This sentence is taken from the briefing given by the new Science Minister of ConLib British government. How did he fill the rest of the sentence? If you ask me with full of shit: -from BBC- : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10123821.stm I am not saying that let people suffer from lack of schooling, health services or social support; yet I also don't accept why and how politicians can put these aspects in front of public as an excuse for limiting the scientific experiments and improvements. Our civilization and its future heavily depend on science, if not single handedly. Scientific achievements have opened previously unimaginable opportunities for human beings; and I don't know what else in their minds to fuel, to energize or to create solutions for any issues they are dealing with... They will pray maybe... Why don't they just say "I understand the value of science and for that I will do my best to find ways to engage scientific perspectives for our problems". Why don't they just admit that "I understand the value of science and I don't know any other sensible way for our future yet, and I will find some new resources to enrich scientific studies, I will offer government for giving up all those childish ceremonies or mumbo jumbos and concentrate on real issues". Yes, why are they so ignorant and why don't we have any options other than these "I understand the value of science" butts?
Without schooling, it is very hard to have science. Without fair health care, any government may find itself facing strikes, civil war, shutdowns and, well, sick workers. These also cause problems for science. Without a working public transport system and road system, science suffers. and so on. And then I find it hard to place science first over all things. Science's only value, once one is looking on a societal level, is in increasing our quality of life. Since money can and must be spent in other ways, also, to improve, maintain this, of course spending must go to other things and of course this limits what government can spend on it. Further, it makes sense for him to point out that NOT giving more than a certain sum of money does not mean he thinks science could not use that money or science does not have value, but rather it is pointing out that it is always a choice between allocations. It is pretty common to tell people that the allocator must choose between and is not merely choosing NOT to give money to something he or she may very well consider important.
I already mentioned that if you read carefully. But it's not the job of the Science Minister to say that. According to this logic, Health Secretary can say that "Sorry, I know the importance of health but we are in a crisis now, blah blah". No, I don't accept that, at least not more than a bull shit. "Without this and that we can not have an healthy science..." Let me tell you something: In this world, with this population, and with all these newly emerged problems such as Climate issue, you can not get anything without science anyway. How are you planning to improve all these issues without scientific solutions, what is your "other option"?
You can improve education and even health care without advances in science. I just read about a program in the US working with long known health care practices that reduce deaths. What the program did was make very simple rules for hospitals to carry out - such as everyone on a certain kind of respirator would have their head tilted at 30 degrees. They also acted as a resource for how their 5 or six rules could be implemented and monitored. No new science, just organization and communication - which required money. This program reduced deaths, country-wide, by over 100,000 in one year. Further, your position seems to be that science is the most important possible area for allocation, so we should allocate all money there. There is no infinite sum for governments to allocate. Out of that < infinite sum, large portions should go other places. I can't see anything controversial about that. Especially given how much the private sector invests in science and does not in other areas of society. My point in the first post is that investing in other areas is investing in science. Science is not separated out from the rest of society. It needs an infrastructure, education, a relatively content and optimistic population, etc. I am sure, however, that there will be cuts in a wide swath of areas, not just scientific research, given the deficits.
Science funding should have priority over all other aspects of society Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Given that the military is the biggest financial supporter of science (behind only the patented pharmaceutical industry), we're almost there already :shrug:
Spending on military research is not science. It is just finding new and worse ways to kill people. If the world could cut its military spending by 90% and allocate only 10% of the saving to science, it would be a massive boost.
