Scientists and politicians…
On Tuesday, I received an “urgent alert to the APS membership: funding cuts to NSF, NIST.” Let me translate the acronymese. APS is the American Physical Society. I’m a member. Although I am now a full-time writer, I used to be a physicist, among other things (people have called me many things, in fact). NSF, of course, is the National Science Foundation. NIST is the lesser known National Institute of Standards and Technology (the name is a late addition, probably to get more funding—it used to be called National Bureau of Standards). The issue is that the Senate Appropriations Committee, that august body of mostly senile and small-minded thinkers who often sit in the Senate for a lifetime, has proposed cuts to both NSF and NIST in its FY 2012 budget for Commerce, Justice and Science agencies. (Since NIH, the National Institutes of Health, does research for the drug companies, I’m not sure whether they’re a commerce or science agency, but they weren’t mentioned by APS.)
This alert was a call for action and the “action required” was to contact my Senators immediately “to emphasize the devastating impact on American science, innovation and economic growth the Senate plan would cause.” To assist me in my contact efforts, they provided a form, which I “should personalize or rewrite as you [I] deem appropriate.” I usually don’t do this type of thing for three reasons: (1) Senators are often old and doddering, as noted above, and will never look at an avalanche of e-mails—even their staff will probably just count them; (2) I often don’t agree with everything in the form e-mail and even if I do, my mind often changes about the minutia (minutes to days) later; and (3) this often puts me on an e-mail list that I don’t want to be put on (not applicable in the case of APS, since I’m on the membership list, but certainly applicable to Russ Feingold’s Citizens United—I support them, but their e-mails have become annoying because they ask for donations, money I don’t really have—hey, I’m a writer!).
Sure ‘nough, I made the wrong choice—rather, I had no choice that suited me. In general, I liked the form e-mail, but I couldn’t add to it or edit it. The other choice was writing the whole damn thing from scratch, I guess. Nevertheless, it’s done, it’s for a good cause, and we’ll see what my Senators say—both are old and doddering but seem to have their hearts in the right place. (Note added in posting: I received form e-mails from my Senators, just as I expected.) Lautenberg is ancient—maybe not as old as Andy Rooney—but the Senator looks older. Menendez is old too. They’re typical senators and have many connections. They also are probably beholding to a plethora of lobbyists and political interests that have financed their campaigns over the years. Maybe they even like Christie. I dunno. I’m new to Garden State of New Jersey (“Garden” corresponds to western NJ, which is more like rural PA), but I’ve already come to the conclusion that this is the most political rats’ nest of any state in the nation (you probably think yours is the winner in that category). It’s pissing politics too, meaning the refrain “you pissed me off, so I’m voting against you” often describes how voters in New Jersey vote. That’s how Christie became governor.
Back to the APS urgent alert. Supporting their campaign was my second good deed for the day (adding my two cents to a rally of my FB friends to support veterans was more important, though). We have been chipping away at science and technology funding for many years, unless you count funding for the militaristic aspects, which has skyrocketed. It began with the cancellation of the SSC in 1993. Some reasons for that cancellation were justified, in particular, the administrative inefficiencies that led to cost overruns. Cuts to NASA have plagued that agency and made it try to do science while always looking over its shoulder to the bean counters. The cancellation of the shuttle program, for example, will seriously limit America’s participation in the International Space Station program. There is an anti-science sentiment in the country (as part of the Tea Party platform—said party doesn’t want to pay for anything that’s remotely progressive) and that spells disaster for the nation’s progress and participation in the scientific and technological advances of the 21st century.
An aside: I find it amusing that many of those out-of-work physicists from the SSC, as well as out-of-work physicists and mathematicians ejected from academic tenure-track positions in colleges and universities, went to Wall Street to design those complex financial products that made the banks and financial institutions’ obfuscation possible, directly leading to the financial collapse of 2008. Paul Samuelson, the first to apply thermodynamic principles to economics, has a direct academic genealogy related to Willard Gibbs, the father of modern statistical physics—he was also one of the ten Nobel prize winners in economics to sign a statement opposing the Bush tax cuts. Economics is a difficult discipline (I refrain from calling it a science—so beat me up!) due to the human element.
We lump such pseudo-scientific disciplines together in the term “social sciences,” and they too have seen cutbacks (mind you, they are only pseudo-scientific because human beings are so damn complicated). You see, every politician thinks he’s an expert in economics. Except for Samuelson and a few select others, economic theory is expressed in ordinary if arcane English, so our politicians think they understand it. I’m reminded of the psychohistory imagined by Isaac Asimov in his Foundation books, except America and the rest of the world has no Second Foundation. Instead, we have NSF in the States and similar organizations elsewhere. Granted, the old boys’ research networks spread through academia and industry implicitly show favoritism in the grants that are doled out (research fads abound), but cutting the funding is not the solution—reform is. For America’s future, cutting military funding would be a lot wiser (except for taking care of veterans, who deserve our full support). It’s all about priorities, as I have said many times in this blog, and we seem to have them all wrong.
I was lucky. Although I always wanted to be a writer, I recognized early on that it was a hard life. Fortunately, Sputnik came along and this country set out on a mission to beat the Russians to the moon. This is the only time I’ve seen trickle-down economics work—I opted for a scientific career instead of writing because there were funds there. One of my years at the University of Maryland was financed by a NSF grant—during the second, I was a TA because Nixon made cuts that also trickled down. This kind of checkered history is a weakness of the American system—as presidents come and go, so do priorities, and the change every four years in these priorities is killing us. From President Kennedy to President Nixon I went from an up-and-coming scientist to a poor bastard wishing he was eligible for food stamps (I wasn’t; Nixon declared graduate students “voluntarily poor”—so much for looking towards America’s future).
I can’t complain. I even made it to become a writer. However, with the anti-science mentality in the country and Congress’ lack of interest in preserving America’s place in the world of science, it will be harder and harder for young men and women to opt for scientific and technological careers. America will suffer. It already is. That much of the APS’ form e-mail I’ll agree with. Nevertheless, funding for education and research is a broader problem than that painted by the APS alert. History will prove, in fact, that we are now writing the American tragedy. I’ve written about that too. I thought it was fiction—a warning that like-minded readers can share, a warning that others should read…before it’s too late to save our country.
This blog post is the e-mail I would have liked to send to my New Jersey Senators. It’s probably more forceful than the APS’—it’s certainly more political. I’d like to believe that they would agree with it. Who knows? Maybe I’ll send it to them anyway! Think they’ll read it?
And so it goes….
