When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he famously declared that the University of California system should not subsidize intellectual curiosity. What he meant is that taxpayers should not pay for the education of California students.
Several years later, Sen. Proxmire of Wisconsin began his annual "Golden Fleece" awards, where he pointed to what he considered to be examples of wasteful federal spending. These examples sometimes included scientific research, and in this vein Senators Tom Coburn and John McCain have released a new report, titled "Summertime Blues: 100 Projects that give taxpayers the blues."
First, the word "taxpayer" is often trotted out as if had magical power. The phrase "as a taxpayer..." is spoken as if this incantation conferred special rights. But everyone is a taxpayer, and if everyone is part of a group, then no one individual in that group has any special claim.
The use of "taxpayer" is meant to stake a claim that as someone who has money automatically taken out of your paycheck, you have a right to decide how that money is spent. Nothing could be further from the truth. While you nominally have power to elect someone to decide how your tax money is spent, in reality unless you are a corporation capable of making substantial donations to PACs, then you have no say about how your money is spent, and no influence on who your elected official is. So right at the outset we should dispense with the fiction that "taxpayers" have some sort
Second, the Coburn/McCain report harps upon job creation as the standard for usefulness. In section after section, the report mocks expenditures in areas with unemployment, without mentioning the rather obvious point that this money is employing people. For almost every conceivable project, payroll expenditures constitute the majority of the budget. So criticizing such projects for not creating jobs is simply untrue.
Third, much of what is in the Coburn/McCain report is legitimate, useful scientific research. Here are some examples:
The California Academy of Sciences is receiving nearly $2 million to send researchers to the Southwest Indian Ocean Islands and east Africa, to capture, photograph, and analyze thousands of exotic ants.
...has received a stimulus grant for an experimental applied science project to assist indigenous Siberian communities in engaging Russian policymakers in local civic and environmental issues.
...$435,271 to develop iPod Touch or smartphone apps to teach introductory biology to high school students
...$266,505 in stimulus funds to continue its annual science education workshops for reporters
...MSU received a grant to send students to work with researchers at the Natural History Museum in Hangzhou studying various dinosaur eggs and other fossils.
...$300,000 in stimulus grant money to examine computer simulations to follow the formation of galaxies through the period 1-2 billion years after the Big Bang.
Really? Researching the Big Bang and the evolution of our universe is somehow unworthy of support? Sending kids to study dinosaurs, and possibly inspiring them into a career in science, is a wasteful expenditure? We should not fund workshops for reporters to communicate science better? We shouldn't explore using new technology to teach biology?
I could go on and on, but I'll leave you to read the Coburn/McCain report for yourself. It is a damning documentation of manifest philistine contempt for education, for learning, and most of all, for science itself.
