{"id":715,"date":"2013-03-23T09:43:43","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T14:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/?p=715"},"modified":"2013-03-23T09:43:43","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T14:43:43","slug":"government-lays-groundwork-for-killing-more-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/2013\/03\/23\/government-lays-groundwork-for-killing-more-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Government Lays Groundwork for Killing more Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two stories have come to my attention.<\/p>\n<p>First, NASA, THE US Space Agency&#8230; the agency that did the impossible in the 60s and then was left to die by the legislature. \u00a0The agency that inspired a generation of scientists, engineers, and test pilots. \u00a0The agency that is <a href=\"http:\/\/spinoff.nasa.gov\/Spinoff2011\/pdf\/Brochure_11_web.pdf\">directly responsible for a lot of the products<\/a> that we use today.<\/p>\n<p>NASA is<a href=\"http:\/\/spaceref.com\/missions-and-programs\/nasa\/nasa-memo-suspend-all-education-and-public-outreach.html\">\u00a0immediately\u00a0suspending ALL education and public outreach programs<\/a> due to the budget crisis. \u00a0They are talking about reviewing all of those programs.<\/p>\n<p>What I want to know is how cutting NASA&#8217;s budget (almost 18 billion dollars last year) will help? \u00a0For example, cutting the defense budget by 50% would still leave the US with one of the highest defense budgets in the world and give us nearly $400 billion in instant savings. \u00a0But defense is obviously more important than education and science. \u00a0I mean, we might need to invade North Korea next year or something.<\/p>\n<p>Second, Cobrun, an Oklahoma Republican Senator, has managed to<a href=\"http:\/\/www.prnewswire.com\/news-releases\/senate-delivers-a-devastating-blow-to-the-integrity-of-the-scientific-process-at-the-national-science-foundation-199221111.html\"> include an\u00a0amendment to the Continuing Appropriations Act<\/a>. \u00a0That\u00a0amendment\u00a0tells the National Science Foundation that they can no longer support research into political science, democracy, and public policy UNLESS that research is\u00a0directly applicable to national security or economic interests of the US.<\/p>\n<p>What. The. Fuck?<\/p>\n<p>The National Science Foundation is about providing funds to important research no matter what area it&#8217;s in. \u00a0Some of my work involves NSF funded research into educational assessments.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m honestly stunned and am quite flabbergasted that anyone would try to further restrict science in the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two stories have come to my attention. First, NASA, THE US Space Agency&#8230; the agency that did the impossible in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,18,89,6,45],"tags":[940,241,349,937,348],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-government","category-research-2","category-science","category-society","tag-education","tag-government-2","tag-outreach","tag-science","tag-us-budget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}