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Roger Pielke, Jr. in the news on science and politics.
Inside Higher Ed
April 23, 2015
Roger Pielke Jr. doesn’t see today’s political debates over science funding as that different from those of previous generations, such as in the 1970s, when Congress forced the Research Applied to National Needs program on the NSF. Pielke is a professor of environmental science at the University of Colorado at Boulder and directs the university’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research.
As a social scientist, he understands the frustration of having the fields’ relevance repeatedly questioned by politicians. But he also thinks that scientists should expect scrutiny from politicians.
That’s just the nature of having science being germane to the issues of the day, he said. When research becomes high profile, it often becomes politicized, and as long as federal money is going to that research, politicians are going to have questions.
Yet for all the politicized battles, at the end of the day, overall research funding consistently does well in terms of discretionary spending. Pielke doubts that will change, no matter what party controls Congress.
“Everyone loves science,” he said. “Republicans and Democrats just love it in different ways and for different reasons over time.”
The bill heads to the full House now, though it still has a long way to go before becoming law. The proposed spending limits diverge from those in President Obama’s budget proposal, and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hasn’t introduced a version of COMPETES Act reauthorization yet. The committee’s chairman, John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, issued a joint statement with Representative Smith Wednesday that said the two would work together to determine how limited federal money can have the greatest effect on research. Read more …
