Scientists are regarding it as yet another attack on science by a political party that has, in the words of GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, become "the antiscience party."
A 2012 spending bill expected to be approved this week slashes the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) budget by a whopping 32 percent. The cuts "will have real consequences on OSTP's operations," said spokesperson Rick Weiss.
The OSTP is the White House's overall coordinating agency for federal science initiatives ranging from clean energy research to economic competitiveness to space exploration to climate change to education.
Cutting the top office responsible for insuring scientific integrity in government is the latest action by a Republican party whose leadership seems to be prosecuting an assault on science at almost every level, including House Speaker John Boehner's attempts to have creationism taught in science classes and his false assertion that climate scientists are arguing carbon dioxide is a carcinogen.
Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA), who chairs the House appropriations panel that oversees NASA and the OSTP, is a fierce opponent of the Chinese government and doesn't want any cooperation between the US and China. "Frankly, it boils down to a moral issue," said Wolf. "Would you have a bilateral program with Stalin?" Wolf inserted two sentences into the April 2011 spending bill that prohibit any joint scientific activity between the two nations that involves NASA or is coordinated by the OSTP.
But that ban doesn't apply to the president's ability to conduct foreign policy, argued Science Advisor John Holdren in a May 4 congressional hearing. That authority, Holdren said, extends to a bilateral agreement on scientific cooperation that Holdren and China's science minister signed in January that builds on a 1979 pact that has generated activity between many U.S. agencies and their Chinese counterparts.
Science has, like business, gone global. It knows no geographical borders, and scientists are collaborating on projects around the world over the internet in unprecedented numbers. Science creates knowledge, and as Francis Bacon pointed out 400 years ago, knowledge is power. Politics is the exercise of power. Science is, by definition, inherently political and so scientific exchange is a part of diplomacy.
In October, the Government Accountability Office released a report that disagreed with the administration's position that scientific cooperation is part of diplomacy, and said that by conducting a May meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Holdren violated the law as expressed in Wolf's April bill language.
Wolf and House Republicans siezed on the report as a basis to punish the OSTP with a budget cut of 55%, effectively eliminating much of its research coordination, transparency, education and oversight roles in US science. Senate leaders subsequently reduced the cut to 9%, and this week the bill passed out of conference committee with a 32% "compromise" cut.
Wolf says his action is meant to prevent China from getting any US technology, but it is a bit like shooting yourself in the foot because you didn't maintain your driveway, walked into a pothole and twisted your ankle. Science and technology are responsible for more than half our economic growth since World War II, and drive close to 60% of our economic activity currently. But we have let science slide as a national priority in funding, education, and public dialogue for the last several decades.
US students, for example, fell from 7th in a 1972 ranking known as the First International Science Study to 23rd in the 2009 OECD's Program for International Student Assessment (PISA ) report, falling below Hungary and just above the Czech Republic. This is far below China, whose world rankings were 1st (Shanghai), 3rd (Hong Kong), 12th (Taipai), and 18th (Macao) by region. This is one of the major priorities Holdren's OSTP has been trying to find ways to turn around -- particularly by focusing on science and math education -- a wholly wholesome and nonpartisan goal that benefits all American children.
"Whenever the people are well informed," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "they can be trusted with their own government." We are poised to create as much new knowledge in the next 40 years as we have in the last 400 years. That poses a serious threat to American-style democracy at a time when so many of our problems revolve around science and so few of our students -- and policy makers -- value what science does for them enough not to turn it into a political football -- or even seem to understand its fundamental relationship to democracy, power, and politics. Are Americans still well-enough informed to be trusted with their own government?
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Of course, following such a policy does not have a desirable long term impact.
I mean seriously according to the article if we cut spending in this little known organization that effects even less, all our kids are going to revert back to apes or something....check out the OSTP's mission here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/about
I mean if the priority is science and math education in primary education - don't we have a Dept of Education? Did they suddenly vanish?!?
As far as China - all those scores assumes no corruption and are bought which is well known - plus their test determines their life - whether they will becaome a powerful govt administrator or a light bulb chnger - then the light bulb-changer's parents pay a company to forward fake grades to US Universities so their son (they killed the daughter) so they can come back as the light bulb manager. They are dumber than a box of rocks.
What we desparetley need in this country is research reform - why are we forcing scientists to write their nth paper on "Why the Sun Rises" to get grant funding - so they can do real novel research in bits using the 10% wiggle room in the grant? Let experimentalists experiment and theorists theorize for God's sake!
Gut this useless "office" give some cash to Chu, and tell him directly to write some grant contests for the next big energy techology (not wind) by the end of this year!
On the merits of the office, who is Chu?
Strategic Goals and Objectives
Ensure that Federal investments in science and technology are making the greatest possible contribution to economic prosperity, public health, environmental quality, and national security
Energize and nurture the processes by which government programs in science and technology are resourced, evaluated, and coordinated
Sustain the core professional and scientific relationships with government officials, academics, and industry representatives that are required to understand the depth and breadth of the Nation’s scientific and technical enterprise, evaluate scientific advances, and identify potential policy proposals
Generate a core workforce of world-class expertise capable of providing policy-relevant advice, analysis, and judgment for the President and his senior staff regarding the scientific and technical aspects of the major policies, plans, and programs of the Federal government.
Which part specifically do you object to?
"Ensure that Federal investmentÂs in science and technology are making the greatest possible contributiÂon to economic prosperityÂ, public health, environmenÂtal quality, and national security"
Science, we don't need no stinken science!
the party of fear is thinking that jesus will save them in a conflict, and not science.
what religion is most popular in china?
the religion of public education.
Not very likely. (Maybe Obama was actually born in China).
Has it occurred to anyone that US corporations are massively transferring US technologies to China and other low wage nations across the board? What better way to learn how to make an a high tech product than to work in the factory where it is made? And what better way to train your own people to go a step further?
Even the US military now buys foreign-made electronic assemblies, and their is serious concern about what may lurk within them (beware of "Made in Troy").
At some point our good buds the Chinese may say, "You know, we don't really need you to tell use how to make stuff any more." CEOs will have Golden Parachutes, but what do we get?
At the rate in which science education is declining (with GOP assistance) in the United States, the only hope the U.S. has for maintaining an edge in scientific research is the importation of knowledge from places such as China and India.
With the current attitude of the GOP/Teabaggers about immigrants, our ability to import knowledgeable Chinese and Indians to staff our research labs will diminish and dry up.
With GOP/Teabagger help, we are therefore in the process of becoming a third-world nation with regard to scientific research. Twenty years from now, it will be amazing if any Americans get Nobel prizes in science.
But I can hear the howls how socialism (an economic philosophy) is evil incarnate, while capitalism (another economic philosophy) is granted godhood. Corporations have definitely brainwashed us to think that (their) "greed is good."
Aristotle was content to speculate that the more an object weighed, the faster it fell. Galileo actually bothered to measure this (sorry Aristotle) and launched modern science. The political power of the era said that the Universe revolved around the earth. Galileo proved otherwise, but was threatened into silence. Politicians are frequently eager to enforce acceptance of their own self-serving versions of reality.
The wealthy can have access to education, jobs, homes, clean resources.
The poor can toil in the trenches until the succumb to pollution, poor nutrition, poor health.
That being said, I also believe that religion has a place in American's lives...as long as those lives aren't being trampled by a single religion.
I also think that science doesn't have ALL the answers, but they're working on getting what they can right.
Doesn't take a scientist to figure out what's going on here. The tp/GOP trying to eliminate any possible competition.