General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSequestration Ushers In A Dark Age For Science In America
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- On the first floor of Jordan Hall at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is a 12-by-8 room that, at first glance, looks like a rundown storage space. The floor is a mix of white, teal and purple tiles, in a pattern reminiscent of the 1970s. Trash cans are without tops and half filled. There are rust stains on the tiles, and a loose air vent dangles a bit from the ceiling. It is only when you see four incubators attached to six tanks of carbon dioxide that you get the feeling something more intriguing is taking place here.
Inside these incubators Dr. Anindya Dutta stores cell cultures that he believes hold the key to a massive advancement in health care. He has identified the specific strands of microRNA, the molecule that plays a large role in gene expression, that are responsible for promoting the formation and fusion of muscular tissue. The implications for such a discovery are tantalizing. People who suffer from diseases like muscular dystrophy would have easier treatments, and the elderly would fall less often and recover faster when they did. And so, as Dutta has me look into the microscope next to those carbon dioxide tanks, there is a notable hint of excitement in his voice.
"If you can find ways to manipulate this muscle differentiation process it would do a huge amount for human health," he says. He explains that I'm seeing how myoblasts can be manipulated into becoming myotubes. Memories of high school biology class come flooding back. You wouldn't know from his giddy, optimistic tone that Dutta is currently navigating the biggest obstacle of his career. Five years after he received a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to undertake this microRNA project, he's nearly out of cash. His proposal was placed in the 2nd percentile of all grants reviewed by NIH in 2007, meaning that it was deemed more promising than 98 percent of the proposed projects.
When he asked for the same amount of money in 2012, his proposal was scored in the 18th percentile. In years past that score may have been good enough, but in the age of sequestration, NIH is supporting a much smaller pool of applicants. Late last month he was told that there would be no funding. UVA has stepped in to help, but Dutta estimates that 40 of his colleagues are in the same boat.
"I am living off of fumes," he says. A feeling of despair has taken hold within research communities like Dutta's, Top officials at academic and medical institutions have grown convinced that years of stagnant budgets and recent cuts have ushered in the dark ages of science in America.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/14/sequestration-cuts_n_3749432.html
warrant46
(2,205 posts)500 AD to 1500 AD = a thousand years of superstition and abominable ignorance
Javaman
(62,530 posts)malthaussen
(17,195 posts)And even in a Europe stifling under the clouds of religious oppression, there were advances made, many imported from Islamic areas.
I think the American Taliban would like to create an age even Darker than the Dark Ages. It is one thing to be ignorant, as we were 1000 years ago. It is another thing to try to ban knowledge already unlocked.
-- Mal
warrant46
(2,205 posts)As for being Euro-Centric I was educated in Canada in the 1950s--- sorry
as far as--- "ban knowledge already unlocked:" one only needs to look at the Roman Catholic Church and its support of feudalism
Ancient knowledge= the Romans invented concrete, the process to make it was lost for a millennium and a half.
Conclusion = the American Taliban are superstitious, simple minded and evil
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)is more than all the NASA budgets combined.
Bowing down anti-intellectualism costs us so much more than dollars, and also makes it impossible for most of us to understand how much it hurts all of us.
Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)onehandle
(51,122 posts)Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)Makes you wonder whose really paying the GOP via Citizens United
bullwinkle428
(20,629 posts)Orrex
(63,210 posts)I think that you omitted a K there.
mainer
(12,022 posts)Like Alzheimer's Disease and cancer.
zazen
(2,978 posts)Even community colleges are putting tens of thousands into hiring grant proposal developers when they haven't a clue how unlikely it is they'll ever pull in even one major federal grant. I've seen the stupidest job descriptions out there, written by administrators who've probably never even read a grant proposal, much less served on one or worked with faculty who've served on one.
University administrators want faculty to internalize these failures--you're just not competitive enough. You're just not innovative enough. And they think if they just double down and give enough of the "compete in the 21st century" speeches and pay increasing staffs (while cutting more tenure-track lines) to generate grants and contracts and spinoffs, their individual institution will survive.
Supposedly higher education is represented by lots of lobbying groups, but those reps spout the neoliberal party line as well to keep their relationships with congressional staffers (and because they still believe it, mostly). And they have so little pull, with idiots like Virginia Foxx (Idiot-NC) in charge of higher ed subcommittees. I think she was fired as the President of a Community College, and ever since has had it in for them. They're full of communists, you know.
progressoid
(49,990 posts)Jebus will fix any problem you have.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)If the research is good, one should begin to network and shop around. Hell, do a poster board in a Chinese seminar.
There may not be anything, but there might be, and this place is certainly beginning to look more and more like a losing proposition.
blackspade
(10,056 posts)Plus saving lives and making life better interferes with developing weapons to kill brown people and political 'rebels'
mountain grammy
(26,621 posts)MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Innovative things haven't been financed for many, many years. The funding has become a club for a small group of researchers at top schools - they sit on the panels that award funding, and they award it to their buddies for doing research that's almost guaranteed to have results, but low risk = low reward.
I know people on some panels and they freely admit this is the case.
So I'm in favor of more funding, but only after an overhaul of the process.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)It has been a slow and gradual process, but at least at NSF and NASA there is a very significant effort to fund new scientists and to try and fund the best science, rather than 'names'. I've been a part of the proposal evaluation process and people do try hard to be fair. Yes, there is still too much of the latter, but it is more noticeable as funding drops. Even as recently as the Clinton era there was enough funding to make it a reasonable prospect to be a research scientist. I can't say that now. Too many federal agencies have shuttered their external research programs and are hunkered down now, trying to preserve what they can. The Sequester is making things much, much worse. To give you an example, NSF chemical oceanography has had it's funds cut by more than 1/2, due to the sequester, a lack of a budget, and an increase in non-project costs (meaning trying to keep the scientific ship fleet going).They have said that if Congress just passed the budgets the senate and president have put out, this would be nearly restored to last year's levels. I have no hope that will happen.