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Bravo!

As an ecologist, I resent the fact that this "Moore" person thinks Snail mating science is a waste of tax payer dollars. When people do this kind of research they are trying to answer a larger ecological question, or trying to find what the ecological impact of a species is. And there a lot of seemingly insignificant organisms that contribute more to this universe then the hot bag of air that is Steve Moore.

If your system is based on this notion of exponential growth then it seems like a no brainer that you HAVE to invest in science and discovery or else how on earth are you going to keep up.

PZ Myers has a great response to this criticism: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/03/29/john-logsdon-hits-the-big-time/

I'd have rather just watched the snail porn.

Do republicans really think they're going to get anywhere hurling shit at scientists? What... women, gays, and heathens don't play anymore?

We have the highest corporate tax rate in the ENTIRE world (if you are dumb enough to pay it)

He needs a smaller jacket.

Dang Big Snail, taking away all the hard earned money Muricans slugged away for

@lucky760 Yes. If you are going to be on national tv get a decent tailor to fix your clothes...

As someone who loves science and believe research is absolutely important, I think both sides do a horrible job of trying to address the issue. To say that seemingly insignificant research is obviously unnecessary is wrong, as much of science is built upon research never intended for the purpose at hand.

However the opposite is not always true either. Not all science and research brings enough value to the table to justify the spending to do it.

If you're trying to use "the greater good" as a measure for what solutions to use or what problems are most important, then you have to accept that even some things like ecological research or environmental issues may not cut the mustard if their scope or impact are not large enough.

I also find it interesting when people clamor to cut military spending as if they didn't understand that a lot of current technology and research is piggy backing off research done for military purposes (and some of which may be funded by military spending).

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

snails are voracious crop pests and quick reproducers as well - I would think that figuring out their mating habits would be really important.

Steve Moore is a sensationalist doofus.

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Some people would say wormwood research is also useless... then they came up with a cure for malaria.

It's actually even more vital than that, the snails in question carry parasitic worms which cause deadly snail fever. I wish I were making that up.

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=126031

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schistosomiasis

Also, this kid is on a roll, he was also on Science Friday this week.

http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/04/12/2013/the-teenage-troublemaker-fighting-for-science.html

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I listened to that! Gotta love NPR

I'm sorry, but there are lots of bogus points in here. First of all, no one is arguing that the scope or impact of funded science should be anything less than great. The question is who should decide it. It seems the republicans want to take the awarding of scientific grants out of the hands of peer review, preferring that politicians micromanage the appropriation of research grants. Personally, I think that will lead to an end of basic science. Politicians are bound by their sponsors whom for the most part have an interest in public funding of applied rather than basic research.

This particular research is not about ecology or the environment, or some squishy bleeding heart first world problem. It's about the relative value of sexual and asexual reproduction. This particular snail can reproduce in either fashion, and it raises fundamental questions about when and why sexual reproduction would be preferred. It will likely lead to a deeper understanding of the genetic mechanisms that underlie sexual recombination, and how they relate to the success of progeny. Sounds like it's got some scope to me. The competition for grants is so stiff within science today that it's highly improbable that narrow research aims will be awarded. The fundamental question you need to ask yourself is "should basic science be funded, or should the only funding available be for applied science." My answer is an emphatic yes to basic science. It has proven its value beyond all doubt. Further, I personally feel that the applied work should be forced into the private sector as anything with a 5 year pay off will be funded naturally by the market anyway.

You also sing the praises of defense funding. I agree, many great discoveries have been funded by, say, DARPA. However, break it down by dollar spent. Because the money isn't allocated by peer review, but rather the whims of some brass, I personally don't feel it is efficiently allocated. Our impression when dealing with ONR (for example) is that they had absolutely no clue what they were interested in as a research aim, and had no clue what we were actually doing. They just thought we had some cool "high tech looking" stuff. Further, we as researchers didn't really care about their misguided scientific goals. It was sort of an unspoken understanding that we were doing cool stuff, and they had money to burn or else they wouldn't be getting anymore. All the while, the NIH is strapped with many of their institutes floating below a 10% award rate. Most of the reviewers would like to fund, say, 30-40% of the projects. Imagine if a quarter of that defense money was allocated by experts how much more efficiently it would be spent.

Science is a lot like playing the lottery, except the odds are way better.

I amend my comment. Science is a lot like the lottery. Except the odds are way better and everybody wins.

I was attempting to say that people should not be fanatic on either side of this argument, as not all scientific research is the most efficient topic or use of resources and not all research deemed "insignificant" is actually insignificant.

The fact that people reacted so strongly to ANY criticism of current research or justifications for it shows just how fanatic some people are about the need to defend any and all research.

It's the nature of a scientist or science minded people to find value and merit in almost any scientific pursuit. But in a world of limited resources and with many other problems, we have to accept that there is an opportunity cost to any and all research, no matter how important.

For some the valuation of this opportunity cost will differ.

Explain to someone who has no insurance or has a problem with medical bills or has no job or has family members fighting abroad or is getting foreclosed on....that we need to spend money to better understand hermaphroditic snails and the intricacies of their mating rituals in order to better understand evolution and reproduction to maybe one day apply that technology to genetic research or fertility programs.

Then watch them give you the look of "thats great but why do I care about that now?" and understand that they are part of the greater good too.

Excuse me, what? This isn't us being fanatic. This is more simple dismissiveness. You haven't convincingly demonstrated significant wasteful spending. Your arguments are all hypothetical or anecdotal. Give me data to sink my teeth into and I might bother to show you fanatical.

Of course there are other priorities, but maybe basic science and medical research don't even register in the budget. You're the one defending defense research, remember? I would send citizens buried by medical expenses (like myself) knocking on your door. I wouldn't suggest they consider cuts to research that experts in biological sciences have agreed show promise. I hate to think how many advancements we aren't funding as it is.

Where I will fault science is in their incapacity to efficiently communicate. Our job description amounts to summarizing the unintuitive. For my money, this communication gulf accounts for most of the perceived waste in science. When you're inside you see how all the ant work science (both metaphorical and literal) contributes. Most of the great discoveries end up looking more like great summaries. Every field has someone come along once a decade or two, but it's hard to know who. Then the universe is easier to understand; and everybody wins.

Here's an example. Studying gill-withdrawal responses in sea slugs provided the foundation for what we now know about neuronal learning and memory. This was circa 1952. Reasoning similar to yours would have prohibited that expense. That would have been dumb. I agree if your point is simply that we should do a better job of convincing you of that.

I don't feel compelled to provide concrete data because I never took a concrete stance for or against scientific spending. Even when referencing military research it was because some people commented about cutting military spending as though that would have no effect on research funding.

My posts were to point out that the question of research with merit is a very difficult one to answer especially if "the greater good" is used as a criteria because "greater good" encompasses things outside of science and which may be much more immediate than the results of research (ie healthcare, employment, international affairs, etc.)

Those things being high impact and immediate could have a negative impact when using "greater good" in a simplified way because each person's cost-benefit analysis of research will vary depending on their circumstances. I can only assume that the greater good is some kind of aggregate so you cant ignore the individual.

In fact, in order to use the greater good as a measuring stick to even START this debate in a "concrete" way as you say, the following would have to be answered and I don't think you could get a room of people to agree on the answers to them much less a nation or planet.


Who is affected by the greater good?
What do we mean by greater good (greater outcome, greater meaning, greater support)?
How is it measured?
Over what period of time?
In what way and to what are we comparing it?
What terms is the final measure of the cost-benefit analysis? Dollars? Happiness? Health? Opinion?

You said your reaction is not fanatic, yet you're attacking me as a foe despite the fact I never actually rallied against ur stance.

This entire time I'm essentially saying "people need to be more aware of the larger picture when trying to answer this question because both sides seem to focus on the smaller parts that support them (and therefore come across semi-fanatic). Furthermore if a proper analysis is used then ud likely find some research doesnt cut the mustard and some is not as insignificant as it might have first seemed."

To which you've promptly replied each time explaining about how mistaken I am in my understanding of the importance of scientific research. I left a piece of your last post so you can see how aggressively you address me directly despite me never having said I disagree with, but only with the vigor of which people will argue scientific research even when the other side has a valid point...or in this case were not making the point ur arguing against to begin with.

@dirkdeagler7

You keep saying I'm being fanatic, or aggressive. Nothing in that quote could be construed as such. It was a direct response to the following quote from your previous post:

"Explain to someone who has no insurance or has a problem with medical bills or has no job or has family members fighting abroad or is getting foreclosed on....that we need to spend money to better understand hermaphroditic snails and the intricacies of their mating rituals in order to better understand evolution and reproduction to maybe one day apply that technology to genetic research or fertility programs."

Presumably you would also argue that they would not be convinced by the need to study the intricacies of sea-slug gill withdrawal reflexes. Your posts seem to suggest that someone other than scientists (some vaguely defined "greater good") should be dictating which specific research aims should be funded. You suggest we should be "asking" these people if that money should be spent.

My contention is that scientists have spent their (already meager) funds with remarkable efficiency. My example was meant to illustrate that asking lay people what science should be funded is likely to have prevented some of the most critical research of the last century from ever having taken place. They don't understand the broader impacts of the research, and thus lack the expertise necessary to evaluate its merit. Sure, someone in pain will probably balk at those sorts of studies. However, if you ask them "are you glad someone did the necessary research to develop ____insert_medical_procedure here____," then I think you'll find they're happy their forefathers spent a few pennies studying snails. The fact is the reverse argument does not hold up. We all, scientists not withstanding, are experts in basic human needs and suffering. For many, scientists that's what drove us to the work. You act as though we can not evaluate the merit of research with respect to the larger picture. I think you're wrong. We do it all the time.

Also, I'm a bit insulted by your reference to people with medical bills, or family members fighting abroad as I fall into both categories. We all have our cross to bear. I don't think I'm alone in responding "I'll be fine, spend the money on the future."

Your fanaticism is in not being able to see that I'm not arguing against you, nor really against your true hurdles (the guy in the video above who will never see the merit in slugs or snails regardless of your evidence). I'm arguing against the need to see the other side as a combatant and instead as a group that has a different expertise and perspective. The 2nd voice in a complex evaluation at a national or global level.

Science minded people can easily project the benefits of research and have a lot of faith in science's ability to provide exponential benefits in the future. It's because this IS the case that this is even a debate. What WE seem incapable of doing is accepting that even exponential benefits and aggregate benefits can fall prey to scope and mass.

People on the other side don't see the long term or the exponential benefits however because theyre not science minded. Their focus has likely been somewhere else like business, healthcare, politics, social issues, etc. and so they will know more about THOSE lasting impacts than science minded people (including you and I). Unless youre suggesting science minded people are more experts on these topics as well?

So when using the explicit or implicit "greater good" as a measure it can be surprising how things unfold. I say "greater good" like that because the idea that the future benefit of current research is worth current spending over immediate problems implies "the greater good of society over time" and if you disagree with that then we can discuss that some other day.

Let me assist you quickly in countering my own comments so you can see why I feel we're not on the same page. The counter to the arguments i've expressed would be that "greater good" evaluation from moment to moment is NOT the correct way to fund research. Because the value that the general population will put on immediate issues (or support through public policy/voting/opinion) will always carry more weight than solving problems in the future (the immediacy bias of humans) it can not be used as a forward thinking way of funding research.

In other words, we don't need to convince people of greater good or of researches value over other uses of resources. The reason is that the only way to properly do science research is as a ongoing project on a mass scale with inter-dependencies that are too complex for anyone but the most informed to evaluate.

Arguing dollars and cents through cost benefit analysis or some other method would ultimately work against research funding, particularly when arguing with business and fiscal spending experts that can play on immediate human need/emotion.

As an aside, i enjoy this discussion but I truly think that there is a miscommunication about what topics you and I are concerned about and what our exact stances on them are. Perhaps this is my fault for not making my stance or opinion more clear because I was not trying to chime in on the debate at large, but chime in on the way people were undertaking the debate.

I believe research funding is even more important than immediate needs and that the justification for them does not have to meet any "greater good" measures because, having studied economics in college, I'm aware of how bad our evaluation of non-concrete goods/services are (ie the evaluation of human life or environmental impacts expressed in real world terms like money).

Because I believe this, I have to accept that it is an IMPORTANT balance to have people as biased in the opposite direction around to offset my opinion and I welcome open discussion (ie without assuming they don't know what theyre talking about from the beginning) with those people because it helps me to feel that our society IS actually meeting the needs of both types of people as best it can.

What I don't do is raise my nose at them as being uninformed and incapable of understanding the issues at large because I believe they do, but with a different process all together which still has value. I also don't assume that my fact and science based arguments will always win out over arguments with immediacy and immediate human benefit (which are very difficult to put a value on).

I apologize for harping on greater good, but it was being thrown around and wielded (even if implicitly) as though it was a single edged sword when it is in fact a double edged sword when the issue is viewed with the proper scope. I also didn't feel the need to be yet another voice clamoring for science funding when the opposite side had little to no presence. Group think is dangerous and without voices to temper the enthusiasm it's easy to forget that debates have 2 sides and both typically have merit even if the other side wouldn't care to admit it.