Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
Bill: Make ‘National Interest’ Explicit in NSF Grants
In February officials with the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Science Board trooped up […]
Matt Owens on Obscure Research That Makes a Big Impact
‘Don’t judge a book by its cover – federal funding for odd or frivolous sounding research pays enormous societal, health, security, and economic dividends to the American taxpayer,’ argues a member of the steering committee for the Golden Goose Award.
Federal Funds Paid for Brain Research That’s the Cat’s Meow
Two neurophysiologists who brought kittens into their lab to study vision have been honored with the Golden Goose Award for federally funded experiments that once sounded silly but provided important benefits to society.
Funding Social Science: A Primer on US Budgeting Process
Howard Silver examines the process in which federal research funding is arrived at — and points out how the process is, or isn’t, working in this Congress.
Three Countries, Three Methods to Preserve Social Science
A recent panel drew social science advocates from three countries – Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States – to the same stage to discuss preserving the disciplines’ sometimes tenuous hold on support from policymakers
Bill That Constrains Social Science Goes to Full Senate
The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee has pushed a bill that deprecates federal research spending for social science to the Senate as a whole.
Social Science-Unfriendly Bill Advances in DC
Legislation that would squeeze out social science and geoscience spending from their traditional share of the National Science Foundation budget will be heard by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.
Federal Funding and the Famed Marshmallow Test
Were a psychologist to win federal funding for an experiment that involved offering 3-year-olds marshmallows, it’s likely that grant would eventually be cited on the floor of the House of Representatives as yet another example of silly and wasteful spending on social science.
