President Eisenhower warned of this. In the world of climate science, we have come to know this simple equation as demonstrated by some of the most zealous proponents of climate change:
No Alarm = No Funding + No Glory
Dr. Lonnie Thomspon and his false alarm over Mt. Kilimanjaro, coupled with him being made famous by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth while seeking more research money to study a problem that is actually more related to land use and evapotranspiration than global warming comes to mind as an example. Andrew Resnick has written a letter published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that suggests researchers are “addicted” to funding, much like drug addicts. His words, not mine.
Click image to enlarge
Source: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/06/11/1407369111.extract
M Seward says:
June 14, 2014 at 3:43 pm
We have a new monster in out midst. Forget the “military-industrial complex” we now have the “science-political complex” or the “ecoreligeous-science complex”. Call it what you will, its a Godzilla sized monster spreading destructive nonsense and drooling at the prospect of total power.
——
In his original warning, Eisenhower called it a “scientific-technological elite.”
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
This is addressed in the linked WUWT post in this post.
The FULL equation is
No Alarm = No Power + No Funding + No Glory (including groupies) + No Honor (status).
Nick Stokes;
You don’t hear from the people who didn’t get grants. They had to do other things.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nonsense. You hear from them all the time. Tires that get more traction on ice. Computer screens that are flexible. 3D printers. Batteries that last longer and charge faster. RNA interference drugs that are starting to cure diseases which previously could only be cured by surgery. Crop strains which are disease and drought resistant. Cars that park themselves, or hit the breaks for you in an emergency. Shall I go on? We hear from people doing real research and getting real results every day.
The problem with theoretical research is that it has stagnated, and in any stagnant niche, you get parasites whose only talent is creating the perception that they are adding value rising to the top.
In other words:
Supply And Demand
If there is a Demand for scientific findings, there will be Suppliers who will fill the demand at a negotiated price.
Question in Job Interview, “How much is two and two?”
Correct answer: “Four”
Successful answer: “What do you want it to be?”
I got my first insight into this whole mad scene when, as a self employed professional engineer, I was also teaching part time at a local tertiary institiution lecturing in my field. One day I was called into my boss’s office and and after broaching the subject of perhaps publishing some papers I was asked what I was up to with my ‘day’ job. After giving a summary of the more interesting stuff he clapped his hands and said Oh good! – that would be good for at least two LPU’s. “LPU ?” I asked. Least Publishable Unit” he answered, we get $x of funding per paper.
All was revealed. Academia had been sliced, diced, pasteurized, homogonized and turned into a tradeable commodity. Managerialism had finally and completely perverted the course of the enlightenment itself and shackled it to funding as merely a quantitative KPI. Not so much dumbed down as lobotomised. Pretty much what was done to mortgage securities recently.
If you give $100 to anyone on the street that agrees the world will end soon, you’d be surprised how many people will say the world will end soon.
M Seward;
After giving a summary of the more interesting stuff he clapped his hands and said Oh good! – that would be good for at least two LPU’s. “LPU ?” I asked. Least Publishable Unit” he answered, we get $x of funding per paper.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And that, right there is what I was talking about in my comment above. He wasn’t interested in producing new knowledge. He was interested in getting paid for the perception of creating new knowledge. He was no doubt running around having the same conversation with everyone else who was part time, scraping up every opportunity to take something that had already been done, and laying claim to it for his institution/department. Much easier to associate oneself with good work than to actually DO good work.
Well I hope you were fairly compensated. But thanks for helping me make my point.
davidmhoffer says: June 14, 2014 at 8:16 pm
“Nick Stokes;
You don’t hear from the people who didn’t get grants. They had to do other things.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nonsense. You hear from them all the time. Tires that get more traction on ice…”
You don’t see much of that research published. And I bet you won’t see data and code.
Funding is part of it but so is the published or demand approach in academia where researchers are expected to push out a number of papers each year , quality being an issue left to journals to ‘deal with ‘
So looking to get funding , to get research published to keep the numbers up , well the area where there lots of funding and were its a lot easer to get ‘research’ published as long as it offers the right type of ‘evidenced ‘ is a good place to start and its easy enough to stick it an AGW angle on virtual anything no matter how bad the fit , and we seen papers just like that.
Its one of the dirty little secrets of research is that politics often influence which areas of science becomes ‘hot’ and which not . The we are above such things mythology that science community likes to dress its self up in , when it comes to issues like self serving interest , personal out looks and malpractice of all forms , is jut that mythology in the end their only human.
Nick Stokes:
It is very rare for me to be able to agree with you so I write to take this opportunity to do it.
At June 15, 2014 at 12:11 am you point out that commercial research is confidential so
Yes. Only academic research is ‘governed’ by publication in the public domain: the public pay for it so have aright to see it. But most research is confidential: it is NOT published in the public domain because it has commercial, military, security, industrial and/or national value which would be harmed if shared publicly. Indeed, there are entire industries which exist to conduct espionage intended to purloin such information.
Furthermore, the most valuable research tends to be conducted by commercial research organisations which would cease to fund research activities that failed to obtain an adequate return from the funding. Indeed, that funding issue is why davidmhoffer is so obviously right when he writes
Richard
Dr K.A. Rodgers
‘And so it goes. It is why those same lords and masters will protect a proven fund raiser no matter what codswallop they produce’
The prime example being Mann and Penn State who made it clear part of their ‘investigation ‘ was looking at how much money he brought in and deciding it was enough to ensure his ‘innocence’
the problem of grant funded research is closely coupled to the lack of teaching required of researchers. in US universities, I.e. tenure track research hires are asked to do too little teaching by the institution. Their entire effort is a bet on obtaining outside funded research, not teaching-education, which is a university’s primary mission. In previous decades, this was a high probability, today it is low probability. The institution’s office of Research assumes that by freeing Jr faculty from classroom lecture, he/she is better able to devote time to better grant writing and lab research to bag tenure. Thus the root of the problem is the tenure process. Its principle measurement of merit, and in most cases sole measure, is dependent on snagging an R01 or other independent multi-year funding, which is assumed to measure or be indicative of publishing impact (weighted sum of published paper’s journal IFs).
But being “freed” of significant teaching requirements places the worth of a tenure track hire solely on research to secure a grant. This phenomenon has gone hand in hand with the dramatic rise in teaching adjunct ( non tenure) professors to satisfy the demand for universities through the last 25 years to increase enrollment as tuition loan programs expanded. This increase classroom load has been met by hiring Adjuncts.. Adjunct teachers are paid by the course, to simply teach a cookbook to undergrads. A relatively and disposable source of talent for the universities.
The ability to use adjuncts professors (instructors) occurs as side effect of over producing too many PhDs. If the quantity of supplied labor was too close to the quantity demanded, universities would have to ask Jr researchers to teach more, as adjunct availability would often fall short. If that occured, then their value to the institution would increase irrespective of obtaining a grant.
Ultimately, the real problem in the US is the contraction of gov research funding relative to GDP. The Progressives have so far suceeded in keeping the 3 big non-discretionary, growing budgets items off-limits from cuts, Medicare, Medicaid, and SS. In a resource limited environment, this of course means less discretionary funds available for research. Thus the universities err by continuing legacy tenure track schemes, built in a previous era of escalating grants sucess rates, while the Progressive social welfare agenda ensures even more rapid reductions in discretionary spending in the coming decade.
The conclusion: its is going to get much worse for science research funding before it will get better. “Getting better” will be relative to future much lower spending, rather than relative to today’s levels. By 2024, federally funded science researchers will be half the size of todays in the US.
Lesson: learn Chinese.
andy says:
June 14, 2014 at 6:44 pm
So,
Glory = Alarm – Funding
?
0=0+0
R2Dtoo says:
June 14, 2014 at 3:53 pm
As I have written here oh so many times.
Nope.
The equation is:
Which should be translated into:
0 · Alarm = 0 · Funding + 0 · Glory
And then this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_by_zero
A related question? Why is the funding biased towards warming? For every Hollywood addled green we should have a small businessman who has to keep 15 service trucks on the road; for every wayward PM at NOAA, there should be an action officer in the Pentagon saying energy independence is a national security issue. Why isn’t big oil writing Anthony checks?
Nick Stokes says:
June 15, 2014 at 12:11 am
You don’t see much of that research published. And I bet you won’t see data and code.
But you WILL see tires that get better traction on ice. Proof meet pudding.
A few years ago, a newly hired assistant professor was told by the Dean of Engineering at Ohio State that if he wanted tenure he would have to bring in at least $300,000 per year. There was no discussion of numbers of MS and PhD students, no discussion of papers or impact factors, no discussion of teaching quality or of service.
Of course, that was just the Dean. The faculty promotion and tenure committees want everything. But the Dean’s attitude was telling.
By the way, whatever you guys might think, Lonnie Thompson and his wife are worshipped at tOSU. And the hallways of his edifice on West Campus are still decorated with Mann’s original hockey stick graphic. A while ago, the student paper “The Lantern” wrote that he had finally agreed to archive his data and grant access to it. I don’t know if that is true or not. There has been a University policy for years that federally funded data must be archived and made available, but no one has ever been able to make Lonnie obey that rule.
This is, for the most part, the current state of “science” in the world and even more so in regards of Climate Science. Because Oppressives/Liberals/Marxist/Socialists have taken over most of the world governments, they have sought to create a One-World “Open Society” Socialist Government, and since Communism is proved to be an oppressive and failed form of government, these Marxists have turned to “saving the planet” in order to justify their Communist type governments, regulations, and grabs for power. So, they throw hundreds of billions of dollars at “scientists” to bribe them into enabling their evil agenda, and because Scientists are human most of them willingly sacrifice their integrity and honesty in order to get promoted and make money. As long as governments fund science, you will get propaganda instead of science.
The corruption of science funding began with the question of “relevance”.
You propose a scientific study, to determine the “existence of the XYZ particle”. The Department of Grants ask, what is the benefit of the “XYZ particle”? You answer “Today none, but it helps advance our understanding.”
Your competitor for grant money propose a scientific study to determine “climate change and sustainability”. The Department of Grants ask, what is the benefit of “climate change and sustainability”? You answer “To save the world.”
Who gets the grant? repeat over thousands of applications, and you can see why NASA launched a mission to planet earth and has lost the capability to put people into space.
Climate Scientist: We can’t find any solid evidence of CAGW.
Government man: Well, if that’s the case, there’s not much sense in spending so much on climate research. Oh— and by the way— you’re fired.
Genuine scientific research will not die when government research grants dry up.
University centers and institutes will shrink, and jobs for university administrators will disappear. Which is hardly the same thing.
See Terence Kealey’s book, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research.
Nick Stokes;
You don’t see much of that research published. And I bet you won’t see data and code.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nope, you see results. And you should go and take a look at what a patent is, and how much information it contains (sufficient to replicate it!) before claiming it isn’t published.
Science has run amok for the simple reason that it is awarded money for activity and not for useful results.
I said this once before, and I will say it again. If you want useful climate models, then pay for results not activity. There is only one way to measure the utility of a climate model, and that is to use it to accurately predict the future, something all of the existing models have failed to do. Why? Because they were NOT asked to predict the future, they were asked to predict the future based on a set of assumptions, which they did. The assumptions have turned out to be incorrect, and the models as a consequence are also flawed.
What we need is a prize for a model that gets things correct. Put out a prize for which any model published one year from now gets the temperature of he earth correct 5 years hence of $1 Billion. Of the models that collect that prize, the one most accurate gets another $5 Billion at the 10 year mark.
You know what you would get? You would get RESULTS. Not because anything was published, not because the data was available, but because you PAID FOR A RESULT THAT COULD ONLY GET FUNDED BY DEMONSTRATING THAT IT IS RIGHT.
What we get now is papers published to conform to the opinion of the people who fund them. They’ve never had predictive accuracy as a required metric, their only metric is vague arm waving implying that they can be used as a predictive metric to justify draconian regulations and tax regimes on the assumption that they have predictive value, which they demonstrably do not.