Saturday, February 7, 2009
Short-term fix?
A blog post from The Questionable Authority introduces a list of stimulus cuts proposed by a group of senators led by Dem. Ben Nelsom and Rep. Susan Collins. The stats posted paint a pretty scary picture where short-term "economic stimulus" may be attained, only at the cost of long-term technological development. The comments following the original post are what I found most interesting, as most agreed that the cuts would accumulate to a degradation in the professional structure of the scientific community. As one of the comments noted, "young scientists [will] find it hard to get jobs and established scientists [will] find it hard to do their jobs").
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I agree. It is amazing what politicians will cut from necessary programs without the people caring enough to pay attention. I hope Obama firmly opposes these cuts, unless he is saving his political capital for health care reform, which is a major public and scientific issue as well.
ReplyDeleteIf science education were improved, maybe people and politicians would better understand the importance of science and technology, or at least the importance of using evidence instead of ideology to make public policy decisions. Anyway, it is important that scientists, and science bloggers, educate people on how politics impacts science.