Republican bill to require political approval of scientific papers

Ok, here are a little better I hope. I don't have the file here, so still only photos. But this is just a poster, basically a cheat sheet for work already done, much easier to relate and far less complex than proposed research.

 

Once grants are handed out, there is no oversight. How is that misleading?

 

How money is spent is in the grant. Not every penny is accounted for, but the majority is. We can't even buy a pizza for our lab meeting on the grant. It's only permitted to buy science related shit. The university goes over every item we purchase, so there is oversight. If you wanted more oversight the cost would become prohibitive.

 

At OHSU 70%!of the funds go to the university to pay for space rental, electricity, cleaning crews and all the oversight and secretaries. The lab only receives 30% of the awarded grant.

 

It's all part of the process. Andre Geim won the IG Nobel (basically a prize for worst science) for magnetically levitating a frog, then a few years later in 2010 won the actual Nobel Prize in physics for his work on graphene. I don't know the thought behind the shrimp on a treadmill, but that does not mean that the science is not important either directly or indirectly. Steps into the unknown need to be taken for science to move forward, and if you restrict those steps to only obvious steps, well, the quality of breakthrough will be greatly reduced.

 

I think "worst science" is unfair to the Ig Nobel prizes... The research topics of their winners are often esoteric and/or light-hearted, but they aren't done poorly, in general.

 

Interesting that many posters in this thread are outraged about the idea of a stricter approval process for getting research grants because

Yet those same posters are in favor of socialized medicine, pharma company profit limits, and obamacare.

Ironic.

 

this

 

The purpose of making an agency head "certify" that all research is "highest quality" is to politicize his agency. You find microscopic faults, hold hearings, and rake him over the rails for not micromanaging scientists who aren't employees of his agency. Certifying allows you to get personal with him, in order to get yourself votes from the Texas morons at home.

It's just another Southern fascist politician. So Lamar is the one who introduced SOPA, eh?