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That's pretty much untrue. In the US at least, the federal budget allocation passed by Congress specifies how funding is distributed across programs and to fund
by lvs 10y ago
That's pretty much untrue. In the US at least, the federal budget allocation passed by Congress specifies how funding is distributed across programs and to fund the implementation of initiatives specified in other acts. They not only set the budgets for agencies, but also they set the funding for specific programs in those agencies. For science funding agencies, those programs are partially grant soliciting programs, as well as other things. It's not just a big slush fund. Politicians regularly try to mess with these allocations to, for example, attempt to reduce funding for science programs they don't believe in. A famous example is with regard to embryonic stem cell research, although this was done by executive action.
- leephillips 10y agoAll you say is true; I was trying to give a coarser-grained description. It applies to cases like this. Someone with a new idea for regrowing tooth enamel is going to apply to some program within NIH (I guess). He's not likely to get funded because a congressperson read a pop-sci article - his proposal will be reviewed by other researchers in dental health.
- lvs 10y agoAnd that's true microscopically, but year-over-year the flow of money down the pipe is indeed controlled by political whims. In the Bush years, we had some grants granted by an agency that were ultimately only partially allocated by Congress for subsequent years, so that we ended up with only a fraction of what our overall budget was supposed to be by the end of a multiyear grant.