Yesterday morning (April 29, 2013), President Obama addressed the National Academy of Sciences on the occasion of the academy’s 150th anniversary. While any organization has the right to celebrate 150 years of existence, this particular anniversary has been darkened by the dark cloud of sequestration and looming funding cuts to our country’s research and development programs.
During his speech, Obama promised that he was committed to investing in science, however, he hinted that the funding should come from private investment, since the sequester is expected to shave close to $1.5 Billion dollars off of the all-important NIH budget. Such cuts pose a real threat to scientific progress and Obama mentioned that
Instead of racing ahead … our scientists are left wondering if they’ll be able to start any new research projects at all, which means we could lose a year, two years, of scientific research.
Scary stuff. Are you worried about your research? How do you think sequestration will affect your research?
The future of Oceanographic research is being threatened by short-sightedness just as we need more answers as to how climate change is affecting the oceans which are the thermal regulators of the planet.
What is even more concerning is the proposal of legislation from Congressman Lamar Smith to have congressional review on grants in lieu of peer review.
I bet he’s really angry at whoever proposed sequestration. Who was that again?
We can’t even convince Republicans that the human genome project brought exponential return on investment. These guys don’t care about science when blinded by small government, anti-science, creationist dogma…
Since small private colleges rarely get any NSF funding, it will not affect us. However, it is a sad day when USA is going to fall behind Europe and other so-called developing countries in scientific innovation. Moreover, US is propagating the anti-science sentiment overseas disguised as religion. Innovation is the engine to drive the Economy forward. I cannot believe Obama thought Republicans will compromise for the lesser of the two Evils. It was a huge gamble and he lost.