Global Warming is Real!
Posted on 09/09/2012 11:16:19 PM PDT by neverdem
Some policymakers, including certain senators and members of Congress, cannot resist ridiculing any research project with an unusual title. Their press releases are perhaps already waiting in the drawer, with blanks for the name of the latest scientist being attacked. The hottest topics for ridicule involve sex, exotic animals and bugs.
The champion of mocking science was the late William Proxmire, whose Golden Fleece Awards enlivened dull Senate floor proceedings from 1975 until 1988. His monthly awards became a staple of news coverage. He generated good laughs back home by talking about a “wacko” in a lab coat experimenting with something seemingly stupid. Proxmire did not invent the mad-scientist stereotype, but he did much to popularize it.
The United States may now risk falling behind in scientific discoveries as other countries increase their science funding. We need to get serious about science. In fact, maybe it’s time for researchers to fight back, to return a comeback for every punch line.
Toward that end, we are announcing this week the winners of the first Golden Goose Awards, which recognize the often-surprising benefits of science to society. Charles H. Townes, for example, is hailed as a primary architect of laser technology. Early in his career, though, he was reportedly warned not to waste resources on an obscure technique for amplifying radiation waves into an intense, continuous stream. In 1964, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov.
Similarly, research on jellyfish nervous systems by Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien unexpectedly led to advances in cancer diagnosis and treatment, increased understanding of brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and improved detection of poisons in drinking water. In 2008, the trio received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
How about stopping funding on global warming studies?
Exactly! When scientists stop lying to appease their political donors then they may restore themselves to some respect.
Mel
From the article:
Federal support for basic science is at risk: We are already investing a smaller share of our economy in science as compared with seven other countries, including Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Since 1999, the United States has increased R&D funding, as a percentage of the economy, by 10 percent. Over the same period, the share of R&D in the economies of Finland, Germany and Israel have grown about twice as fast. In Taiwan, it has grown five times as fast; in South Korea, six times as fast; in China; 10 times.
Americn taxpayers could also stop providing for the defense of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. They could either pay us to defend them or defend themselves. Then take the money we earn or the money we save and increase our research.
Ok Jim, what are you willing to cut out of the budget to support the additional science? How about NPR? Or the FHA or HUD?
The Government shouldn’t be in the business of funding science.
Because they suck at it.
How about earmarking every science dollar spent by government as a tax cut to those who spend on basic science? Get government out of science (and out of our schools and minds).
We have well endowed universities and colleges. We have corporations with money pouring out of their ledgers. We have wealthy entrepreneurs pursuing all kinds of basic science. Why have a giant political organization sponsoring science at all?
How’s that food pyramid working out? Until we recognize socialism for what it is we won’t cure the patient.
Global Warming is Real!
Their argument is that we shouldn’t make fun of science, and their proof is how many things scientists have discovered by accident? Good one.
Ahh, Trofim Denisovich Lysenko.
Love the funky mics. The upper ones are probably ribbonskis. The two bottle mics at the bottom are Neumanns, or Russki copies. (Would like to know which.)
I have no problems with the government funding honest BASIC RESEARCH, in such fields as physics, chemistry, biology, etc. - eg.: superconductivity, cellular processes, solar observations, ...
I have enormous problems with the funding of studies such as how cell phone use and sexting leads to emotional problems in homosexual orangutangs and teenagers, or science>technology processes such as creating a better battery for use in a laptop or electric car.
You’ve inspired a new tagline.
That pic is too much of an inside joke for too many reasons, especially for the children! If someone isn’t curious enough to go to your link, then it’s probably a wasted effort.
The caption is barely legible, and it’s in Russian. How many people, let alone young voters, can recognize the Cyrillic alphabet? How many young voters can recognize Stalin and know about the horrors he caused, let alone recognize Lysenko and the genetic fallacy he propagated? I have to wonder if they even bother to teach about it in public high schools today.
I couldn’t recognize Lysenko’s mug. I could barely transliterate his nama only because I studied Russian over 40 years ago as a senior in high school thanks to a Ukrainian priest.
The tone of the picture speaks for itself.
Interesting. I never realized that Lysenko looked like Carl Sagan!
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