

Stupid scientists - nhoss2
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/08/19/none-so-blind/

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amirmc
I had to read that twice before I understood it.

I've heard of basic science research (and funding) being likened to growing
crops (albeit with different timeframes). You have to spend a lot of time and
effort sowing seeds and about 20-30 years later you get to harvest the
benefits.

Edit: I think other commenters might be missing the irony in the OP. The
author mentions LCD monitors, prescription glasses, medicine, clean water,
medical technology, the internet, satellites and computers. After all that, he
ends with _"What have they [scientists] ever done for me?"_

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shabble
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public
order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have
the Romans ever done for us?

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yummyfajitas
This article makes an all too common economic fallacy.

It argues against a proposed _marginal_ cut in spending on science. In order
to portray this as a bad idea, he then argues that in _total_ , spending on
science is a good thing.

Similarly, I oppose 10% cuts in military spending because if the military were
cut 100% 50 years ago, I'd probably have suffered under communism.

This is the logical fallacy of the "excluded middle".

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j_baker
I don't think he's making any policy suggestions so much as he's fighting the
mindset a lot of people have: the anti-intellectual stance that scientists are
a bunch of ivory tower elites that have no real impact on society. Certainly,
there are places where we're unnecessarily spending money in science. But that
doesn't justify some anti-science rhetoric you're seeing from some.

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hugh3
Yes, but he's "arguing against it" by reshaping it into a ridiculously extreme
and self-evidently-false form.

It's an intellectually dishonest and particularly annoying (yet extremely
common) way to argue.

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Goladus
It's a 4 paragraph blog entry meant to be funny and make you think a little
bit. It's not trying to be anything more than that. "Intellectually dishonest"
is an unfair charge.

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watchandwait
In 2011, the the U.S. government will spend more money directly bailing out
Fannie Mae than it will spend on NASA's entire budget.

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hugh3
According to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA> the inflation-
adjusted budget of NASA over its _entire_ history from 1958 to 2011 is less
than $800 billion.

That is significantly less than the cost of... several single large
initiatives that have passed through Congress recently (no doubt if I picked
an actual example then I'd wind up with a political argument on my hands...)

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ulvund
I have never seen this attitude

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winestock
I haven't seen such an attitude, either. Not stated so explicitly, anyway.

What is more common is the attitude that, for example, we should put off
manned space exploration "until we solve all of our problems here on Earth." I
have personally witnessed this attitude in high school cheerleaders and DC
lawyers.

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flatline
I rather thought that this is exactly the attitude he was parodying - calls to
defund seemingly frivolous research, things that have no immediately obvious
applicability to the general public such as the space program, etc.

~~~
mkr-hn
Like when Sarah Palin decried fruit fly research in a portion of a speech
where she was talking about the need to fund autism research.

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stopsucking
Today I learned how many people on HN can't recognize satire.

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mathattack
Funny! And it's a more concise and effective call to arms than a 30 page peer
reviewed article spilling with data.

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diego_moita
[irony] Yeah, these scientists! They only want to talk about bullshit like
evolution and global warning! [/irony]

