Is Greater Than readers may recall an essay published here a couple of weeks ago entitled 
2007-2011
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Paul M Davis
4 Comments
Matthew Beck
It’s terrifying to see how America has manipulated the sciences for its own demented benefit, under the guise of “national security”
This is part of a bigger takeover of the sciences that has been going on, particularly since Bush took office. I spoke a few years back to a professor of biochemistry who had recently quit his research job at the NIH. He had been working for years to slow the growth of brain tumors, but when it was time to renew funding he didn’t get it. His lab had to switch operations from what they’d been working on for years, brain cancer, to studying the effects of obscure forms of chemical warfare that the “terrorists” would surely wage.
Thanks for bringing this to light. Great piece.
29 Feb 2008 02:02 pm
Chanda
I keep telling people that what I see is a re-militarization of the sciences. The Democrat-led Congress severely cut civilian science funding last December. (Actually, against Bush’s recommendation. Who knew we’d agree on something?) The end product of this is major fall out — big experiments are ending early, graduate students are scrambling to find summer funding, and the number of jobs in academia will take a big hit.
What is the end product? As civilian funding goes down and military funding sky rockets, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where all of the scientists are going to get jobs. Another way we have seen this happen is major cuts in the NSF Astronomy budget and a buffering in NASA’s budget. NSF funding tends to be for research the scientists choose, whereas NASA gets to tell its scientists what to do. So, we’re seeing a funding environment where everyone is essentially being pushed into working for the defense department and related organizations, whether they want to or not.
29 Feb 2008 02:02 pm
imp
Thanks for a thoughtful informative and well done interview. As a member of the media I intend to interview Mr. Cottle.
07 Apr 2008 10:04 am
bill
classic paul, i knew it was you who quit before i even saw the pic to the article. proud of you man .
b. gillian
21 Jul 2008 11:07 pm
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