That should read Science Communitys Justified Freak Out. When research funding gets cut, research grants not renewed, etc., years of work can go down the drain. Because when the researcher finally finds new funding (often, these days they find that funding in other countries, in Asia, or elsewhere...so they take the benefit of their scientific knowledge out of the US, where theyve generally been educated, regardless of where they were born), they usually have, by then, lost valuable research assistants, shut down ongoing experiments that then have to be started over from scratch, have to set up new labs, and more. Biomedical engineering design and fabrication of equipment used in this field, much of it unique, one-of-a-kind items designed to facilitate a researchers work (my familys business) suffers too. These firms, many of them small and medium in size, are forced to cut very highly highly skilled employees and forego hiring and training the next generation of workers in this field (for the kind of jobs we say we want to create). This is what has been happening in basic biomedical research for the past few years... in the short run such cuts to research are costly and ill-advised. But in the longer term, they will have enormous costs to the economy...including lost opportunity costs. Much has already been lost. As this article points out, the scientific community is grateful for the small proposed increase over last years budget (no guarantee congress will aprove and appropriate the proposed budget), but the situation in research in the U.S. is DIRE right now.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 04:47:15 +0000
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