6 ms·

Cutting all blue-sky social science research does seem to go a bit far. On the other hand, I'm not sure NZ needs this: "The intimate technology shaping million

Cutting all blue-sky social science research does seem to go a bit far. On the other hand, I'm not sure NZ needs this: "The intimate technology shaping millions of lives: Exploring the possibilities of menstruation and perimenopause tracking apps for people with diverse embodied experiences." - 870k NZD "It takes a village: Picturing family support for transgender young people in Aotearoa" - 870k NZD "Sensationalising Sleep: Discourses and practices of sleep in Aotearoa" - 360K NZD etc.. From the Marsden fund 2022: https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/what-we-do/funds-and-opportunities/marsden/awarded-grants/marsden-fund-awards-2022/ https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/what-we-do/funds-and-opportu...

reaperducer 2y ago
I'm not sure NZ needs this: Throwing the baby out with the bath water makes great sound bites for politicians, but weaker societies for everyone else.
- GenerocUsername 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - reaperducer 2y ago
    Maybe our institutions need to stop pooping in the tub …and there's the sound bite.
- nradov 2y ago
  Spending public money on unproductive work makes society weaker for everyone else. I'm not necessarily opposed to government funding for social science research but it's not clear that this research produces a positive ROI for taxpayers.
  - BadHumans 2y ago
    Plenty of government programs that benefit the public are not cash flow positive so how do you define a positive return on investment?
    - michaelt 2y ago
      Mostly programs will either have a positive return on investment in the conventional sense (e.g. hire more tax inspectors, make more tax income), or have an arguable, positive overall long-term return on investment hopefully, (e.g. infrastructure spending, sending smart kids to college) or will enjoy widespread public support and provide non-monetary benefits, (e.g. public parks, libraries, maternity leave) or will be widely accepted as a core function of government (e.g. police and military), or a morally good and virtuous act (e.g. caring for the disabled, foreign aid) or will be the pet project of someone powerful, semi-useful, and inexpensive enough no-one cares to fight them over it (e.g. opera subsidy) or will convince people they're one of the above regardless of the truth of the matter or will be at risk of cancellation.
    - nradov 2y ago
      Government programs like research funding aren't measured by cash flow but rather by long term impact on GDP (or perhaps other metrics related to quality of life). For basic research in the hard sciences we can draw a direct line from grant funding in various fields to commercial products years later. When it comes to allocating a limited pool of government grant funding across fields, this shouldn't be the only factor but it has to be a factor. If nothing else this helps to ensure continued public support for government science funding because taxpayers see that their money isn't being frittered away.
  - kristopolous 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - nradov 2y ago
      You missed the word "public". If private individuals or foundations want to spend their own money on whatever then go ahead. But if bureaucrats are allocating tax dollars then there needs to be more careful scrutiny and accountability for results. Is it better to spend public money on this, or a replacement for the HMNZS Manawanui research ship? There are limited funds to go around. https://maritime-executive.com/article/new-zealand-navy-survey-vessel-runs-aground-and-sinks-off-samoa https://maritime-executive.com/article/new-zealand-navy-surv...
      - kristopolous 2y ago
        "fiscal responsibility" and railing about public money are usually just ruses used by people pushing a political agenda. I've had countless discussions with people who want to spend billions on sports stadiums and the military but then scream endlessly about "big government" when it comes to the arts and education. They'll bail out wall street at the drop of a hat and then shrug with big eyes, "where's the money going to come from" when someone brings up say, having an anthropology department at UCLA. It's an obvious bullshit game of a political project masquerading as virtue that you'd have to be a toddler to fall for. I don't care.
        nradov 2y ago
        I'm not sure where that unhinged rant came from but it has zero relevance to my comment. Ultimately there are only a limited pool of funds to allocate so hard choices have to be made and some people won't get what they want.
        kristopolous 2y ago
        No. That's not how currency works when you're the issuer. Thinking that way is already baking yourself into Murray Rothbard.
  - reaperducer 2y ago
    Spending public money on unproductive work makes society weaker for everyone else. Fortunately, the rest of us not computers, and are happy that our tax dollars go to symphonies and art and orphanages and other "unproductive" works.
    - nradov 2y ago
      Quit trying to score cheap points with low-effort snark. This is an article about research funding, not symphonies or art or orphanages, and my comment above was obviously intended in that context. If we have to qualify every comment to prevent possible misinterpretation then the discussions become really tedious.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  When the ratio of bath water to baby reaches a certain point it becomes the best solution.
acheron 2y ago
The head of the physics department goes to the university president to ask for money for a new lab. The president says “Your department always needs such expensive equipment. Why can’t you be more like mathematics? All they need are paper, pencils, and trash cans. Or even better, sociology only needs paper and pencils.”
- coliveira 2y ago
  In fact universities love Physics departments. They usually can justify multi-million dollar expenditures and grants that keep the university research afloat.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- jltsiren 2y ago
  Usually the third field is philosophy. Sociologists have to go out, meet people, and observe things, while philosophers can simply think alone in a closet.
miltonlost 2y ago
Your choice of research you don't like (menstruation, perimenopause, support for transgender youth) says more about you than what NZ might need...
- jstanley 2y ago
  The menstruation one isn't researching menstruation. It's researching "the possibilities of menstruation and perimenopause tracking apps for people with diverse embodied experiences". They're not even making the app. They're trying to find out if an app would be useful, for $870k NZD.
addicted 2y ago
Why do you think these are not important? Do you think it’s not important to know whether all these apps that people are feeding private medical data into actually have any benefits? Do you think studying why a certain group of children have worse wellbeing than a different group of children is not useful? Considering how important sleep is you don’t think determining the impact media has on people’s sleep is not important? I’m absolutely ok with the idea that some research gets funded that shouldn’t. But the fact that even your cherry picked sample shows research that even reading a couple of sentences of the abstract shows a lot of value indicates that this may be even less of an issue than I had imagined.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  [flagged]
- Ono-Sendai 2y ago
  Re: the menstruation app one - instead of spending 870 k talking about what they would like to see in a menstruation app, just make one. It's not rocket science. re: the transgender one, it seems to be one of these social science projects that just involves interviewing people. From the project page: "This discourse-based research will interview twelve transgender young people". Is interviewing 12 people for $870,000 NZD a good use of money? I don't think so.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - tw1984 2y ago
    > Is interviewing 12 people for $870,000 NZD a good use of money? I don't think so. It is called corruption.
    - moralestapia 2y ago
      Not sure why you're downvoted. This is the most likely explanation. Hanlon's razor is not relevant anymore, it's actually the opposite these days. People who don't want to see this reality are just polezniye duraki that further allow the corrupt people in charge to get away with it. Slightly derailing the topic, one only has to take a look at US goverment budget for like 0.001 secs to see how deep this problem goes. There are invoices like $500 a piece for a fastener. The duraki will come up to say "oh but that's probably a fastener that has to be created in space from the rarest material available to be used in an extremely sensitive physics experiment". It's not and you're making a fool of yourself. The real purpose of those fasteners is to get someone a new condo in Miami. It's just corruption.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jeroenhd 2y ago
All three of those seem like very useful areas of research to me. New Zealand benefits from better understanding physical and mental health of large communities.
bdcravens 2y ago
Each of these are relatively tiny. 870k NZD is scarcely more than the average price of a home in NZ. As in many countries, the kinds of expenditures are absolutely dwarfed by military spending. In the case of New Zealand, that's about 5B NZD. I suspect if we go line by line through their budget, we'll find plenty of questionable expenses that could pay for hundreds of social science studies.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

reaperducer 2y ago

I'm not sure NZ needs this: Throwing the baby out with the bath water makes great sound bites for politicians, but weaker societies for everyone else.

GenerocUsername 2y ago
[flagged]
- reaperducer 2y ago
  Maybe our institutions need to stop pooping in the tub …and there's the sound bite.
nradov 2y ago
Spending public money on unproductive work makes society weaker for everyone else. I'm not necessarily opposed to government funding for social science research but it's not clear that this research produces a positive ROI for taxpayers.
- BadHumans 2y ago
  Plenty of government programs that benefit the public are not cash flow positive so how do you define a positive return on investment?
  - michaelt 2y ago
    Mostly programs will either have a positive return on investment in the conventional sense (e.g. hire more tax inspectors, make more tax income), or have an arguable, positive overall long-term return on investment hopefully, (e.g. infrastructure spending, sending smart kids to college) or will enjoy widespread public support and provide non-monetary benefits, (e.g. public parks, libraries, maternity leave) or will be widely accepted as a core function of government (e.g. police and military), or a morally good and virtuous act (e.g. caring for the disabled, foreign aid) or will be the pet project of someone powerful, semi-useful, and inexpensive enough no-one cares to fight them over it (e.g. opera subsidy) or will convince people they're one of the above regardless of the truth of the matter or will be at risk of cancellation.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Government programs like research funding aren't measured by cash flow but rather by long term impact on GDP (or perhaps other metrics related to quality of life). For basic research in the hard sciences we can draw a direct line from grant funding in various fields to commercial products years later. When it comes to allocating a limited pool of government grant funding across fields, this shouldn't be the only factor but it has to be a factor. If nothing else this helps to ensure continued public support for government science funding because taxpayers see that their money isn't being frittered away.
- kristopolous 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - nradov 2y ago
    You missed the word "public". If private individuals or foundations want to spend their own money on whatever then go ahead. But if bureaucrats are allocating tax dollars then there needs to be more careful scrutiny and accountability for results. Is it better to spend public money on this, or a replacement for the HMNZS Manawanui research ship? There are limited funds to go around. https://maritime-executive.com/article/new-zealand-navy-survey-vessel-runs-aground-and-sinks-off-samoa https://maritime-executive.com/article/new-zealand-navy-surv...
    - kristopolous 2y ago
      "fiscal responsibility" and railing about public money are usually just ruses used by people pushing a political agenda. I've had countless discussions with people who want to spend billions on sports stadiums and the military but then scream endlessly about "big government" when it comes to the arts and education. They'll bail out wall street at the drop of a hat and then shrug with big eyes, "where's the money going to come from" when someone brings up say, having an anthropology department at UCLA. It's an obvious bullshit game of a political project masquerading as virtue that you'd have to be a toddler to fall for. I don't care.
      - nradov 2y ago
        I'm not sure where that unhinged rant came from but it has zero relevance to my comment. Ultimately there are only a limited pool of funds to allocate so hard choices have to be made and some people won't get what they want.
        kristopolous 2y ago
        No. That's not how currency works when you're the issuer. Thinking that way is already baking yourself into Murray Rothbard.
- reaperducer 2y ago
  Spending public money on unproductive work makes society weaker for everyone else. Fortunately, the rest of us not computers, and are happy that our tax dollars go to symphonies and art and orphanages and other "unproductive" works.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Quit trying to score cheap points with low-effort snark. This is an article about research funding, not symphonies or art or orphanages, and my comment above was obviously intended in that context. If we have to qualify every comment to prevent possible misinterpretation then the discussions become really tedious.
fallingknife 2y ago
When the ratio of bath water to baby reaches a certain point it becomes the best solution.

acheron 2y ago

The head of the physics department goes to the university president to ask for money for a new lab. The president says “Your department always needs such expensive equipment. Why can’t you be more like mathematics? All they need are paper, pencils, and trash cans. Or even better, sociology only needs paper and pencils.”

coliveira 2y ago
In fact universities love Physics departments. They usually can justify multi-million dollar expenditures and grants that keep the university research afloat.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
jltsiren 2y ago
Usually the third field is philosophy. Sociologists have to go out, meet people, and observe things, while philosophers can simply think alone in a closet.

miltonlost 2y ago

Your choice of research you don't like (menstruation, perimenopause, support for transgender youth) says more about you than what NZ might need...

jstanley 2y ago
The menstruation one isn't researching menstruation. It's researching "the possibilities of menstruation and perimenopause tracking apps for people with diverse embodied experiences". They're not even making the app. They're trying to find out if an app would be useful, for $870k NZD.

addicted 2y ago

Why do you think these are not important? Do you think it’s not important to know whether all these apps that people are feeding private medical data into actually have any benefits? Do you think studying why a certain group of children have worse wellbeing than a different group of children is not useful? Considering how important sleep is you don’t think determining the impact media has on people’s sleep is not important? I’m absolutely ok with the idea that some research gets funded that shouldn’t. But the fact that even your cherry picked sample shows research that even reading a couple of sentences of the abstract shows a lot of value indicates that this may be even less of an issue than I had imagined.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
[flagged]
Ono-Sendai 2y ago
Re: the menstruation app one - instead of spending 870 k talking about what they would like to see in a menstruation app, just make one. It's not rocket science. re: the transgender one, it seems to be one of these social science projects that just involves interviewing people. From the project page: "This discourse-based research will interview twelve transgender young people". Is interviewing 12 people for $870,000 NZD a good use of money? I don't think so.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- tw1984 2y ago
  > Is interviewing 12 people for $870,000 NZD a good use of money? I don't think so. It is called corruption.
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    Not sure why you're downvoted. This is the most likely explanation. Hanlon's razor is not relevant anymore, it's actually the opposite these days. People who don't want to see this reality are just polezniye duraki that further allow the corrupt people in charge to get away with it. Slightly derailing the topic, one only has to take a look at US goverment budget for like 0.001 secs to see how deep this problem goes. There are invoices like $500 a piece for a fastener. The duraki will come up to say "oh but that's probably a fastener that has to be created in space from the rarest material available to be used in an extremely sensitive physics experiment". It's not and you're making a fool of yourself. The real purpose of those fasteners is to get someone a new condo in Miami. It's just corruption.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jeroenhd 2y ago

All three of those seem like very useful areas of research to me. New Zealand benefits from better understanding physical and mental health of large communities.

bdcravens 2y ago

Each of these are relatively tiny. 870k NZD is scarcely more than the average price of a home in NZ. As in many countries, the kinds of expenditures are absolutely dwarfed by military spending. In the case of New Zealand, that's about 5B NZD. I suspect if we go line by line through their budget, we'll find plenty of questionable expenses that could pay for hundreds of social science studies.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]