Oh, cry my a river: Craig Barnett, chairman of Intel, boo-hoos about the supposed lack of science funding by the Feds in a whining column in today’s San Francisco Chronicle. He writes:
Barrett doesn’t use actual numbers in his piece, only percentages, raising my lawyer’s radar that the magnitude of the actual dollars being spent on science—in other words, context—might undercut his argument. So, I did a little digging. The DOE’s budget is huge, for example in FY 2008 over $24 billion, with nearly$3.5 billion earmarked for “science” and more than $5.5 billion for “environmental management.” That ain’t hay. Add in who knows how much in earmarks—which Barnett conveniently excluded—and we are talking very real money.The recent budget deal between Republicans and Democrats effectively flat-funds or cuts funding for key science agencies. Excluding “earmarks,” the Department of Energy funding for fiscal year 2008 is up only 2.6 percent, thus losing ground to inflation. The National Science Foundation is up 2.5 percent, with the same result. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is up 11 percent, however the labs where research happens only get 2.3 percent, again losing ground to inflation.
Similarly, National Science Foundation’s budget is more than $5 billion, with $390 million to be invested in nanotechnology. From the NSF’s press release:
Working with other agencies as part of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) nanotechnology research will continue to advance fundamental understanding of materials at the subatomic, atomic, and molecular levels and will enable the development of capabilities to design, manipulate, and construct revolutionary devices and materials with unprecedented properties. The Budget provides $390 million in 2008 for NSF’s nanotechnology research investments, an increase of 4.5 percent from the level proposed in 2007, including funding for a new NSF center to address environmental, health, and safety research needs for nanomaterials.
I believe in generous government funding for science—although I wish that when the money helps private companies strike gold that they would be required to share with the taxpayers who helped make it possible. But science isn’t the be all and end all. There are many other pressing needs and our economy is slowing down.
Sometimes the sense of entitlement within the science sector is breathtaking.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
