[slightlyovertaxed]

Dropping data isn't as bad as it sounds. If you begin an experiment and you know something has gone wrong, i.e. the wrong chemical was added, the person admitted to having a mental illness, etc., it is acceptable to toss that data regardless because it is contaminated.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[untenured]

Several years ago the American Economic Review published an article in which the authors tried to verify the statistical output of ten articles in a previous issue. About five authors simply refused to cooperate, despite AER policies that they must, and only one enthusiastically cooperated and had his results replicated. From this I became convinced that fraud in empirical economic research may be very widespread. I suspect a journalist with enough free time could make quite a splash by looking into it.

The Economics of the Jihad II - The Demand for Jihad.

[Investment Biker]

Yes, but the Manhattan Project did build the bomb without him. Now how does this apply to medical research? The NIH is way out on granting research.

For example, they will grant basic research on diabetes that will study one issue after another that has no hope of ever curing T1 diabetes. Yet there are researchers begging for money to do translational research to actually cure diabetes. Companies like Living Cell Technologies, Cerco Medical LLC, Novocell, and others all believe that they have a cure and have at least partially demonstrated that cure in animals. Yet the NIH funds another study on the mouse immune system or the mouse islet cells or the mouse complications of diabetes. It is sickening how much money they have wasted breaking plates that are thrown in the air.

This is why there is pressure to change the NIH. Lets hope they do so before more people die before more plates are broken.

[Dumb_Ox]

Beyond that, the consequences of eroded resources may drive away Feynman-type thinkers. After all, science sometimes happens when unusual minds think about the seemingly unimportant

Does this guy know how to make an argument? From his article's description, Feynman wasn't given a grant to look for weird things, just a university position.

After a techno-triumphalist phase in my teens, I've grown more skeptical of demands for more governmental science funding. It so often takes the form of those Teachers' Union bumper stickers pleading that all they need to fix our problems is higher salaries and better equipment, paid for at taxpayers' expense. The hype of the "LATEST SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY" when combined with NASA's blatant and very expensive public relations stunts only confirm my mild cynicism.

[Physicist]

According to an eye-popping article in the June 9 Nature, about one-third of more than 3,200 polled U.S. researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health self-reported serious scientific misbehavior during the three years prior to being surveyed.

Since 1970, total federal non-medical research spending as a fraction of Gross Domestic Product has declined by about one-third.

Two different domains. Medical research spending has gone way up.

[Doctor Stochastic]

The last projects that I worked on were directed. The funding agencey said to work on this only; get results; tell us the results you will get before we give you the money; if you succeed we will not fund you next time.

Congress is trying (and has for at least 25 years) to cut basic research. The politicians only want immediately (before the next election) available results. Fortunately, the Asian countries are taking up the slack in science.