Thursday, January 15, 2009

Science in the stimulus.

For those interested, here is a link to the executive summary of the (Democratic draft of the House version) of the forthcoming economic stimulus bill. The science portions are easy to find in there, and I like what I see.

Update. The science policy bloggers for Science have an article that basically points to this analysis of the proposed stimulus by the AAAS. The two big questions that come to mind are, (1) will there be sustained support for science to follow up on this investment of resources?; and (2) how will the details work regarding the requirements that the funds be allocated quickly?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are things so bad that fact rather than Official Truth matters in Washington? Feel good when NSF annual budget exceeds Head Start annual budget - when punctuated intellience is valued over interminable stupidity.

CarlBrannen said...

And why is it that DoD seems to be getting most of the new money?

Douglas Natelson said...

Carl - If I had to speculate, I'd say it's because DoD had in the relatively recent past cut its basic research (6.1) money and put more into development (6.2), and they want to reverse that. I'd also say it's likely a calculated move, since the Republicans would probably not vote against increased DoD funding. This interpretation could certainly be wrong, though.

gilroy0 said...

DOD is also getting a big share of the money (I'd say) because -- like it or not -- that's where we've already vested a huge fraction of our research infrastructure.