to the intelligence community, that’s why I was thinking it. I’d prefer foreign service though. I’m going to spend my postdoc(s) enjoying myself doing chemistry and getting more languages and foreign experience under my belt.
The problem is that when you join a government agency you will likely have to continue within the government for the rest of your career. Government pays significantly less than the industry (maybe CIA can have exceptions from the unified federal pay scale) and there is always lot of red tape.
And you don’t necessarily care for a desk job as an analyst, reading Russian journals and newspapers for hints of military research or doing forensic analysis for DEA from stuff collected in garage labs. Also, a good friend of mine was employed in medchem labs at the governments Cancer institute in Ft Detrick in Maryland, and he completely despised the place and his boss.
Maybe you can apply to CIA and offer yourself as a freelancer. Ask them to give you a nice sinecure lab job seemingly unconnected to the agency, and from there you can occasionally supply them with untraceable poisons, incapacitating agents or whatever is required to make World a safer place for democracy.
I’m fine with the government pay scale as long as it’s at least three times as much as grad school. I believe that won’t be too difficult. I don’t need a particularly large amount of money to be happy.
I also think that working a maximum of 40 hours a week only, with the rest of the time being available to pursue my interests and hobbies (of which I have many that are not chemistry related), is a big factor in the decision. Maybe I could even have a family and see them often or something. Working as an information sifter and reading foreign newspapers, journals, and websites for hints of naughty stuff is fine by me. Dealing with a crappy boss sucks, but I hope the job security angle can overcome it. Of course unlike your friend, I don’t intend on doing chemistry if I work for the government. It’s either the intelligence part, or the foreign service.
The freelance CIA chem lab idea actually sounds pretty good and I’d go for that, but I don’t think it’s very realistic. Plus the details are poorly thought out…
You kind of wonder where you might submit a grant. Is there a “secret” NIH? Which professor would you suspect the most of being a secret CIA plant?
[Actually, this isn't that far from the truth. I guess, back in the day, professors in the Ivy Leagues would recruit for CIA.]
Another great place to try sending a resume to is the Center for Naval Analyses, assuming of course you can handle working for the military. You get sent out on ships and the like to do operations research; they like people with scientific minds and quantitative experience.
Also, it’s really stupid that the NIH is three times the size of the NSF in funding, and these cuts would only make it worse. It should be the other way around, but funding is run by old people who are afraid to die of cancer in the next ten years, but have no problem with not having alternative energy sources thirty years down the road.
The problem, as uncle sam points out, is that axes are being wielded by executioners who should be trusted with instruments less blunt than butter knives.
Some of the shit that is being axed ARE budget items that SHOULD be dealt with in another bill, that’s true. What’s equally true is that the huge upturn in “green manufacturing” is seeing a sudden and rabid downturn with companies, once flushed with cash, are penniless because investment strategies are going to favor the necessities and change, which the American people seem to have voted in favor of, appears to be contengent on a low, low price tag.
Yes, the NSF and NIH are typical budget items – so is every thing else in that package. The point isn’t to fund agencies, it’s to flush them with cash so that they can actually expand beyond their current operations. That creates jobs – expansion. Since the private sector is unable to secure money from pusillanimous and broken banks, the only way forward is to print cash, hold our ass and hope the sun rises tomorrow… (it will. it always does.) Merely funding to continue at present levels doesn’t do diddly shit to “stimulate” anything.
Business as usual is not going to help us.
We actually borrow it, not print it. We haven’t gotten to the point of printing just quite yet…
http://www.sciencedebate2008.c......php?id=60
Apparently, the budget for the NSF wasnt completely demolished. Yay for the power of lobbying and the many scientists and engineers who totally clogged up phone lines. I still think part of the NSF cut might have been because of the porn viewing incident, oh well.
Actually, for postdocs and existing non-academic scientists, the more self-serving route would NOT be increasing NIH/NSF budgets. Usually the money stream is NIH/NSF$ -> academic grants -> foreign grad students/postdocs = more competition for permanent scientific positions.
I would prefer if they would stimulate the creation of good permanent science jobs in the US of A, but don’t think this is da way.
The NSF could easy restore the domestic postdoc fellowship and simply require US citizenship much like they do with REU programs.