Tom Coburn wants to stop all NSF Political Science research funding

[n2doc]

Tom Coburn Doesn’t Like Political Science
by HENRY on OCTOBER 7, 2009
He has just introduced an amendment to prevent the NSF from funding political science research (PDF). Apparently, Fox News and CNN pundits can do our job better than we can.

The largest award over the last 10 years under the political science program has been $5.4 million for the University of Michigan for the “American National Election Studies” grant. The grant is to “inform explanations of election outcomes.” The University of Michigan may have some interesting theories about recent elections, but Americans who have an interest in electoral politics can turn to CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, the print media, and a seemingly endless number of political commentators on the internet who pour over this data and provide a myriad of viewpoints to answer the same questions.
Whether the answers provided by this ‘myriad of viewpoints’ are good ones, I will leave as an open question. I obviously have a dog in this fight as a political scientist who will probably apply for NSF funding in the future. But I also think that there are measurable Good Things (in terms of understanding how our system of politics works etc) that come from good empirical work in political science. And the politics of Coburn’s amendment are not precisely difficult to discern (among his stated objections are that this money has gone to fund research concluding that the US is increasingly willing to torture suspected terrorists, and carefully unspecified work – doubtless some form of shameless subsidized leftwing punditry – by Paul Krugman). If you feel that political science doesn’t deserve any funding, feel free to say so in comments. If you disagree with Coburn (and are a political scientist) and live in the US, get on to your senator’s office to say so (and ideally, contact your university’s research vice president’s office or whatever while you are at it – they are likely to have good contacts). This may come up for a vote today.

http://crookedtimber.org/2009/10/07/tom-coburn-doesnt-like-political-science/

[notesdev]

1. Can you please elaborate?

What's the amount of money that has been spent on this, and what has been gained that would make one say, "Yeah, I'd spend my money on that"?

[damntexdem]

2. Forget all that: there's something bigger at issue here.

As a very-important part of the Republican war on science, there is the desire to kill social research in the U.S., because it is likely that the facts will debunk GOP lies about the country, its society, and its politics.

[zazen]

3. His focus on poli sci is laughable; subversive work is funded throughout SBE and EHR

I'm not going to write it here. His staff will have to ferret it out.

All research at NSF and elsewhere is based on ideological assumptions--poli sci and the SBE Directorate (and to some extent EHR) just more overtly so. I've worked on at least 100 NSF proposals, including in poli sci, and there's an ideology to the reigning idea of "neutral" as well. Can't do anything too novel, or too behind the times. We've had grant proposals rejected the ideas of which were widely funded five years later, but at the time the reviewers said, huh? That's too experimental. Part of the art of getting funded includes couching everything as supposedly non-ideological, while subtly supporting the prevailing ideology of your reviewers (assuming you agree with it). Even the most supposedly neutral science is highly rhetorical-- it's just not overtly electoral, but Coburn wouldn't get that.

He's just driving the rhetorical/political elements of research further underground. The questions will then be funded through "special emphases" in another area. I vote for "Public Policy Dimensions of Decision-Making in (name your field)" and poli sci folks will be funded again, though even current funding is abysmal.

And you can sure be your research administrators and fed relations people are already making the calls, unless you're at Pepperdine or something.

Thanks for the heads up