[from occupied ga]

If you are against these schools and departments getting the funding they need,

Who determines "need?" You, me, Kongress (ol' pork barrel), who? "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," sound familiar? You may think some climatology program "needs" money. I may think that it's complete boondogle. Who then determines need - Majority? Consensus? The recipients of the largess? (ha ha ha)

then there is no need to debate with you any longer.

OK. we aren't going to agree anyway.

[Shryke]

Who then determines need - Majority?

Who else? Are you an anarchist?

[ahayes]

You want to know who determines need? First, the guy in charge of the research program writes up a nice long grant proposal. The proposal goes on to a board who reads it and decides, "Is this reasonable? Is it interesting? Is it profitable? It it significant?" They assign it a certain rating depending on how those questions are answered. The grant proposals that score highly are awarded grants, and the ones that fail are not.

I'm currently waiting to find out whether our research group is going to receive a $100,000/year addition to our NIH grant of a couple million. If so, we'll build a cell culture facility so that I can test the efficacy of several drug partial structures against various strains of cancer cells.

Drug companies bring drugs to the market after spending an average of $500 million to $1 billion on research and development. They do most of their research in analogues of lead compounds, and some identification of lead compounds, but many of the lead compounds that end up bringing a drug to the market that might save hundreds of thousands of lives were discovered by a university research group receiving a federal grant of a million or less a year.

It's an entirely different thing from subsidizing women's studies programs.