The National Science Foundation (NSF) is being attacked by Republicans

[The Illusive Man]

TL:DR Republicans do not like The National Science Foundation (NSF) because science and research counters ignorance, aka their political stratagem.

His part of the project—CLIO World Tables, a four-university collaboration—was supposed to receive $87,000 in 2014. Colleague Dino Christenson, a CAS assistant professor of political science, has been using NSF money to study interest groups’ strategies and their influence with the Supreme Court.

They might figure out how and why sneaky shit occurs in politics and devise ways of countering it! OH NOES!

Meet Tom Coburn (R-OK), the man behind the Coburn amendment which barred the NSF from political science. He does not like the NSF except when it suites his own political gain.

“Political science would be better left to pundits and voters,” said Don Tatro, Senator Coburn’s press secretary, in an interview. “Federal research dollars should go to scientists who work on finding solutions for people with severe disabilities, or the next generation of biofuels, or engineering breakthroughs.”

Guess where the data he cites comes from:

The data used here were originally collected by Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, with the support of National Science Foundation grant number SBR 9320922, and were distributed through the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Neither NSF nor the original collectors of the data bear any responsibility for the analysis reported here.

Meet Lamar Smith (R-TX); Chairman of the US Committee on Science, Space and Technology, you may remember him being a SOPA supporter.

He seeks to eliminate peer review via his “High Quality Research Act” in favor of funding criterion set by Congress. His pitch is the create jobs angle. Also clean coal and fracking. Also, composing in .xml format? Shameful.

[booley]

we this is par for the course, isn't it?

They didn't like the CDC study on gun so they defund the CDC and ban it from doing more studies on guns.

They don't like studies on HIV and Aids so they try to shut down federal monies going to aids research.

They don't like climate change so they attack researchers who do climate research.

Ironically despite this country's strand of anti intellectualism, we do still have a grudging respect for science.

But if you can make it harder to find out what science says about a subject, ignorant rhetoric can more easily fill the void.  The GOP can say any dumb shit they can think of, pull any bull shit statistic out of their collective asses and who's to say differently?

[Dakota Bob]

If you believe everything you need to know is in the Bible, what's the point of science?

[mythbuster43]

Tom Coburn--AKA the slimy hypocritical troglodyte that--along with Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay--epitomize the worst aspects of politicians.