Tuesday, Aug 31, 2010, 11:11AM CST
By Mark Lisheron
Texas researcher studying weather on Venus with stimulus grant says work will further understanding of weather on Earth. But the project doesn't create jobs, Sen. Tom Coburn's office says.
Like most of the thousands of scientists doing research with taxpayer-funded federal grants every year, Mark Bullock and Rick Wilson toiled in anonymity.
Bullock, a planetary physics manager with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and Wilson, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston, had secured two of the more than 4,500 grants made from a new funding source by the National Science Foundation. The sum of the grants is $492,499.
Bullock and Wilson worked for more than a year without a single call from a reporter interested in or even aware of their research. Bullock was in the midst of studying weather patterns on the planet Venus. Wilson was gathering surveys that asked people how they felt about the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the same stimulus pool that was funding Bullock and Wilson's research.
Sens. Tom Coburn and John McCain changed all that earlier this month. The senators identified examples of waste, inattention and mismanagement in stimulus programs around the country in a report, Summertime Blues:100 stimulus projects that give taxpayers the blues. According to Coburn and McCain, the work of Bullock and Wilson represented two important reasons why the stimulus was a failure.
Bullock and Wilson worked for more than a year without a single call from a reporter interested in or even aware of their research. Bullock was in the midst of studying weather patterns on the planet Venus. Wilson was gathering surveys that asked people how they felt about the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the same stimulus pool that was funding Bullock and Wilson's research.
Sens. Tom Coburn and John McCain changed all that earlier this month. The senators identified examples of waste, inattention and mismanagement in stimulus programs around the country in a report, Summertime Blues:100 stimulus projects that give taxpayers the blues. According to Coburn and McCain, the work of Bullock and Wilson represented two important reasons why the stimulus was a failure.
"The stimulus was supposed to stimulate the economy, not serve as a slush fund for exotic research or self-promotional propaganda," Coburn spokesman John Hart told Texas Watchdog.
While the amount of the grants are among the smallest on the list of infamy, the report's authors took relish in chiding the Texas scientists for the goals of their research:
"Want to know if it’s going to rain this week . . . on Venus? According to scientists at the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in Texas, you absolutely do. So the government has given them nearly $300,000 in stimulus funds to satisfy the American taxpayer’s profound need for interplanetary weather info. The atmospheric forecasting of weather and climate on other planets has great public appeal, insist the SWRI researchers in their grant summary. Therefore, they will boldly go where few meteorologists have gone before: the lower atmosphere of Venus."
The report dismisses Wilson's project, surveying the public about their perceptions of how the stimulus is working, as self-serving twaddle.
"It would probably be a safe bet that if citizens knew that stimulus funds were being used to fund research on their perception on the stimulus, it would sway them in a negative direction," was the report's pithy summary.
Hart said the Venus weather project has created one-third of a job but cost nearly $300,000, and that the project studying perceptions of the stimulus has created just three-quarters of a job.
"Both of these projects go to the heart of our concerns with the stimulus program," Hart said. "Neither project has done what the stimulus was designed to do: create jobs."
Among the public reactions to the report, according to Coburn and McCain's personnel, was a sense of wonder at how programs like these found funding. Dana Topousis, acting division director for public affairs for the National Science Foundation, says she has spent the last month trying to explain.
Singled out, it might be easy for people with political motives to mock many of the research projects funded through the National Science Foundation, Topousis said. Such criticism ignores the mission of the foundation and how it approves grants.
Both Bullock and Wilson made their proposals well before Congress passed the stimulus bill, Topousis says. Both projects were subject to the usual independent peer review, recommended to the foundation and made possible by the additional funds made available through the additional stimulus funding, she said.
"By no means do we just rubber-stamp projects," Topousis said.
Bullock's proposal to study wind patterns on Venus is an extension of his 11 years of planetary study at the Southwest Research Institute's office in Boulder, Colo. Much of the institute's work since its founding in 1948 in San Antonio have been to provide basic research for NASA space missions, Bullock said.
Realizing he might be providing additional fuel for critics, Bullock said his stimulus grant will pay to send him to Hawaii in December and January. Bullock has reserved telescope time at the famed Mauna Kea Observatories to capture infrared images of the planet's cloud system and an atmosphere that moves 60 times faster than the wind systems on Earth.
"I know people saw the report and said, 'Gee, they're studying the weather on Venus. What is that all about? They can't even figure out the weather here on Earth,'" Bullock said. "But this is what science has always done. When you look at another planet with curiosity, you learn something about Earth."
In its genesis and goal, the project Wilson and a colleague, Catherine Eckel, a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Dallas, put together has been even more distorted in its isolation in the Coburn and McCain report, Wilson said. Should the data the researchers have collected so far prove out, the result is likely to be the opposite of the cheerleading accusations leveled at the project.
Realizing he might be providing additional fuel for critics, Bullock said his stimulus grant will pay to send him to Hawaii in December and January. Bullock has reserved telescope time at the famed Mauna Kea Observatories to capture infrared images of the planet's cloud system and an atmosphere that moves 60 times faster than the wind systems on Earth.
"I know people saw the report and said, 'Gee, they're studying the weather on Venus. What is that all about? They can't even figure out the weather here on Earth,'" Bullock said. "But this is what science has always done. When you look at another planet with curiosity, you learn something about Earth."
In its genesis and goal, the project Wilson and a colleague, Catherine Eckel, a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Dallas, put together has been even more distorted in its isolation in the Coburn and McCain report, Wilson said. Should the data the researchers have collected so far prove out, the result is likely to be the opposite of the cheerleading accusations leveled at the project.
Having assembled nearly 200 public officials and citizens in Brownwood and Port Lavaca for an unrelated survey funded by the Department of Homeland Security, Wilson said he and Eckel thought they could cheaply survey the same people with a stimulus grant. The National Science Foundation has regularly funded behavioral science surveys of public attitudes toward the federal government's handling of everything from Hurricane Katrina to the passage of the new health care bill, Topousis said.
The pair used questionnaires to gauge how residents of two small towns in Texas would react when stimulus funding largely bypassed small towns for metropolitan areas, Wilson said.
The pair used questionnaires to gauge how residents of two small towns in Texas would react when stimulus funding largely bypassed small towns for metropolitan areas, Wilson said.
A cursory look at the results has shown no particular resentment of government, no anger for having sent the largesse elsewhere. Hardly a valentine to the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the study would likely have been lost to some academic journal had it not been for Coburn and McCain, Wilson said.
Wilson admits that there was some sentiment among his academic colleagues who support the stimulus to craft questions that might elicit favorable responses. Wilson, who is also the editor of the American Journal of Political Science, dismissed the talk out of hand.
"Weirdly, I think the results of this study might play into Sen. McCain's hands," Wilson said. "The results may suggest that the public may not be as apt to need earmarks as politicians seem to think it does."
Wilson admits that there was some sentiment among his academic colleagues who support the stimulus to craft questions that might elicit favorable responses. Wilson, who is also the editor of the American Journal of Political Science, dismissed the talk out of hand.
"Weirdly, I think the results of this study might play into Sen. McCain's hands," Wilson said. "The results may suggest that the public may not be as apt to need earmarks as politicians seem to think it does."
Explanations of the two projects do not, however, explain how either has satisfied the original goals of the stimulus, to get money into a stagnant economy quickly and create new jobs. Wilson spent $28,000 to pay about a dozen graduate students to help with the surveying, work that has gone away. Bullock was able to get one assistant, who was working part-time before the stimulus project, hired full-time by the research institute.
Hart said that rather than picking on two relatively small projects, the report suggests there are probably many more stimulus projects of specious or no value.
"Most honest observers will admit these examples are the tip of the proverbial iceberg," Hart said. "The stimulus contains thousands of projects that are not true economic stimulus.
"Our reports have confirmed what the public already knew about the government's limited ability to stimulate the economy with more spending. The goal of the stimulus was to jump-start the economy, not fulfill the wish lists of aspiring interplanetary meteorologists or political pollsters cleverly disguised as university researchers."
Mark Lisheron has written extensively about how the federal stimulus is playing out in Texas. To find all his reports, search keyword stimulus at texaswatchdog.org. Contact Mark at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org.
Artist's rendering of lightning on venus by the European Space Agency. Photo of Venus centered at the South Pole by NASA.
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Comments
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Nonchalant Savant
Wednesday, 09/01/2010 - 08:53PM
The weather on Venus? HOT. How do I feel about spending a half a million bucks to find out? Pissed.
Where's my government grant? |
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Keith
Wednesday, 09/01/2010 - 11:57PM
When I read this, "Hart said that rather than picking on two relatively small projects, the report suggests there are probably many more stimulus projects of specious or no value. "Most honest observers will admit these examples are the tip of the proverbial iceberg," Hart said. "The stimulus contains thousands of projects that are not true economic stimulus. "Our reports have confirmed what the public already knew about the government's limited ability to stimulate the economy with more spending. The goal of the stimulus was to jump-start the economy, not fulfill the wish lists of aspiring interplanetary meteorologists or political pollsters cleverly disguised as university researchers."
This kind of waste and missdirected spending is what is so wrong with obama's desire to spend our tax dollars, just to spend!!
Spending does not promote growth!! Wise spending may encourage growth!!
Spending MY/OUR tax dollars should produce the BEST growth if it is going to TAKE DOLLARS out of my pocket!!
I will spend my money like I see fit and if that is not good enough for politicians then they should take money out of their pockets and fund the things they want to fund, don't do it with MY/Our money!! |
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