Starving science: a petty, shortsighted national "strategy"

This image taken approximately 438 miles above the earth's

surface provides a spectacular view of the Lena Delta in

Russia. Image courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, whose

 images are all in the public domain.

150 years ago, passenger pigeons were so numerous that they could black out the sky when their flocks passed overhead. The last passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, died in the Cinncinnati Zoo in 1914. All we have left of this species are specimens held in museum collections.

One of the most extensive collections of animal specimens in the world is managed by a tiny unit of the U.S. Geological Survey, called the Biological Survey Unit. A small group of curators maintains a collection of more than one million animals collected over the past 130 years by scientists and ordinary citizens across the U.S.

Now, for reasons that are at best mysterious, the USGS is planning to eliminate the Biological Survey Unit. The BSU has a very small budget, a mere $1.6 million out of the USGS's budget of $1.1 billion, and an even tinier fraction of the country's $4.4 trillion budget.

What the heck are they thinking? Shutting down the Biological Survey Unit won't save enough money in the vast government budget to even be noticed, but the loss of its precious collections will reverberate through the decades. Does someone in the USGS or the Department of the Interior have a grudge against the BSU? Or are they just petty?

The BSU's collection resides in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, one of the great museums of its type in the world. The collection contains some 370,000 birds, 300,000 mammals, and 390,000 amphibians and reptiles, many of them dating back to the late 19th century. These specimens represent a unique view back in time, illustrating the natural history of our continent and the animals that have lived on it over the years.

It's only through collections like this that scientists can understand how human activities have affected our natural world. For example, historical collections of eggs from wild birds allowed scientists to document the thinning of eggshells caused by the pesticide DDT, which was made famous by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring.

Just a few weeks ago, the presidents of three of the leading animal science societies in the U.S. wrote a letter to Science magazine pleading for the USGS to continue funding its Biological Survey Unit. So far, the USGS has not responded to them.

Museum collections may not be as flashy as some areas science (perhaps we need a new Indiana Jones movie to raise their profile), but that doesn't mean they are not critically important to our understanding of the natural world. Once the BSU disappears, it's not coming back: the curators will retire or find other jobs, and the collection will become inaccessible, even if it still exists somewhere in the bowels of the Smithsonian.

The plan to shutdown the Biological Survey Unit seems indicative of a larger trend of neglecting investment in our future. It may reflect a particular form of neglect by the USGS, as pointed out by Cynthia Ramotnik in a 2015 article. It also reflects the severe cut to the USGS budget proposed by Donald Trump last month: he requested a total budget of $860 million, which represents a 20% cut from the current year's budget of $1.08 billion. But in the case of the BSU, the budget impact is so small that it seems worse than neglectful to cut it: it is shortsighted and petty.

When asked by the Washington Post, former House speaker (and current Trump enthusiast) Newt Gingrich admitted that the cutting the BSU's $1.6 million budget wouldn't matter to the larger budget, but he then went on to comment, “if this collection is that valuable, there are probably 20 billionaires that could endow it.”

Great: let's hand over our national resources to billionaires, and if they're not interested, well, it must be that the resources weren't that valuable in the first place. Not.

This is ridiculous. We're still a rich country, and we shouldn't be eliminating projects like the Biological Survey Unit just to give a massive tax cut to rich people, or just to make a point about budget cutting, or whatever the reason that the USGS and the Department of the Interior might offer. (The USGS hasn't responded to my inquiries.) Maintaining our museum collections not only shows respect for the thousands of people who built them over the years, but it benefits the countless scientists, educators, school children, and others who will learn from these collections in the future.

What do the Presidential candidates think about science?

ScienceDebate.org recently posed 14 questions to President Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and just a few days ago, the candidates answered all 14.  Can we learn what they actually think about science from these answers?  Well, maybe just a little bit.  

My first inclination, on going to the ScienceDebate2012 website, was to look for the candidates' positions on the two biggest scientific topics in the political arena today: evolution and global warming.  Somehow, ScienceDebate2012 only asked about one of these, which I'll get to in a minute.

The ScienceDebate2012 organization calls its list "the top American science questions: 2012", but the questions themselves are a disappointment.  They're what you'd expect from a committee: lots of nice-sounding, polite questions, but nothing that really challenges the candidates.  I guess SD2012 was afraid that the candidates might get all offended, or maybe that fewer scientists would sign their petition.  But if you read the answers, you'll see that the candidates just answered the question they wanted to hear, as politicians love to do.  Most of the answers describe policies we already know (for those who are paying attention to the campaigns), but an interesting surprise popped up: Mitt Romney has no fondness for NASA.  Jump to the bottom to learn more.

Most of the questions are big fat softballs, starting with the first one: "What policies will best ensure that America remains a world leader in innovation?" http://www.sciencedebate.org/debate12/   Good tough question, guys!  We only have 14 questions, and you waste one on this?  Unsurprisingly, the answers to this one just repeated campaign talking points.

Before looking at some real answers, let's start with the howlingly obvious question that ScienceDebate2012 failed to ask.  

The Un-asked Question: do you believe that evolution should be taught in public schools, and that it should be presented as the only explanation for how species arose?  

This question has only one right answer, as any biologist worthy of the name knows.  Evolution is the foundation of all of modern biology, genetics, infectious disease research, you name it.  And the U.S. is one of the few advanced countries where a significant number of its citizens don't accept evolution, opting instead for an archaic religious position that claims Earth is only a few thousand years old.  

We should know the candidates' answers.  In 2008, ten Republican presidential candidates were asked if they believe in the theory of evolution.  Only 7 said yes--but one was Governor Romney.  Back in 2007, he told the New York Times that "the science class is where to teach evolution," and that intelligent design was "for the religion class or philosophy class."  President Obama also supports evolution, and opposes teaching creationism in the science classroom. 

So the candidates agree on this one - at least they did in the past.  But Romney's fellow Republicans don't all agree. In particular, we need to ask Governor Romney: do you support the crazy religious extremism of your fellow Republican, Congressman Paul Broun from Georgia, who just announced that evolution, embryology, and the Big Bang theory are

 "lies straight from the pit of hell"?  

And Broun also stated that the Bible - and his wacko interpretation of it - should be used to run our government.  Any candidate for president should denounce this call for theocratic rule.

And by the way, if a Democratic Congressman said anything like this, I'd throw the same question at President Obama.

Now on to one of the real questions, on global warming. ScienceDebate2012 posed the question this way:

"The Earth’s climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these changes on life on the planet. What is your position on cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and other policies proposed to address global climate change—and what steps can we take to improve our ability to tackle challenges like climate change that cross national boundaries?"  

Obama's short answer acknowledges that "climate change is one of the biggest issues of this generation," and goes on to say he will "continue efforts to reduce our dependence on oil and lower our greenhouse gas emissions."  Vague generalities, and nothing he hasn't said before, but consistent at least.

Romney's answer, though, tries to have it both ways.  He first says that global warming is indeed happening and then says, basically, we need more research because it's controversial.  Here's how his lengthy answer begins: 

"My best assessment of the data is that the world is getting warmer, that human activity contributes to that warming, and that policymakers should therefore consider the risk of negative consequences."  

But then he pivots in the very next sentence and claims 

"there remains a lack of scientific consensus on the issue ... and I believe we must supported continued debate and investigation within the scientific community."  

So there you go: yes, global warming is a problem, but let's study it rather than do something.  At the end of his answer, Romney recovers a bit by saying he supports "robust government funding for research on efficient, low-emissions technologies."  So it appears he would support some action on global warming.  But his answer offers a troubling false claim about a lack of scientific consensus: the consensus is rock solid.

Now, I promised one surprise: a bit of new information.  Question 12 covers space exploration and is another softball: 

"What should America's space exploration and utilization goals be in the 21st century and what steps should the government take to help achieve them?" 

I expected some vague answers about how great America is (and both candidates did indeed deliver on that), but Romney surprised me with his answer.

Here's the surprise: Romney comes right out and says he will probably cut the NASA budget.  What he actually said in his answer was: 

"A strong and successful NASA does not require more funding, it needs clearer priorities."

In Washington-speak, this means "NASA has too much money and I will probably cut it."

So at least we know where Romney stands on space exploration.  He wants to downsize it and, apparently, outsource it to other countries.  Here's how he puts it later in his answer: 

"Part of leadership is also engaging and working with our allies and the international community. I will be clear about the nation’s space objectives and will invite friends and allies to cooperate with America in achieving mutually beneficial goals."  

If I worked for NASA, I'd be worried.  

Get football out of our universities

(In which I take on the football-industrial complex, and get myself in trouble)

The Super Bowl is over, finally. The college football^* season is over too. Now we can be spared the breathless, hyperbolic stories about football for a few months, at least until next season. The culture of football in American universities is completely out of control. It is undermining our education system and hurting our competitiveness in technology, science, and engineering. If we keep it up, the U.S. will eventually be little more than the big, dumb jock on the world stage - good for entertainment on the weekend, but not taken seriously otherwise.

Too harsh? I don't think so. I think we need to eliminate football entirely from our universities if we want to maintain our pre-eminent position as the world's scientific and technological leader.

Why do we need to get football out of our universities? I've watched over the years as football has taken an ever-more prominent role in our high schools and colleges, as football coaches have been paid ever-higher salaries, and as football staffs and stadiums have been super-sized. All of this effort goes to the care and feeding of a very small number of (exclusively) male students, most of whom get a poor education and almost none of whom succeed as professional players. Our universities are providing a free training ground for the super-wealthy owners of professional football teams, while getting little in return.

This has got to stop. The core mission of our universities is to educate our students, not to entertain them with big-time sports events. Our political leaders, and all too often our university presidents, seem to have lost sight of this fact.

So I was very pleasantly surprised when President Obama, in his State of the Union speech on January 25, put in a plea for science over football:

"We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair."

Wow, not bad! Of course, as a politician he has to support football, so he argues only that the science fair deserves equal footing with football. (Even that is pretty radical for a politician.) I'll go a big step further: the winner of the science fair deserves far more praise and celebration than any winner of any football game. If football disappeared, we could get our entertainment from another sport, as we do every year after the football season ends. But if we stop producing scientists, other countries will make the discoveries that solve the technological, medical, and engineering problems of the future, and that form the basis for great civilizations.

Now that I've gotten myself in trouble with football fans (and there are many of them), let me get myself in even more trouble, with an example from my own university.

At the University of Maryland last year, the football coach fell out of favor with the athletic director, who wanted to replace him. (This despite the fact that the coach was very successful, with an overall winning record.) The problem was, he had one more year to go in his contract, and the university would have to pay him a cool $2 million if they fired him. U. Maryland doesn't exactly have money to burn: for three years running, it has imposed furloughs on all employees and prohibited all raises, including cost-of-living increases. So you'd think that blowing $2 million to pay a coach to sit on the sidelines, and paying who-knows-how-much to hire a new coach, would be out of the question.

Nope. The brand-new President of the university, in office just one month, announced the hiring of a new coach, along with a $2 million payout to the old coach.

What a bad move. That $2 million should have been spent on, well, how about educating the students? (And don't get me started on football coaches' salaries - they often make 3-5 times more than their own presidents.)

Do we want our universities to be known for their football teams? Or do we want them to be known as educational powerhouses? Apparently, the U. Maryland administration is more interested in building a better football team. Not surprisingly, many of the professors disagree. I can only hope that the students would side with the professors, but I honestly don't know.

Yes, I know the arguments on the other side. "Football makes a profit," some claim. To that I would say, so what? Universities could make a profit running a casino too - should they do that? If football is so profitable, then spin off the teams as private corporations, and let them pay the university a licensing fee to use the university logo. But let's stop pretending they have anything to do with education.

Don't get me wrong. I love sports - I've played them all my life - and I think students should participate in them. It's healthy and fun, and it's part of the college experience. But universities don't need big-time, pseudo-professional athletic teams with outsized coaching staffs. Look at the Ivy League, which comprises 8 of the best universities in the country. They play sports against each other, they don't award athletic scholarships, and their academic programs are the envy of the rest of the world.

The football-industrial complex has too much power over our universities. Nothing else can explain how we spend so much money and time on football, which contributes almost nothing to students' education, while academic departments are cutting faculty and staff. The culture of football worship has gotten so out of control that I think the only solution is to get rid of it entirely.

I don't expect any university to take my advice. But I'll end with another excerpt from President Obama's State of the Union speech, which we should take as a warning:

"Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They’re investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became the home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer.

So, yes, the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn’t discourage us. It should challenge us. .... We’re the home to the world’s best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any place on Earth."

President Obama is right: students do come from all over the world to study in our universities. But they don't come because of the football teams.

^*Note to my friends in other countries: by "football" I mean American football, that game with the peculiar oblong-shaped ball - not the wonderful game of soccer, which almost all other countries call "football."

ADDENDUM: I've done two radio interviews about this blog post, which you can listen to at the following links: 670 The Score, a Chicago sports radio program, and 1560 The Game, a Houston sports radio show.

Science, medicine, and politics mix in new mammography and stem cell guidelines

Today's news included two stories that both illustrate how politicians almost always get science wrong. It never seems to be a good thing when politicians sink their teeth into a scientific or medical question: they are only too happy to distort the facts to achieve their political goals.

First, the new mammography guidelines. This was all over the news two weeks ago: an official federal advisory panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, recommended that women between 40 and 50, who had no risk factors for breast cancer, not have annual mammograms. This caused a firestorm of criticism from many quarters, because the previous guidelines recommended annual screening. The panel determined, after looking at data from the past decade and more, that the risks of excessive screening (many more false positives, and the resulting biopsies and even surgeries) were not justified by the small number of additional cancers detected.

This is a complex issue, and many other bloggers wrote about it, so I'm not going to discuss it in detail. My overall impression was that the panel weighed the evidence and made their recommendations based on the best available science, and I think their decisions were good ones. I'd also note something that the media seems to have missed: about ten years ago, when another panel was debating similar recommendations, there was tremendous political pressure to make annual screening the official policy.