[Perdogg]

Yes!

[kinoxi]

No

[Androcles]

Good points in this article but it should not be forgotten that much of America's wartime science came at a vast discount because the Briitish threw open their vast research projects as part of their appeal for aid. The breaking of the sound barrier, for example, rested very very heavily on UK work in this area. Without that science given by the Brits (And being Irish I have little love for my former neighbours), the advances of the US would have come at a much higher price and delay.

[tdewey10]

It's Bush's fault. ;-)

[FlingWingFlyer]

Can science get by without your tax money?

Nope!!

And that's why so many "scientists" have an agenda that leads us into be swamped with junk science. Like the hooker in "Pretty Woman" who asks "Who do you want me to be?" our new age "scientists" ask, "What do you want me to prove?" It's all about the money.

[oblomov]

Can science get by? Yes.
Can "science" get by? No.

[jude24]

Much of what we take for granted - including this laptop on which I am now typing my reply - is rooted in Cold War era defense research projects and Apollo moon landing technology.

Do we want to miss this technical advances? I don't think our military can afford not to subsidize pure and applied science.

I am a little biased, though, as someone who earned a B.S. in Chemistry.

[Fairview]

The difficulty is that years ago large corporations like ATT used to fund pure research facilities with no expectation that anything marketable would come out of them for many years, if ever. They were looking for Nobels, not money (in the short term). Bell Labs is an example. NV Philips still has a lab in Briarcliff Manor, New York. But years ago the accountants started demanding, well, accountability. And the scientists who were paid to sit around with their feet on their desks, creating new branches of mathematics and thinking their way to new knowledge, were asked to begin producing some product that could be sold.

I have friends who worked for Philips back in the golden days. These were the people whose random doodlings produced the compact disk. They were expected to spend much of their day staring out the windows and thinking beautiful thoughts about science. Today no one is going to finance that. There has to be direct market applicability in all the work the lab turns out. This means that only the federal government and sometimes major universities are going to generate novel concepts that are pure science with no short-term place in the market.

[Dustbunny]

Yes !!! If it looks like a money maker private citizens will invest.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Contrary to myth, the private sector does tons of science — because it is so profitable...Rush Limbaugh makes the quite reasonable point that all the fuss about government funding for embryonic stem cell research only proves what a dead end it really is - if it showed any potential for medical usefulness, private sector funding would be pouring in because of the anticipated profitability......

[SunkenCiv]

self-ping.

[SunkenCiv]

Just adding this to the GGG catalog, not sending a general distribution.

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[Kevmo]

Good Article, made me look up the word "casuist" in the dictionary. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 results for: casuist Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) - Cite This Source cas‧u‧ist /ˈkæʒuɪst/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kazh-oo-ist] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –noun 1. an oversubtle or disingenuous reasoner, esp. in questions of morality. 2. a person who studies and resolves moral problems of judgment or conduct arising in specific situations. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Origin: 1600–10; < Sp casuista < L cāsu(s) case1 + -ista -ist] Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006. WordNet - Cite This Source casuist n : someone whose reasoning is subtle and often specious [syn: sophist] WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University