An interesting article in Reason that notes that political pressures on government-sponsored science are hardly new to the Bush administration. And David Bernstein notes that this kind of screwing around is the inevitable result of having so much scientific research dependent upon government dollars (as opposed to funding by businesses or other institutions); he who pays the piper picks the tune, regardless of ideology.
That’s not to let the Bushies off the hook, by any means, but as Bernstein says,
Libertarians would, in fact, be surprised if government funding of science did not lead to its politicization, if not by Bush than by someone else; the sorts of thing the Bush administration has been doing, are, in fact, what libertarians have warned liberals who support government subsidies for scientific ventures about for years. To those who have supported massive government subsidies for science and social science, and are now tearing their hair out as government plays fast and loose with the scientific process and threatens scientific progress, I say, “Well, d’uh, what exactly did you expect?”
(I can recall arguments made decades ago against increased Federal funding of education for exactly the same reason; once folks are dependent on the Feds for money, it’s too late to be shocked, shocked, to find out that they want control over what you do with it, too.)
The Ronald Bailey Reason article is a bit less pessimistic, noting that there have been a number of inititiatives over the last decade or so to make the science behind the policy more visible to the public. But it remains an ongoing problem, and one that defies a simple solution.
(via JNV)
Harvard figured this out. Note the following:
“Privately funded researchers at Harvard University say they’ve isolated 17 new groups of human embryonic stem cells and plan to give them free to other investigators in an effort to jump-start medical breakthroughs.”
If you don’t want the government telling you you can’t use government money to produce stem cell lines, then use private funding.
Usually government does poorly in science even when not politicized. There are notable exceptions but even the successes such as the Human Genome Project required competition with a private company to do well.
Not only does politicization of science go back in time, it is also not limited to the United States. The ITER nuclear fusion reactor is on hold because France and Japan are in a spitting match. France blaims us for backing the Japanese, but it has rejected all compromises that doesn’t put the reactor on French soil.