Dolan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Always amusing when non-scientists gripe about
> money spent for scientific research. $385k for
> basic scientific research with implications on
> human infertility and preeclampsia? Sounds like a
> bargain to me. Indeed, money well spent!
>
>
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/25
> /ducks-meet-the-culture-wars/
Give me a break. You can justify virtually anything on that same potential-value basis. I have a MS in BioChem but I'm not going to start to pretend that every research project has some unassailable inherent value simply because it's fundamental research. Even if you stretch it, this isn't some directly applicable applied-type reproductive research to answer some question or solve a problem, it's more along the lines of very broad evolutionary/behavioral insight. Yes, it's interesting to someone on that basis but hardly critical research.
Hell, I got paid for a year as a research assistant to take a boat out fishing in the Bay every other week. Yeah, it was "research" and we wrote a peer-reviewed paper and if you'd have asked me then, I'd have justified it by saying the same kind of crap. But being real about it now mostly it was just a way to pay our checks and go striper fishing for free. lol
It's one thing to fund this type of stuff when you have plenty of money to throw around. What the hell, toss some money to a professor somewhere to go study limp duck dicks. But just because NSF has been given money to give way and a study meets peer-review requirements doesn't mean that money couldn't be better spent elsewhere at a time when we're effectively broke. Given that these were stimulus funds, the main intent was just to just plain spend some money.