There’s a great scene in the movie “Dave” where Kevin Kline, masquerading as the president, convinces his cabinet to restore funding to a homeless shelter instead of an ad campaign to make people feel better about a car they already bought.
If only balancing a budget was always that straightforward.
The sequestration cuts are hard on many, including many of you, but I think it’s unfair and misleading to lambast the miniscule amount of federal funding that goes to science. Lately the biggest brouhaha has been over a nearly $400,000 project to study duck reproduction.
I absolutely agree with columnist Jackie Vance that Meals on Wheels and childhood hunger are problems affecting the most vulnerable of citizens, and that money should be found to keep those programs going. Where I disagree is mocking the duck reproduction program. Let’s start with how $384,949 is, in the scheme of things, nothing, or, if you want to get technical, it’s 0.0000004 of the federal budget, according to the Washington Post. (Let’s also note it’s entirely possible journalists wrote about this project so they could write headlines with puns on ‘fowl,’ ‘poultry,’ and ‘duck.”)
The years of cuts to federal scientific grants has been a travesty, and I don’t use that word lightly. Even in the field of slashing social science, Republicans are winning by questioning research projects based on their ‘merit,’ notes David Weigel of Slate. Anyone who has spent time wrestling with Congressmen over antipsychotic regulation knows it’s a bad idea when politicians start playing doctor; the same is true for when they start to fancy themselves as purveyors of scientific truth.
If you are paying attention in your long-term care facility, you see the effects of research, both applied, basic and social, everyday. Sometimes it’s straightforward, such as in medication or culture change, or through a family member or resident who is alive only because of advances in cancer research. McKnight’s readers are often reading about applied science projects, i.e. products or advances that exist because of years of work. For example, Patricia Brennan, Ph.D. — the avian genitalia expert — points out that the adhesive product Geckskin is based on years of the study of gecko locomotion.
Brennan’s duck reproduction project is yielding insight on sexual conflict and how it plays into evolution. Quite bluntly, male ducks often rape female ducks and female ducks have evolved in a way that makes it more difficult to get knocked up. Or, as Brennan wrote in Slate: “Females are often unable to escape male coercion, but they have evolved vaginal morphology that makes it difficult for males to inseminate females close to the sites of fertilization and sperm storage.”
It will be a long time before we know what studying duck reproduction means for humans in terms of rape, contraception or evolution. But let me join the chorus of pro-science people who say that Brennan’s work is to be celebrated, not derided. Budgeting often means making hard choices. But as a taxpayer, I would take science funding any day over making my life a little bit better at an airport.
