Until Tuesday morning at 9:32 I was employed as a research scientist at a major west coast university.
I had been on the job for 11 months and 22 days, and my boss said I was doing good work. I was making progress towards developing a new technology for DNA detection, a pretty hot area in our current "defensive" state-of-mind.
Or so I thought.
You see, my funding was coming from the NIH discretionary budget. The principal investigator (my boss) would normally request supplemental funds every year to tide researchers over until the next fiscal year when new grants would be instated. While tenuous, these supplements had been routinely granted through four presidential administrations. Public science policy is governed in this way.
And now it seems the Bush folks have sent us a message: genetics research NOT related to homeland security (i.e. real fundamental science, the stuff that would cure, say, cancer or MS) will have to take a back seat to defense-related research.
And as the money flows out of this western university, guess which states are geting the DARPA projects?
Alabama
Texas
Florida
It's all politics with Bush, even science policy.