Incredible how someone with the slogan 'Making America Great Again' can then get away with doing the exact opposite of that. It's like watching the captain take a sledge-hammer to the bridge of the ship that a few 100 million people are depending on.
Fortunately in NL we seem to have managed to put a stop to rightwing populism taking over politics entirely (for now, at least), it will certainly come at a price (coalition forming will be difficult) but anything better than a country governed by a party hell bent on un-doing 50 years of progress.
> Incredible how someone with the slogan 'Making America Great Again' can then get away with doing the exact opposite of that.
This type of cut is exactly what those who elected Trump intended him to advocate. I know no one who voted for him who is angry about these proposed cuts, and many who believe they don't go deep enough.
"The National Institutes of Health, for example, would be cut by nearly $6 billion, about a fifth of the NIH budget."
Many of their employees have drop dead salaries. And the same time these department are corrupt as fuck (say hand out of SBIR grants to buddies). I know I will be down voted but trust me, I won't shed a tear about these cuts.
Mate, I know that the plural of anecdote is not data. And I can't provide specifics because such a thing may easily blow up in my face (blow back).
But just FYI:
I had a SBIR grant rejected and it was rejected with a cause. But I also had a SBIR grant rejected and the rejection was totally bullshit. There can't be another name for this but corruption. At the same time, when I submitted this application, a buddy who got a major SBIR grant in the past told me not to have high hopes. He explained to me how and why his proposal was selected from the big stack of proposals. It is not an open race.
Don't shed a tear. I am sure this officials with their high 6 figs salaries can easily find a job in the private sector. Enjoy!
> There can't be another name for this but corruption.
So you've had 2 grant proposals rejected—and even you only claim 1 of them was incorrect. So your solution to a grant rejection is to burn the whole system down?
I could not know that the first one was not feasible. I had no access to the equipment (but later someone had access who published a paper). But still, one of the main points the reviewer did not get. Even if it was not a good idea from an energetic standpoint, it was still a good idea to store energy. If you have electricity (wind!) that you can't use, it may still be a good idea to convert this to fuel.
The second one had nothing comparable. We had peer reviewed publications. Nobody had this in this field. The main argument was that it is financially not feasible for mass production. The reviewer was off by factor 100.
The guy who got the proposal, he told me how it went. I don't want to go into details.
The rejection rates for SBIR's are commonly 90%+ because there are far more proposals than dollars.
Now you want to burn down the agency because you had two SBIR proposals rejected, which is statistically to be expected for good proposals and certainly for proposals which you describe as "not feasible" and "not suitable for mass production" (yes, I realize the second description was applied by the reviewer not by you, but that response indicates you failed to adequately make the business case for your proposal which is essential to success in every SBIR application process).
Getting funding for ideas is hard. It always has been and always will be because there are more good ideas than dollars. Most proposals, including most good proposals, will never get funded. This isn't a conspiracy. It's a fact.
Burning down our scientific infrastructure and slashing its funding because it's currently not funded at a level that allows it to do the things you want it to do is a strange response at best.
"The rejection rates for SBIR's are commonly 90%+ because there are far more proposals than dollars."
I know. But I thought it is based on merit. If you try to tell me it is a lottery it should require very few people.
"Now you want to burn down the agency because you had two SBIR proposals rejected,"
Reading is not your stength. Somebody explained me, how grants are given and I don't think I like the idea.
You're a scientist and a quantitative thinker. You need to analyze this domain like a quantitative thinker instead of simply reacting emotionally.
In situations where there are far more good ideas than funding, good ideas will be rejected. This is mathematics. No other outcome is possible (well, technically you could also distribute the same total resources among all good ideas instead of among a subset of good ideas, but spreading the same total budget across a much larger number of projects means a total of zero projects receive adequate funding to be completed and the resulting outcome is worse than the subset-funding outcome).
Good ideas being rejected doesn't mean it's "just a lottery" where no work needs to be done to select the ideas that are to be funded. Most ideas are not good ideas, even in situations where there are more good ideas than resources. Filtering down to that group of good ideas still takes considerable time and effort, even in the case where most of the good ideas will in the end not be funded because there are more good ideas than resources.
Most people don't get funded. Most people with good ideas don't get funded. That's not the fault of the system. It's mathematics that no one involved in the process wants but everyone involved in the process has to work with.
"In situations where there are far more good ideas than funding, good ideas will be rejected. This is mathematics."
This was not a vague idea, this was a project that was very advanced. Obviously nothing came out of the funded ideas or I would have heard about.
But again. I was told how this grants are given and I am glad I don't waste my time with it anymore. I played Hare and Tortoise too long already in my life. I became successful when I stopped playing it.
Fortunately in NL we seem to have managed to put a stop to rightwing populism taking over politics entirely (for now, at least), it will certainly come at a price (coalition forming will be difficult) but anything better than a country governed by a party hell bent on un-doing 50 years of progress.