Intel Chairman Wants Blank Check for Science

Oh, cry my a river: Craig Barnett, chairman of Intel, boo-hoos about the supposed lack of science funding by the Feds in a whining column in today's San Francisco Chronicle. He writes:

The recent budget deal between Republicans and Democrats effectively flat-funds or cuts funding for key science agencies. Excluding "earmarks," the Department of Energy funding for fiscal year 2008 is up only 2.6 percent, thus losing ground to inflation. The National Science Foundation is up 2.5 percent, with the same result. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is up 11 percent, however the labs where research happens only get 2.3 percent, again losing ground to inflation.

Barrett doesn't use actual numbers in his piece, only percentages, raising my lawyer's radar that the magnitude of the actual dollars being spent on science--in other words, context--might undercut his argument. So, I did a little digging. The DOE's budget is huge, for example in FY 2008 over $24 billion, with nearly$3.5 billion earmarked for "science" and more than $5.5 billion for "environmental management." That ain't hay. Add in who knows how much in earmarks--which Barnett conveniently excluded--and we are talking very real money.

Similarly, National Science Foundation's budget is more than $5 billion, with $390 million to be invested in nanotechnology. From the NSF's press release:

Working with other agencies as part of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the National Science Foundation's (NSF) nanotechnology research will continue to advance fundamental understanding of materials at the subatomic, atomic, and molecular levels and will enable the development of capabilities to design, manipulate, and construct revolutionary devices and materials with unprecedented properties. The Budget provides $390 million in 2008 for NSF's nanotechnology research investments, an increase of 4.5 percent from the level proposed in 2007, including funding for a new NSF center to address environmental, health, and safety research needs for nanomaterials.

I believe in generous government funding for science--although I wish that when the money helps private companies strike gold that they would be required to share with the taxpayers who helped make it possible. But science isn't the be all and end all. There are many other pressing needs and our economy is slowing down.

Sometimes the sense of entitlement within the science sector is breathtaking.

Blank Check Syndrome

"The scientists," by which I mean the politicized advocates for a financial and ethical blank check in human cloning, genetic engineering, and other awesomely powerful biotechnologies, are upset. The poor babies are grousing about the potential for government regulation--in the UK where the regulators are more rubber stamps than enforcers of reasonable ethical parameters! From the story in the Times:

Excessive regulation of science is damaging public confidence in research by creating a misleading impression that most of it is dangerous or ethically dubious, say working scientists.

Much of it is. Endangering women's lives, health, and fecundity in egg harvesting for human cloning experimentation. Human cloning and genetic engineering. Seeking to create artificial life. These are no small or mundane matters.

Far from reassuring ordinary people that research is safe and ethical, scientists feel that strict laws covering experiments on animals, embryos and human tissue actually have a negative impact on public perceptions of their work.

Actually, it gives false assurance to the public.

There was particular concern about new rules that require doctors to obtain explicit consent before patients' tissue samples can be used in research.

Whose tissue is it???

Tough regulations on animal experiments and research using human embryos and stem cells have a similar effect, suggesting that there is something undesirable about such work.

Are they out of their minds? Those regulations are essential to public confidence that animals are not abused or used in experimentation for gratuitous purposes. Do these people not know that animal rights crazies want to destroy their lives and work? As for embryos, they are using nascent human beings as mere natural resources. That too is no small matter and for many people is of profound ethical import.

And here comes the blank check part:

Tony Gilland, of the Institute of Ideas, who organised the survey, said that while the respondents were self-selected, their views reflected a clear mood that science was overregulated.

"If we really want value for money from publicly funded scientists then we have to be willing to allow them to pursue their curiosity and see what comes of it," he said.

"A scientist's peers are best placed to judge whether their work is excellent or mediocre. Today the mark of a 'good' scientist seems to be all about whether they are prepared to doff their cap to the externally imposed constraints of ethics committees and regulators or the Government's demands for short-term economic or social benefits from their work."

Talk about spoiled brats. No powerful institution gets to do what they want just because they want to, or depend wholly on their colleagues to police their activities. Not lawyers. Not doctors. Not even hairdressers. Why should scientists be any different? They don't know when they have it good.