8 ms·

As an aspiring scientist and postdoctoral candidate, few things dishearten me more than when political agendas creep into the scientific process. Research is ha

by jostmey 12y ago

As an aspiring scientist and postdoctoral candidate, few things dishearten me more than when political agendas creep into the scientific process. Research is hard enough not having to worry about political competition. I fear the mixing of science and politics could erode the objectivity of the community.

soup10 12y ago
This fear is part of why we have the absurdly opaque and inefficient grant writing process, in which funds are allocated by the government without so much as interviewing the recipients.
- DaniFong 12y ago
  +100 Absolutely this is a key factor in why scientific grants have terrible yield vs private funding. As a former fusion scientist, I saw this coming, and left the field to make my own fortune and direct it towards what I believed the best energy research was.
afarrell 12y ago
Name me one field of human endeavor that is not impacted by the fact that groups of humans need a process to decide which things to allocate resources to. Name me one field of human endeavor which is not impacted by the fact that this process is operated by humans and therefore occasionally exhibits pettiness, favoritism, dysfunction and short-sightedness. Name me one field of human endeavor without politics.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  Name me one field of human endeavor that should be more removed from politics than the search for fundamental knowledge about the workings of the universe. "Is" does not imply "ought". We deserve better.
  - rando289 12y ago
    > Name me one field of human endeavor Tons of stuff. I'd rather politics axe "workings of the universe" than vaccinations and disease control.
    - maaku 12y ago
      Vaccinations (medical science) and disease control / pandemic response are not as divorced from "workings of the universe" as I think you think they are...
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      I'd rather fund all of those things a thousand times over just by cutting a small fraction of funding to the world's militaries.
      - rtpg 12y ago
        You seem to underestimate the cost of a lot of science (not to mention that more money doesn't necessarily mean we'll get more results, maybe just the same result duplicated). The ISS is the most expensive structure ever built, after all.
        tobinfricke 12y ago
        The ISS is perhaps "the exception that proves the rule": its political value is vastly greater than its scientific value.
      - wdr1 12y ago
        That's absurd. The majority of budget isn't the military.
        nitrogen 12y ago
        Welfare and social program expenditures could also be significantly reduced by reducing the cost of curing and preventing disease.
- Retric 12y ago
  Writing fanfiction? Your prohibited from making money from it so it's rather insular.
pizza 12y ago
According to the article, this was an issue of MIT's reactor being a waste of money compared to the other reactors the administration backed and continued to increase funding for.
- pdonis 12y ago
  Yes, and I'm not sure that's a fair description. As far as I can tell, MIT's reactor has been producing as much useful data as the other ones; and I don't think the other US projects, or ITER, have a significantly better chance than MIT's of achieving ignition, which is supposed to be the goal that makes all this worth the taxpayer's money. See my response to nitrogen 51 upthread.
  - neltnerb 12y ago
    I think people here are overestimating how well we understand plasma science. I don't have a PhD in that field, but my friends who do seem to think there is still an awful lot of basic science that is just... not there yet.
    - pdonis 12y ago
      This may be true if by "basic science" you mean being able to rigorously derive the behavior of a complex system like a plasma from first principles. I don't have a PhD, but I have a Master's in Nuclear Engineering, and a lot of the plasma physics I studied while getting it was full of heuristics and phenomenological laws rather than rigorous or at least semi-rigorous derivations from first principles. However, it's not clear that we need to know all that to achieve controlled fusion, and the fusion reactors that are being pushed for global funding are not being pushed as improving our basic science about plasma physics. They are being pushed as engineering efforts that will achieve ignition. As I said in another post upthread, we know what conditions we need to achieve for ignition; we just don't know how to engineer a device to achieve them. That's what ITER and these other devices are supposed to help us figure out.
      - neltnerb 12y ago
wallflower 12y ago
> few things dishearten me more than when political agendas creep into the scientific process. "Because of science - not religion or politics - even people like you and me can have possessions that only a hundred years ago kings would have gone to war to own. Scientific method should not be take lightly. The walls of the ivory tower of science collapsed when bureaucrats realized that there were jobs to be had and money to be made in the administration and promotion of science. Governments began making big investments just prior to World War II... Science was going to determine the balance of power in the postwar world. Governments went into the science business big time. Scientists became administrators of programs that had a mission. Probably the most important scientific development of the twentieth century is that economics replaced curiosity as the driving force behind research... James Buchanan noted thirty years ago - and he is still correct - that as a rule, there is no vested interest in seeing a fair evaluation of a public scientific issue.." -From Kary Mullis, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner (and the genius inventor of PCR) in an excellent essay in his book "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field".

by jostmey 12y ago

soup10 12y ago

This fear is part of why we have the absurdly opaque and inefficient grant writing process, in which funds are allocated by the government without so much as interviewing the recipients.

DaniFong 12y ago
+100 Absolutely this is a key factor in why scientific grants have terrible yield vs private funding. As a former fusion scientist, I saw this coming, and left the field to make my own fortune and direct it towards what I believed the best energy research was.

afarrell 12y ago

Name me one field of human endeavor that is not impacted by the fact that groups of humans need a process to decide which things to allocate resources to. Name me one field of human endeavor which is not impacted by the fact that this process is operated by humans and therefore occasionally exhibits pettiness, favoritism, dysfunction and short-sightedness. Name me one field of human endeavor without politics.

nitrogen 12y ago
Name me one field of human endeavor that should be more removed from politics than the search for fundamental knowledge about the workings of the universe. "Is" does not imply "ought". We deserve better.
- rando289 12y ago
  > Name me one field of human endeavor Tons of stuff. I'd rather politics axe "workings of the universe" than vaccinations and disease control.
  - maaku 12y ago
    Vaccinations (medical science) and disease control / pandemic response are not as divorced from "workings of the universe" as I think you think they are...
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    I'd rather fund all of those things a thousand times over just by cutting a small fraction of funding to the world's militaries.
    - rtpg 12y ago
      You seem to underestimate the cost of a lot of science (not to mention that more money doesn't necessarily mean we'll get more results, maybe just the same result duplicated). The ISS is the most expensive structure ever built, after all.
      - tobinfricke 12y ago
        The ISS is perhaps "the exception that proves the rule": its political value is vastly greater than its scientific value.
    - wdr1 12y ago
      That's absurd. The majority of budget isn't the military.
      - nitrogen 12y ago
        Welfare and social program expenditures could also be significantly reduced by reducing the cost of curing and preventing disease.
Retric 12y ago
Writing fanfiction? Your prohibited from making money from it so it's rather insular.

pizza 12y ago

According to the article, this was an issue of MIT's reactor being a waste of money compared to the other reactors the administration backed and continued to increase funding for.

pdonis 12y ago
Yes, and I'm not sure that's a fair description. As far as I can tell, MIT's reactor has been producing as much useful data as the other ones; and I don't think the other US projects, or ITER, have a significantly better chance than MIT's of achieving ignition, which is supposed to be the goal that makes all this worth the taxpayer's money. See my response to nitrogen 51 upthread.
- neltnerb 12y ago
  I think people here are overestimating how well we understand plasma science. I don't have a PhD in that field, but my friends who do seem to think there is still an awful lot of basic science that is just... not there yet.
  - pdonis 12y ago
    This may be true if by "basic science" you mean being able to rigorously derive the behavior of a complex system like a plasma from first principles. I don't have a PhD, but I have a Master's in Nuclear Engineering, and a lot of the plasma physics I studied while getting it was full of heuristics and phenomenological laws rather than rigorous or at least semi-rigorous derivations from first principles. However, it's not clear that we need to know all that to achieve controlled fusion, and the fusion reactors that are being pushed for global funding are not being pushed as improving our basic science about plasma physics. They are being pushed as engineering efforts that will achieve ignition. As I said in another post upthread, we know what conditions we need to achieve for ignition; we just don't know how to engineer a device to achieve them. That's what ITER and these other devices are supposed to help us figure out.
    - neltnerb 12y ago

wallflower 12y ago

> few things dishearten me more than when political agendas creep into the scientific process. "Because of science - not religion or politics - even people like you and me can have possessions that only a hundred years ago kings would have gone to war to own. Scientific method should not be take lightly. The walls of the ivory tower of science collapsed when bureaucrats realized that there were jobs to be had and money to be made in the administration and promotion of science. Governments began making big investments just prior to World War II... Science was going to determine the balance of power in the postwar world. Governments went into the science business big time. Scientists became administrators of programs that had a mission. Probably the most important scientific development of the twentieth century is that economics replaced curiosity as the driving force behind research... James Buchanan noted thirty years ago - and he is still correct - that as a rule, there is no vested interest in seeing a fair evaluation of a public scientific issue.." -From Kary Mullis, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner (and the genius inventor of PCR) in an excellent essay in his book "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field".