National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope

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National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope was a 73-page report released on May 26, 2011 by US Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican from Oklahoma, accusing the National Science Foundation of poor management and practices, criticizing various research projects, and in particular several in the social sciences. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Mainstream press coverage generated a public controversy and a stir in academia.

Contents

Report

The May 26, 2011 report "National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope" was highly critical of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Conservative Republican Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma) argued that poor management and practices at NSF, "waste, fraud, duplication and mismanagement" have resulted in losses of over $1.2 billion, with a further $1.7 billion in unspent funds. [6] The report fingered several studies that exemplify "waste and duplication" in its press release:

An "$80,000 study on why the same teams always dominate March Madness", a "$315,000 study suggesting playing FarmVille on Facebook helps adults develop and maintain relationships", a study costing "$1 million for an analysis of how quickly parents respond to trendy baby names", a study costing "$50,000 to produce and publicize amateur songs about science, including a rap called "Money 4 Drugz," and a misleading song titled "Biogas is a Gas, Gas, Gas";" a study costing "$2 million to figure out that people who often post pictures on the internet from the same location at the same time are usually friends"; and "$581,000 on whether online dating site users are racist". [6] Ineffective management examples, cited in the report, included "ineffective contracting", "$1.7 billion in unspent funds sitting in expired, undisbursed grant accounts", "at least $3 million in excessive travel funds", "a lack of accountability or program metrics to evaluate expenditures" and "inappropriate staff behavior including porn surfing and Jello wrestling and skinny-dipping at NSF-operated facilities in Antarctica". [6]

The report has recommended to clarify and establish guidelines on what is meant by "transformative science", measure success and ensure accountability, improve grant accountability, reduce duplication, consolidate the Directorate for Education & Human Resources and most controversially, eliminate the Social, Behavioral, and Economics Directorate which receives a total of $200–300 million per year. [6] The press release noted that "The social sciences should not be the focus of our premier basic scientific research agency". [6] Coburn questioned whether "these social sciences represent obvious national priorities that deserve a cut of the same pie" as the natural sciences. [7]

Reception and critique

In 2011, NSF replied to the report, saying that it "has been diligent about addressing concerns from members of Congress about workforce and grant management issues, and NSF's excellent record of tracking down waste and prosecuting wrongdoing is apparent" from the report itself, and that even some of the cases featured in the press release, like the inappropriate actions in the Antarctica facility, were internally reviewed and dealt with within the NSF. [8] [7] It was pointed out that NSF's budget of about $7 billion represents about 0.5% of the projected 2011 federal deficit. [9] NSF has stated the report's claim for the biggest saving in unused money, is based on a "misreading of federal statutes", or an accounting misunderstanding. According to NSF, it is money obligated for multiyear grants. [10]

Controversy arose from the fact that the report highlighted many studies as pointless or wasteful, and made fun of them as "silly", or not "serious science". [2] It was claimed to undervalue the social sciences such as economics, political science, sociology, psychology, linguistics and others, [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [11] [12] [13] including, for example, collecting demographic statistics and other data on the US population, used in public policy and decision making. [13] Commentators have noted that attacks on "silly science" have a long tradition during economic downturns: in the 1970s a notable example was the Golden Fleece Awards established by Senator William Proxmire. [2]

Several professional associations of academics, such as the American Political Science Association and the Association for Psychological Science criticized the report. [14] [11] Academics allege that the report had inaccurate descriptions of their research, often misinterpreted them, or lacked the understanding of the underlying goals. [9] [2] [3] Others described it as "flat-out inaccurate". [15] Professor John Hibbing noted, it is "legitimate to ask what kind of scientific research is important and what isn't", but a nonscientific report by a politician may not be the best way to achieve this goal. [9]

On July 11, 2011, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) opposed in a letter to the House Appropriations Committee, to reduce funding for the NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, stating, as an example, that the work of social scientists had been part of the development of geographic information systems that could be used in responses to disasters such as the September 11 attacks. [16]

Impact

The report started a controversy, which resulted in a Congressional inquiry and one-year long study, with Texas Republican Lamar Smith chairing the House Science Committee, [17] and a 2014 Congressional proposal to limit NSF's grant-writing authority. In April 2014 the NSF board responded, breaking its tradition of not commenting on pending legislation. [18]

Related Research Articles

National Science Foundation United States government agency

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government, that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health. With an annual budget of about US$8.3 billion, the NSF funds approximately 25%, of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing.

National Science Digital Library

The United States' National Science Digital Library (NSDL) is an open-access online digital library and collaborative network of disciplinary and grade-level focused education providers. NSDL's mission is to provide quality digital learning collections to the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education community, both formal and informal, institutional and individual. NSDL's collections are refined by a network of STEM educational and disciplinary professionals. Their work is based on user data, disciplinary knowledge, and participation in the evolution of digital resources as major elements of effective STEM learning.

Tom Coburn American politician and physician

Thomas Allen Coburn was an American politician and physician. A Republican, he was a United States Representative and later a United States Senator from Oklahoma.

American Political Science Association Professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States

The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States. Founded in 1903, it publishes four academic journals. APSA Organized Sections publish or are associated with 15 additional journals.

Grants are non-repayable funds or products disbursed or given by one party, often a government department, corporation, foundation or trust, to a recipient, often a nonprofit entity, educational institution, business or an individual. In order to receive a grant, some form of "Grant Writing" often referred to as either a proposal or an application is required.

Medical research Wide array of research

Medical research, also known as experimental medicine, encompasses a wide array of research, extending from "basic research", – involving fundamental scientific principles that may apply to a preclinical understanding – to clinical research, which involves studies of people who may be subjects in clinical trials. Within this spectrum is applied research, or translational research, conducted to expand knowledge in the field of medicine.

Golden Fleece Award

The Golden Fleece Award (1975–1988) was a tongue-in-cheek award given to public officials in the United States for their squandering of public money, its name sardonically purloined from the actual Order of the Golden Fleece, a prestigious chivalric award created in the late-15th Century, and a play on the transitive verb fleece, as in charging excessively for goods or services. United States Senator William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, began to issue the Golden Fleece Award in 1975 in monthly press releases. The Washington Post once referred to the award as "the most successful public relations device in politics today." Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, referred to the award as being "as much a part of the Senate as quorum calls and filibusters."

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), previously science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET), is a broad term used to group together these academic disciplines. This term is typically used when addressing education policy and curriculum choices in schools to improve competitiveness in science and technology development. It has implications for workforce development, national security concerns and immigration policy. The science in STEM typically refers to two out of the three major branches of science: natural sciences, including biology, physics, and chemistry; and formal sciences, of which mathematics is an example, along with logic and statistics. The third major branch of science, social science such as: psychology, sociology, and political science, are categorized separately from the other two branches of science, and are instead grouped together with humanities and arts to form another counterpart acronym named HASS - Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. Psychology however is considered a major part of STEM, besides the other 2 subjects. In the United States/ United Kingdom education system, in elementary, middle, and high schools, the term science refers primarily to the natural sciences, with mathematics being a standalone subject, and the social sciences are combined with the humanities under the umbrella term social studies.

Philip Rubin

Philip E. Rubin is an American cognitive scientist, technologist, and science administrator known for raising the visibility of behavioral and cognitive science and neuroscience at a national level. During his research career he was best known for his theoretical contributions and pioneering technological developments, starting in the 1970s, related to speech synthesis and speech production, including articulatory synthesis and sinewave synthesis, and their use in studying complex temporal events, particularly understanding the biological bases of speech and language.

The Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) is a consortium of national cyber security institutions, including academic research centers, U.S. federal government laboratories, and nonprofit organizations, all of which have long-standing, widely recognized expertise in cyber security research and development (R&D). The I3P is managed by The George Washington University, which is home to a small administrative staff that oversees and helps direct consortium activities.

Larry Bartels

Larry Martin Bartels is an American political scientist and the Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and Shayne Chair in Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University. Prior to his appointment at Vanderbilt, Bartels served as the Donald E. Stokes Professor of Public Policy and International Relations and founding director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.

David J. Anderson is an American neurobiologist. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. His lab is located at the California Institute of Technology, where he currently holds the position of Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology, TianQiao and Chrissy Chen Leadership Chair and Director, TianQiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience. Anderson is a founding adviser of the Allen Institute for Brain Research, a non-profit research institute funded by the late Paul G. Allen, and spearheaded the Institute's early effort to generate a comprehensive map of gene expression in the mouse brain.

Steve Alexander (businessman)

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Marcia Linn American cognitive scientist

Marcia C. Linn is a professor of development and cognition specializing in education in mathematics, science, and technology in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1970 she has made significant contributions to the understanding of how computers and technology can be used to support learning and teaching in mathematics and science. Her CV includes an extensive list of presentations and published books, articles, and peer reviewed papers in science education and education technology.

Robosquirrel

Robosquirrel refers to several versions of robotic squirrels developed by researchers at the University of California, Davis and San Diego State University. Robosquirrel is currently in use and development in an interdisciplinary research project that uses biorobotics to investigate how communication between prey and predators evolve in response to each other. It has received extensive science and popular media coverage. It stirred controversy when Senator Tom Coburn listed it in his Wastebook 2012 as a scientific research project that wastes United States federal tax dollars. Senator Coburn's release of Wastebook 2012 was quickly picked up by the popular media and the robosquirrel project was the headline of many media stories.

The White House BRAIN Initiative, is a collaborative, public-private research initiative announced by the Obama administration on April 2, 2013, with the goal of supporting the development and application of innovative technologies that can create a dynamic understanding of brain function.

Donald H. Owings

Donald H. Owings was a professor of psychology and faculty member of the Animal Behavior Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis. His research focused on ground squirrels, in particular, their interactions with predators such as rattlesnakes; and, more generally, on concepts of communication within and between species. In 1994, he was elected as a fellow of the animal behavior society and in 2010 he received the Exemplar Award for mentoring graduate students.

Cora Bagley Marrett American sociologist

Cora Bagley Marrett is an American sociologist. From May 2011 until August 2014, Marrett served as the Deputy Director of the National Science Foundation.

OpenTheBooks.com is an American nonprofit organization based in the Chicago suburb of Burr Ridge, Illinois. It describes itself as a transparency group devoted to posting online all the disclosed spending of every level of government across the United States. Their oversight reports on government spending have been featured on multiple news outlets including C-SPAN's hour-long Q&A program with Brian Lamb, ABC Good Morning America, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and USA Today.

Tara W. Hudiburg is an American forest scientist who specializes in ecosystem modeling. She is an associate professor at the University of Idaho in the department of Forest, Rangeland and Fire Sciences. Hudiburg was honored with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2019.

References

  1. 1 2 The Unexamined Society David Brooks, The New York Times (July 7, 2011)
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Boyle, Alan. "Cosmic Log - Funny science sparks serious spat". Cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com. Archived from the original on 2011-05-30. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
  3. 1 2 3 "Coburn's NSF Idiocy : Mike the Mad Biologist". Scienceblogs.com. Archived from the original on 2011-09-06. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
  4. 1 2 "Science GRO plays offense and defense in wake of new congressional attacks on behavioral science". Apa.org. June 2011. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
  5. 1 2 Mervis, Jeffrey (2011-06-03). "Social Sciences Face Uphill Battle Proving Their Worth to Congress - ScienceInsider". News.sciencemag.org. Archived from the original on 2011-08-14. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 "Dr. Coburn Releases New Oversight Report Exposing Waste, Mismanagement at the National Science Foundation - Press Releases - Tom Coburn, M.D., United States Senator from Oklahoma". Coburn.senate.gov. 2011-05-26. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011. Retrieved 2015-10-14.
  7. 1 2 JENNY MANDEL of Greenwire (2011-05-26). "Sen. Coburn Sets Sight on Waste, Duplication at Science Agency". NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
  8. ↑ "Senate Report Finds Billions In Waste On Science Foundation Studies". Fox News. 2011-05-26. Retrieved 2011-12-17.
  9. 1 2 3 Pappas, Stephanie (2011-05-26). "Scientists Cry Foul Over Report Criticizing National Science Foundation - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience - NBC News". NBC News. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
  10. ↑ Mervis, Jeffrey (2011-05-26). "Senator's Criticism of Science Foundation Draws Fire - ScienceInsider". News.sciencemag.org. Archived from the original on 2011-09-03. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
  11. 1 2 "All of Science Stands Behind Behavioral Science at NSF - Association for Psychological Science". Psychologicalscience.org. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
  12. ↑ Environmental policy UC davis. June 2011
  13. 1 2 Poeppel, David (2011-07-15). "Coburn wrong on research - POLITICO.com Print View". Dyn.politico.com. Archived from the original on 2012-03-27. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
  14. ↑ "APSA Responds to Senator Coburn's Report on NSF Funding | APSA". Apsanet.org. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
  15. ↑ Koerth, Maggie (1999-05-17). "Coburn anti-NSF report misleading, factually incorrect – Boing Boing". Boingboing.net. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
  16. ↑ Letter from AAAS
  17. ↑ Brad Johnson How One GOP-Controlled Committee Is Waging A War On Science HPMG News, 06/24/2014
  18. ↑ Eli Kintisch,Should the Government Fund Only Science in the "National Interest"? National Geographic News. October 29, 2014
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