3 ms·

Thanks for a high quality response. My questions are sparked very much by having departed the field and being able to look back more objectively (I think) than

Thanks for a high quality response. My questions are sparked very much by having departed the field and being able to look back more objectively (I think) than someone who's advocating from the position of needing the funding. I'm very familiar with the granting and budgeting process in astro. So I actually have the goal of trying to help astronomers really think about how to justify their existence to the taxpayers who support them. Because most arguments are so "soft" that they could justify any $ amount of spending on astronomy, telescopes, students, postdocs, professors. And you can be pretty sure that anyone working in the field feels that the money is worth it -- and how can someone object? Or as in other replies, people will ask, why are you against fundamental science or some BS like that. If you don't have any hard metrics to point to that some level is needed, what defense do you have against being cut, or on the other hand letting budgets run wild by the people who benefit from the employment? One really famous professor in the field told me his belief was that "the current goal of astronomy research is to employ astronomers". How do we refute that? On #1, how do we get a signal from the astronomy community that a certain research finding is of value? (and all the cost that went into it?) Everything is "worth it" from the typical point of view of astronomers. Even the 10th paper of the single halo white dwarf star luminosity function is "worth it"? Really? Or did it only justify the spending on that space telescope with UV capabilities because the money was already spent? I know it's unpleasant to crap on someone's research topic, but is it all worth it? On #2, how many astronomers, telescope support astronomers, staff scientists, Northrup Grumman engineers, data archive specialists, etc etc etc are really needed? I guess it goes back to whether the science being done is worth it. But the people in those positions will find endless ways to justify their need to exist. I suppose astronomy does have one big benefit -- you can quantify the popular appeal of it by how many people watch shows about astronomy, swipe right on astronomy Instagram posts, etc. But whether we need another multi-billion $ telescope to keep that going? I frequently have my doubts, having left.

Rebelgecko 6y ago
Appreciate you sharing the perspective of someone who was part of that field. I think to some extent anything that isn't a for-profit endeavor is subject to some measure of "feed the beast". Kinda like how bureaucracy has a tendency to expand in order to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. While I'm sure there's plenty of waste, I think that's just a fact of life. A positive way to think of it is that the 10th paper on white dwarf luminosity is just ensuring that previous work is reproducible :) Even if someone takes the absolute most jaded view that it's all just a big federal jobs program, I think you could make the argument that it beats throwing more billions at the military industrial complex (of course there's plenty of synergies, like these 2 mirrors)
- supernova87a 6y ago
  I appreciate that perspective. And I will be the first to say that astronomy is far from the extreme end of any measure of a bad use of funds. I simply try to combat the intellectually lazy position that some people fall back on, that any questioning of scientific merit (or resource intensiveness) is an affront to the whole thing and cannot be done. It's usually stated by people who have never had to do it, or don't know how.
lgl 6y ago
I'm not sure you're actually looking back on it more objectively. In fact it looks a lot more like you got burned or denied some grant or funding and are now a bit bitter and lashing out on these. This is an assumption but you're probably from the US since you used the "justify taxpayers money" catchphrase that's so overused as FUD for the spending narrative over there. So how about these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Programs_spending_more_than_$1.5_billion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... Are they worth it? What are they good for? How many generals and support staff do you need? How do you measure and know it's enough? What's the breakthrough another plane, ship, tank, spy tech, drone at the cost of 700B to 1T per year would achieve? (and please be specific if you're going to reply, not the old "because it's worth doing" argument -- that could justify any amount of spending) I think there are worthier things you should have opinions about than science spending because you seem very worried about the worthiness of it all. The worthiness of scientific progress and discovery? Should every paper be worthy? Must everything be immediately right and world changing? I'm surprised why someone that claims to have been in the field needs some sort of instant gratification for scientific work since that's rarely how science works. Not many cutting edge scientific breakthroughs can be said to have been "worth it" immediately. Sometimes it takes years, decades or even centuries for us to actually figure out the true value of some discoveries. We should never stop building or financing science or scientific experiments and we should never say that "it's enough", that's just nonsense.
- smabie 6y ago
  You're not really responding to him at all. And the whataboutism regarding the military is irrelevant. Assume there is limited money to spend things on. How do you decide how to spend that money? Because using your arguments, you could spend all the money on astronomy and that would fine.
exmadscientist 6y ago
> I frequently have my doubts, having left. If it makes you feel any better... I left fundamental particle physics for EE, since that's a lot more employable and it turns out being a particle physics experimentalist actually involves a pretty heavy EE load anyway. As part of my refocus I ended up doing all the EE work for a NIH- and DoD-funded medical research effort. This is a very different area of science than physics or astrophysics! And it's, uh, mostly all garbage. An optimist might be happy if Sturgeon's Law applied and only 90% of it is crap. I could just as well say that the only goal of biomedical research is to employ biomedical researchers. So much time and money was wasted on research that was hyperspecialized or somehow just trivial, and didn't appear to be of any use beyond writing more grants and papers for the next generation of the lab's students. (And that's not even counting the animal research. I won't get involved in that stuff personally; that's not because I'm fundamentally opposed or anything, but because I've seen just how little is really learned from most such programs.) And now I'm a consulting EE fully in the private sector. And guess what? Most projects that my company gets involved in are similarly doomed, right from the start. I guess I'm trying to say a few things here: 1. I hear you. Oh, man, do I hear you. 2. At least astronomy gets what it pays for. Medical research sure doesn't! 3. Research has gotten hard. Long gone are the days when you could literally look through a handheld telescope or microscope and make a major discovery. Now discoveries are made by massive, interdisciplinary teams, and the teams are only getting larger. But the structure of research organizations has not evolved to meet the new reality, for many disparate reasons. (Case in point: Nobels still only go to three people, maximum.) 4. Similar budgeting and planning problems affect the entire economy. (And no, I personally don't believe central planning is the answer.) At some level, keeping us all busy kind of seems to be the point of it all. 5. If you want to see a similar soul-search, the thread the other day about building a new collider should show you the HEP people going through the same thing. (Though the interest-boredom product on that one didn't manage to exceed my threshold, so I didn't go through it.) 6. If universal basic income frees up enough the time of enough specialists, that could be really awesome for research. I'd love to build a telescope (again...)! And if I didn't have to worry about putting the proverbial food on my table, it would be fantastic to do that. But, alas, I fear that any specialist worth having is one who could find lucrative employment easily enough, even in an enviroment of UBI. 7. Seriously, don't feel too bad about yourself, telescopes are awesome! From both a science and engineering point of view. There are way worse things society could and would have spent that money on.

Rebelgecko 6y ago

Appreciate you sharing the perspective of someone who was part of that field. I think to some extent anything that isn't a for-profit endeavor is subject to some measure of "feed the beast". Kinda like how bureaucracy has a tendency to expand in order to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. While I'm sure there's plenty of waste, I think that's just a fact of life. A positive way to think of it is that the 10th paper on white dwarf luminosity is just ensuring that previous work is reproducible :) Even if someone takes the absolute most jaded view that it's all just a big federal jobs program, I think you could make the argument that it beats throwing more billions at the military industrial complex (of course there's plenty of synergies, like these 2 mirrors)

supernova87a 6y ago
I appreciate that perspective. And I will be the first to say that astronomy is far from the extreme end of any measure of a bad use of funds. I simply try to combat the intellectually lazy position that some people fall back on, that any questioning of scientific merit (or resource intensiveness) is an affront to the whole thing and cannot be done. It's usually stated by people who have never had to do it, or don't know how.

lgl 6y ago

I'm not sure you're actually looking back on it more objectively. In fact it looks a lot more like you got burned or denied some grant or funding and are now a bit bitter and lashing out on these. This is an assumption but you're probably from the US since you used the "justify taxpayers money" catchphrase that's so overused as FUD for the spending narrative over there. So how about these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Programs_spending_more_than_$1.5_billion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... Are they worth it? What are they good for? How many generals and support staff do you need? How do you measure and know it's enough? What's the breakthrough another plane, ship, tank, spy tech, drone at the cost of 700B to 1T per year would achieve? (and please be specific if you're going to reply, not the old "because it's worth doing" argument -- that could justify any amount of spending) I think there are worthier things you should have opinions about than science spending because you seem very worried about the worthiness of it all. The worthiness of scientific progress and discovery? Should every paper be worthy? Must everything be immediately right and world changing? I'm surprised why someone that claims to have been in the field needs some sort of instant gratification for scientific work since that's rarely how science works. Not many cutting edge scientific breakthroughs can be said to have been "worth it" immediately. Sometimes it takes years, decades or even centuries for us to actually figure out the true value of some discoveries. We should never stop building or financing science or scientific experiments and we should never say that "it's enough", that's just nonsense.

smabie 6y ago
You're not really responding to him at all. And the whataboutism regarding the military is irrelevant. Assume there is limited money to spend things on. How do you decide how to spend that money? Because using your arguments, you could spend all the money on astronomy and that would fine.

exmadscientist 6y ago

> I frequently have my doubts, having left. If it makes you feel any better... I left fundamental particle physics for EE, since that's a lot more employable and it turns out being a particle physics experimentalist actually involves a pretty heavy EE load anyway. As part of my refocus I ended up doing all the EE work for a NIH- and DoD-funded medical research effort. This is a very different area of science than physics or astrophysics! And it's, uh, mostly all garbage. An optimist might be happy if Sturgeon's Law applied and only 90% of it is crap. I could just as well say that the only goal of biomedical research is to employ biomedical researchers. So much time and money was wasted on research that was hyperspecialized or somehow just trivial, and didn't appear to be of any use beyond writing more grants and papers for the next generation of the lab's students. (And that's not even counting the animal research. I won't get involved in that stuff personally; that's not because I'm fundamentally opposed or anything, but because I've seen just how little is really learned from most such programs.) And now I'm a consulting EE fully in the private sector. And guess what? Most projects that my company gets involved in are similarly doomed, right from the start. I guess I'm trying to say a few things here: 1. I hear you. Oh, man, do I hear you. 2. At least astronomy gets what it pays for. Medical research sure doesn't! 3. Research has gotten hard. Long gone are the days when you could literally look through a handheld telescope or microscope and make a major discovery. Now discoveries are made by massive, interdisciplinary teams, and the teams are only getting larger. But the structure of research organizations has not evolved to meet the new reality, for many disparate reasons. (Case in point: Nobels still only go to three people, maximum.) 4. Similar budgeting and planning problems affect the entire economy. (And no, I personally don't believe central planning is the answer.) At some level, keeping us all busy kind of seems to be the point of it all. 5. If you want to see a similar soul-search, the thread the other day about building a new collider should show you the HEP people going through the same thing. (Though the interest-boredom product on that one didn't manage to exceed my threshold, so I didn't go through it.) 6. If universal basic income frees up enough the time of enough specialists, that could be really awesome for research. I'd love to build a telescope (again...)! And if I didn't have to worry about putting the proverbial food on my table, it would be fantastic to do that. But, alas, I fear that any specialist worth having is one who could find lucrative employment easily enough, even in an enviroment of UBI. 7. Seriously, don't feel too bad about yourself, telescopes are awesome! From both a science and engineering point of view. There are way worse things society could and would have spent that money on.