There Should Be Grandeur: Basic Science in the Shadow of the Sequester
So, add that up: sequester cuts will strike bluntly across the scientific community. The illustrious can move a bit of money around, but even in large labs, a predictable result will be a reduction in the number of graduate student and post – doc slots available — and as those junior and early-stage researchers do a whole lot of the at-the-bench level research, such cuts will have an immediate effect on research productivity.
The longer term risk is obvious too: fewer students and post-docs mean on an ongoing drop from baseline in the amount of work to be done year over year, and given that industry has reduced its demand for research-trained Ph.Ds, a plausible consequence is that some, many perhaps, those with capacity to do leading edge science — no dummies they — will simply never enter the pipeline, shifting instead to some other career that does not demand six years and more of poorly paid training to find that there are no jobs.
From my perspective as a government scientist I have not been able to delve into this discussion in this way for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I don’t write as well as Tom Levenson, for which I not embarrassed, but also because I get incredibly pissed off at the stupidity, and repeatedly cursing at that isn’t very productive. Or eloquent. The thing is, the sequester isn’t a good situation suddenly gone bad. The dis-functionality of my government has been an impediment, to varying degrees, for a number of years now.
From a personal perspective it sucks: I’ve not had a cost-of-living adjustment in three years now, and now I am facing a furlough plan of 20% — not working one day a week. Plans are sketchy at this point, so it’s not clear what the details are on that; it’s possible that a poorly thought-out plan would have workers in a group taking different days off, with the intention of still having an “office presence” (one rumored scenario) but meaning that collaborations are hindered far beyond a 20% reduction in productivity, since there are at least 2 days a week a pair can’t work together. Too early to tell if things will be made even worse in this way. Murphy, however, is always lurking.
From a lab perspective, not having defined spending plans have hurt for quite some time — even operating under a continuing resolution has hampered things. Uncertain and uneven funding is a problem — you really want that new Thingerdoodle™ for the lab, and while it’s expensive — let’s say it costs 10% of your budget — you could afford it if you were given your promised allocation. However, you can’t when the money is portioned out over a shorter time scale. If you get a monthly release of your money, you never have enough to make the purchase. If you get a larger chunk but still only part of the budget, you risk running out of money for your day-to-day needs. And if you try and save it up, someone might see that you have not been spending as fast as you claimed you would, and you run the risk of someone taking it away from you. meanwhile, progress in the lab is limited from lack of a Thingerdoodle™.
The time compression of getting the full budget is also a problem. Let’s say you spend a few months on a CR, or in sequester mode, and then everything is resolved. But then, even if you have more money, you have to spend it before the end of the fiscal year or some other deadline, and spending money wisely takes time. Meaning you aren’t in the lab because you’re on the web or the phone, figuring out the right widgets to buy. Not being in the lab means the experiments are on hold, and that’s not the most efficient way to run things.
Basically, both feast and famine slow you down.
