Mooore generic debating polls.

Tried my darnedest to find photos of scientists looking like actual humans instead of the cold, distant figures they're portrayed as in most stock photography. Couldn't avoid the pipettes though ;) Apparently they epitomise "science"?

More on science/medical, less on military.

According to a report from link of Arizona, here are a few shining examples of the kind of scientific research the US government funds...
-$1.5 million to test the endurance of a fish on a treadmill
-$5 million to study the partying habits of fraternities and sororities
-$3.5 million to learn why people are afraid of going to the dentist
-$817,000 to study monkey drool
-$300,000 to study if girls or boys spend more time playing with Barbie dolls (spoiler alert: it's girls)

I'm with link.

What Zanhar said. Science/Medical along with Educational funding should be first and foremost !!!!

@ DarkSarcasm, since you decided to criticize the science without looking at its implications yourself:

The "fish on a treadmill" (not fish btw, amphibians) study is this one: link with its main purpose being learning about the physical environment that might allowed aqueous animals to evolve legs and eventually becoming terrestrial. I find learning what we can about how life on earth evolved valuable information. I'd read at least the discussion portion, it's actually very interesting.

The fraternity one is this one: link. As it mentions in the introduction, fraternities and sororities have exorbitantly high drinking levels when compared to colleges as a whole, which unfortunately leads to disproportionately more cases of sexual assault, hospitalization and death. i would say devising methods of reducing that would be something worth putting money into, especially when it can helps us learn which methods are actually more successful.

I couldn't find a paper for the dentist one, so he might not have published anything yet, but it looks like Dan McNeil is focusing on those with severe phobias towards going to the dentist. Oral health is very important and it looks like his treatment of desensitivity is actually very successful in making sure patients get the treatment they need.

The monkey study is this one: link. It's looks like a fairly complicated paper and I don't think I really understand it from my brief glance. I have to thank you for bringing it up though, it looks like something very interesting to read later on. From what I understand though the main purpose of the study is to learn the evolutionary history of the MUC7 human saliva gene. Instead of the gene being changed in a significant way to change its function, its instead been amplified which runs a bit counter to our current ideas of how evolution works. Definitely something interesting to look into. Also it's published in Nature, one of the top scientific journals in the world, very rarely do they not publish something novel.

The doll one is this one link and it doesn't talk anything at all about whether girls or boys prefer playing with dolls. Instead the focus is on the differences in the genders when it comes to facial recognition. Now this study I'll admit is a bit out there, but it at least brings to question some preconceived notions about how effective we are at recognizing faces.

As a side note, every time Trump goes to Mar-a-Lago he spends $3 million (link) and he's been there over 15 times so far...

That is clearly vital, life-changing research that is absolutely worth being 19 trillion dollars in debt for.

I would say so, The more we know about the world we live in the more options we have towards fixing the problems we face. Also actually try reading the studies I sent you.

Aang basically covered it. Props for seeking out the actual journal articles, reading and interpreting them, and summarising them for us. Lol @ Trump's Mar-A-Lago trips costing the American taxpayer almost 4x as much as the studies.

To add a little: I think the sort of research DarkSarcasm and Aang were discussing exemplifies why we need decent amounts of public funding, despite the senator using it to argue to the opposite.

Such "pure science" - evolution, genetics, neuroscience - doesn't serve an immediate commercial purpose and would be very unlikely to secure private funding. And yet it's completely necessary.

Personally I believe that furthering humanity's body of scientific knowledge is a worthwhile goal in itself. But this aside, it's been shown time and time again that "pure science" leads to future applications and innovations.

There's an link on the MIT website about this - by no means an authoritative source, but it makes some good points. Basically:

“Basic research” is the term used for such studies that are undertaken merely for the sake of curiosity, discovery and knowledge – like some of the evolutionary/genetic/neuroscience studies discussed above. These are basically the backbone of scientific progress, because you don’t often begin to recognise the applications until the discoveries are in hand. It’s an investment for future benefit. It’s the very process of creation, and without it, applications vanish. The bulk of this research is conducted by universities with public funding.

Some tangible examples of what such research has led to:

- Basic research into cell apoptosis has unexpectedly revealed new therapies to treat cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease.
- Basic research at the atomic level developed the hydrogen maser, which now forms the foundation of all GPS systems.
- Basic research have uncovered human cancer genes, though it didn’t set out to find them.
- Richard Schrock’s basic research into random chemical compounds led him to discover the catalysts now used for the green production of pharmaceuticals, fuels, and other synthetic chemicals. He said of this topic: “My work had applications. I just didn’t know it at the time.”
- Research leading to the discovery of plankton (the most abundant species on earth) and its essential role in the world’s ecosystems and in climate regulation. Completely unknown before Penny Chisholm’s research in 1988. She credits federal government funding for the breakthrough, which she received for 25 years. I’m pretty sure the senator, had he been around, would have been very derisive about funding a scientist of “Environmental Studies” for a field like oceanography. And yet her research pretty much revolutionised our understanding of life.

Such research is largely conducted by universities using public funding. However, this support is actually declining. The article gives an example: in 1960, 55 percent of MIT’s campus revenue came from federal research dollars. By 2013, it fell to 22 percent. Scientists say the decline is disrupting the research process: scientists are focusing on projects with a high probability of results because these actually have a chance of getting funded, instead of straying too far into unknown territory and taking the risks that lead to breakthroughs. Basic science is suffering because of reductions in public funding.

This article was also written before Trump’s move to slash research funding, particularly biomedical research – eg. The National Institute of Health (the largest research institute in the country, and one of the largest in the world) will be cut by $6 billion.

I’m not sure what results the senator is advocating for. By reducing public funding more than it already has been, will he be happy to leave the vast majority of research to industries? While they carry out their own types of research, this is pretty much link on near-term commercialisation possibilities, not on pure science. Even this research would suffer indirectly, considering it builds upon the foundation of basic research.

Or should scientists at academic institutions turn to industry sponsorship instead of public sponsorship? This is already happening at an alarming rate due to decreases in public funding, which is having a very poor effect on science: financial relationships with industry have been shown to produce significantly link in the form of pro-industry conclusions. link metastudy[/url] found that obtaining non-commercial funding is essential to maintaining objectivity, and in link article[/url] 15.5% of scientists admitted to altering the design/results of their studies due to pressure of an external funding source.

Aang comprehensively covered why the senator’s particular examples were ill-thought-out. Just going to reinforce that he couldn’t have chosen a worse example in terms of evolution research: Amphibious fishes are extremely important as the evolutionary bridge between marine and terrestrial organisms. They have made and continue to make significant contributions to biological knowledge (which in turn has applications). And considering evolution is the backbone of biology… yeah look. He makes it pretty obvious that he only has an arts degree (*arts vs STEM shade*)