Free Republic

he past few days, the Internet has been filled with commentary on whether the National Science Foundation should have paid for my study on duck genitalia, and 88.7 percent of respondents to a Fox news online poll agreed that studying duck genitalia is wasteful government spending. The commentary supporting and decrying the study continues to grow. As the lead investigator in this research, I would like to weigh in on the controversy and offer some insights into the process of research funding by the NSF. My research on bird genitalia was originally funded in 2005, during the Bush administration. Thus...

<p>Think technology is just applied science? You're wrong. It's the other way around.</p> <p>In November 1944, as the Allies were moving toward victory, President Franklin Roosevelt asked Vannevar Bush, his director of US wartime research and development, to outline a program for the role of government in postwar science and technology. World War II had led to radar, sonar, and the atomic bomb, all of which would play a major role in the eventual Allied victory. But Roosevelt was concerned about how the nation's newly science-dependent economy would fare once the conflict ended. War-ravaged Europe could no longer be counted on to provide fresh scientific knowledge.</p>