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> current U.S. policies on science are extremely unfavorable to foreign researchers To U.S. researchers also - the proposal funding rate is so low on account o

> current U.S. policies on science are extremely unfavorable to foreign researchers To U.S. researchers also - the proposal funding rate is so low on account of the resource/PI ratio that many U.S. researchers are moving to Europe where there is greater promise of hard funding.

arcanus 8y ago
The USA spends more on R+D in aggregate and more as a percentage of GDP than the European Union[1]. It is not substantially easier to get a Professorship or permanent research appointment in Europe than the USA, at least generally speaking. Without data to back it up, I don't see how this comment holds up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_...
- tacomonstrous 8y ago
  What percentage is allocated to basic research? The US government is continuing to abdicate its responsibility towards funding it.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    what is the US government's responsibility here? There are very good arguments that government funding of science has actually been a problem, starting with the big picture: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/saving-science https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/saving-science
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - dnautics 8y ago
      Lots of down votes but no explanation. I'll put a counterargument. Lots of good science has been privately funded: A lot of things in the early 20th and 19th centuries, Salk Sabin and the cure for polio, Peter Mitchell and solving the chemiosmotic effect, the entire HHMI, etc. Do we actually need a lot of science? A lot of the low hanging fruit has been picked and it seems to me like the next advances will require deep reflection and study that isn't compatible with the tenure-track-driven-by-grant-receipt / grant-receipt-driven-by-performance-on-other-grants cycle of government driven science. At the same time, if government does anything else the scientific endeavor it funds will devolve into an exercise in channeling funds to a few golden children that are selected.... How? And will be detached from any reasonable standard of good governance and accountability. So I challenge someone to explain why the us government has a responsibility to fund science, where that authority comes from, and how acceptable standards of accountability will be established.
      - jabl 8y ago
        I didn't downvote your contribution, but I suspect a lot of the downvotes were due to your argument being, at best, tangentially related to the point made in the article you linked to. So the article makes the claim that left to its own devices, science wanders off into the weeds, spending a lot of money and brainpower on things which have absolutely no foreseeable application to the real world (e.g. stuff like string theory). FWIW, I do have sympathy for this viewpoint; while I think there is a place for purely curiosity driven blue-sky basic science, perhaps a smaller pie of the total R&D spending ought to be spent on such things. From this you then conclude that government financing of science is bad (which goes against the econ 101 reason why the state must shoulder some of the R&D responsibility, so I won't bother to discuss that further here), whereas the article makes the opposite conclusion, namely that the state should take a much more hands-on goal-oriented approach to funding science (e.g. "get our boys to the moon before the commies").
- vkou 8y ago
  Does me building a CRUD app for an internal business process at an advertising firm fall under this category of R&D?
tacomonstrous 8y ago
Yes, for instance, the NSF's budget has been static in nominal terms since the Bush years (or at least that's what the program manager told me the last time.i was on a panel). Getting a grant, especially for young researchers looking to establish a track record, is very difficult in this environment.
- rsj_hn 8y ago
  OK, but the NSF research budget (7 billion) is small potatoes compared to the NIH (37 Billion per year), and DOD (70 Billion). And it's about the same as the Department of Energy (7 Billion, not including the national labs). There is plethora of other Federal agencies that fund research, such as the EPA, NIST, NASA, Federal Aviation Administration, Food and Drug Administration, even the Bureau of Land Management is in on the act. The VA funds research in prosthetics. The Health and Human Services department (including CDC) funds research. As best I can tell, total Federal outlays for research are about 120 Billion. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ap_18_research-fy2019.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ap_18_...
  - tacomonstrous 8y ago
    >but the NSF research budget (7 billion) is small potatoes compared to the NIH Exactly! And they are the main organization for funding non-medical basic science in the nation.
    - rsj_hn 8y ago
      I see, so is your argument not that we need more total federal dollars for research, but that they should be shifted away from the other organizations and towards the NSF?
  - hedvig 8y ago
    Where does that funding come from? Why, your pocket. Imagine if the 1% who pays the 50% of that had that money back, how much better our society would be.
- 8y ago
privong 8y ago
> the proposal funding rate is so low on account of the resource/PI ratio that many U.S. researchers are moving to Europe where there is greater promise of hard funding. Funding rates are low in many (all?) fields of science in the US, but I agree with @arcanus that some data showing US researchers moving to Europe is warranted. In my field (astronomy), jobs in the US are tough to come by, but jobs in Europe are generally even more difficult to get. There seem to be fewer jobs in Europe and those jobs are often reserved for people who are already "in the system" and worked at the hiring institution. So many of those jobs to go people who've put in their dues by hanging around, rather than hiring the best people. Europe does have large European Research Council (ERC) grants which are typically a few million Euros per award. If you win one of those, you're good to go and can fund a sizable research group (at least in astronomy) and can probably use that as leverage to get a faculty job. But those grants are tough to come by. I can't speak for other fields, but the vast majority of people I've met in astronomy that are moving to Europe are doing so because they're from Europe and want to head home. But the availability of research/faculty jobs there is not good, compared to the US.
neuromantik8086 8y ago
Yup. The stats at the bottom of this page are fairly depressing: http://homepages.rpi.edu/~newbeh/WhyFundScience.html http://homepages.rpi.edu/~newbeh/WhyFundScience.html

arcanus 8y ago

The USA spends more on R+D in aggregate and more as a percentage of GDP than the European Union[1]. It is not substantially easier to get a Professorship or permanent research appointment in Europe than the USA, at least generally speaking. Without data to back it up, I don't see how this comment holds up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_...

tacomonstrous 8y ago
What percentage is allocated to basic research? The US government is continuing to abdicate its responsibility towards funding it.
- dnautics 8y ago
  what is the US government's responsibility here? There are very good arguments that government funding of science has actually been a problem, starting with the big picture: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/saving-science https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/saving-science
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - dnautics 8y ago
    Lots of down votes but no explanation. I'll put a counterargument. Lots of good science has been privately funded: A lot of things in the early 20th and 19th centuries, Salk Sabin and the cure for polio, Peter Mitchell and solving the chemiosmotic effect, the entire HHMI, etc. Do we actually need a lot of science? A lot of the low hanging fruit has been picked and it seems to me like the next advances will require deep reflection and study that isn't compatible with the tenure-track-driven-by-grant-receipt / grant-receipt-driven-by-performance-on-other-grants cycle of government driven science. At the same time, if government does anything else the scientific endeavor it funds will devolve into an exercise in channeling funds to a few golden children that are selected.... How? And will be detached from any reasonable standard of good governance and accountability. So I challenge someone to explain why the us government has a responsibility to fund science, where that authority comes from, and how acceptable standards of accountability will be established.
    - jabl 8y ago
      I didn't downvote your contribution, but I suspect a lot of the downvotes were due to your argument being, at best, tangentially related to the point made in the article you linked to. So the article makes the claim that left to its own devices, science wanders off into the weeds, spending a lot of money and brainpower on things which have absolutely no foreseeable application to the real world (e.g. stuff like string theory). FWIW, I do have sympathy for this viewpoint; while I think there is a place for purely curiosity driven blue-sky basic science, perhaps a smaller pie of the total R&D spending ought to be spent on such things. From this you then conclude that government financing of science is bad (which goes against the econ 101 reason why the state must shoulder some of the R&D responsibility, so I won't bother to discuss that further here), whereas the article makes the opposite conclusion, namely that the state should take a much more hands-on goal-oriented approach to funding science (e.g. "get our boys to the moon before the commies").
vkou 8y ago
Does me building a CRUD app for an internal business process at an advertising firm fall under this category of R&D?

tacomonstrous 8y ago

Yes, for instance, the NSF's budget has been static in nominal terms since the Bush years (or at least that's what the program manager told me the last time.i was on a panel). Getting a grant, especially for young researchers looking to establish a track record, is very difficult in this environment.

rsj_hn 8y ago
OK, but the NSF research budget (7 billion) is small potatoes compared to the NIH (37 Billion per year), and DOD (70 Billion). And it's about the same as the Department of Energy (7 Billion, not including the national labs). There is plethora of other Federal agencies that fund research, such as the EPA, NIST, NASA, Federal Aviation Administration, Food and Drug Administration, even the Bureau of Land Management is in on the act. The VA funds research in prosthetics. The Health and Human Services department (including CDC) funds research. As best I can tell, total Federal outlays for research are about 120 Billion. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ap_18_research-fy2019.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ap_18_...
- tacomonstrous 8y ago
  >but the NSF research budget (7 billion) is small potatoes compared to the NIH Exactly! And they are the main organization for funding non-medical basic science in the nation.
  - rsj_hn 8y ago
    I see, so is your argument not that we need more total federal dollars for research, but that they should be shifted away from the other organizations and towards the NSF?
- hedvig 8y ago
  Where does that funding come from? Why, your pocket. Imagine if the 1% who pays the 50% of that had that money back, how much better our society would be.
8y ago

privong 8y ago

> the proposal funding rate is so low on account of the resource/PI ratio that many U.S. researchers are moving to Europe where there is greater promise of hard funding. Funding rates are low in many (all?) fields of science in the US, but I agree with @arcanus that some data showing US researchers moving to Europe is warranted. In my field (astronomy), jobs in the US are tough to come by, but jobs in Europe are generally even more difficult to get. There seem to be fewer jobs in Europe and those jobs are often reserved for people who are already "in the system" and worked at the hiring institution. So many of those jobs to go people who've put in their dues by hanging around, rather than hiring the best people. Europe does have large European Research Council (ERC) grants which are typically a few million Euros per award. If you win one of those, you're good to go and can fund a sizable research group (at least in astronomy) and can probably use that as leverage to get a faculty job. But those grants are tough to come by. I can't speak for other fields, but the vast majority of people I've met in astronomy that are moving to Europe are doing so because they're from Europe and want to head home. But the availability of research/faculty jobs there is not good, compared to the US.

neuromantik8086 8y ago

Yup. The stats at the bottom of this page are fairly depressing: http://homepages.rpi.edu/~newbeh/WhyFundScience.html http://homepages.rpi.edu/~newbeh/WhyFundScience.html