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Disaster Capitalism Meets the Boston Public Library
By way of Universal Hub, we discover that the greatest crisis the City of Boston (God save it!) faces is some excess space in the Johnson Building (aka the ‘New Wing’*) of the Boston Public Library...
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The Old Days Were Better–At Least When It Came to NIH Funding
So says DrugMonkey: The bottom line here is that looking at the actual numbers can be handy when playing the latest round of “We had it tougher than you did” at the w(h)ine and cheese hour after...
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When the War on Science Collides With Economic Development, the Result Is...
In today’s adventures in Batshitloonitarianism, South Carolina governor and rightwing rising star Nikki Haley has decided to retard her state’s economic growth by cutting South Carolina’s contribution...
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Peter Orszag Is a Very Ignorant Person: The Privatization of the Postal...
Rumor has it that he’s very smart, so I guess I can’t call him a fucking moron. But his call to privatize the Postal Service misses the primary reason why the Postal Service is in trouble–ridiculous...
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The Fallout From Inadequate School Funding
Proflikesubstance, who just finished teaching a summer course for teachers, reports the following (boldface mine): Perhaps part of the reading problem can be traced back to the fact that many school...
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We Can Afford Rockets and Butter
I like science blogger Ethan Siegel: anyone who shaves his head for charity is a-ok in my book. But I have to disagree with the premise of his post “With All The Suffering in the World, Why Invest in...
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Congressman Ryan and Science Budgets
We note this observation in Nature (boldface mine): If carried out, Ryan’s plan could cut spending on non-defence-related research and development by 5%, or $3.2 billion, below the President’s 2013...
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Strong Support For Chicago Teachers, Especially Among Chicago Parents
Encouraging news for Chicago’s teachers and students (remember, teachers’ working conditions are children’s learning conditions; boldface mine): Conducted by We Ask America, the poll of 1,344 voting...
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Sequestration and Science Funding
I’ve written before about sequestration, the automatic cuts that the Republicans forced through during the debt ceiling hike fiasco (by the way, Republicans are now crapping their pants about...
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Romney, Ideology, and the 2005 Greenfield Flood
One of the things Romney ultimately can’t run from is his record of governance in Massachusetts, and, as Charles Pierce notes, it’s a doozy. Not only he respond poorly, but he also refused to honor...
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The Decline of Government That Actually Does Stuff
This assessment of the fiscal cliff deal at The Economist should concern anyone who thinks government should be involved in anything more than the bare minimum of governance (boldface mine): But Mr...
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Open Access: It’s the Funding, Stupid
Related to a point I made about funding and open science, DrugMonkey explains how the real stumbling blocks to open access publishing are funding agencies (boldface mine): This whole thing is getting...
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The Instability of Science Funding and the Failure of NIH Leadership
Having perused the Twitterz yesterday and also this cri de coeur, I think there will be a deluge of science-funding related posts. So I think it’s best if we’re clear about what the problem is. One...
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PhDs, Supply, and Demand
DrugMonkey says much more clearly what I was trying to get at in my NIH funding post (boldface mine): We need to turn off the tap. Stop training so many PhDs. This is going to hurt the many, many of us...
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The PhD Glut Isn’t Just Biomedical: Welcome to the Sh-tstorm, Chemists
Economist and author of How Economics Shapes Science Paula Stephan notes that there’s a PhD glut in chemistry too (boldface mine): It did not take long, however, for this to change. Faculty quickly...
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The Overproduction of PhDs and the NIH’s Failure of Governance
Last week, I briefly mentioned that the overproduction of PhDs is a failure of governance. As the whole issue of the PhD glut has spread around the intertoobz, one of the points I’ve seen raised in...
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A Question About the ‘Research Inflation’ Rate
As there is lots of discussion about NIH floating around the intertoobz, one thing that I’ve seen raised in past discussions is the ‘research’ or ‘medical’ inflation rate. That is, the cost of research...
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The PhD Glut in Two Figures
First, the total number of NIH-funded investigators (green line is the total; data from here): Second, the funding rate per R01-type grant (R01s are the typical academic lab grant; data from here): Rub...
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Obama Still Buys Into the STEM Shortage
One of the things that has gone relatively unnoticed is that Obama bought into the whole notion that the U.S. faces a STEM worker shortage. Riverdaughter dissects that particular bullshit (boldface...
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The PhD Glut Makes the Big Time
Well, I guess all of that complaining about the non-existent STEM crisis finally got some attention by the Very Serious People, in this case The Atlantic. It’s worth a read, although there are lots of...
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