Research grants are obtained by threatening the American taxpayer with fines, prison, or other penalties if they fail to pay up. They are “awarded” via the bureaucracy – sometimes by an agency or department including a great many in the DOD, sometimes by Congress, probably sometimes by the President although I haven’t read of that. Sometimes all it takes is getting the ear of the right Congresscritter and getting them to cut you a slice of that tasty pork everyone complains about but so many get fat off of.

“Yeah, it sounds like you have a truly encyclopedic knowledge of the nature of scientific enterprise.”

We haven’t been discussing the nature of scientific enterprise. You keep trying to limit the issue to “science” while completely ignoring the critical issue and field I brought up (and that even Sarah Palin seemed to have been obliquely referencing) – the law and the government usurpation and abuse of science.

“Not even worth further reply…”

You haven’t yet addressed any of my points regarding the illegal nature of using taxdollars on science. You’ve likewise ignored my point that the scientific necessity and validity of the research has no relevance to it’s legality. Strawmen, ad hominum attacks, evasion, and avoidance of the issues I have raised has been the whole of the response I have gotten from this “scientific” community. Government sponsored science is illegal in this nation. It corrupts the government, it corrupts the science, it creates waste and inefficiency, and it kills ingenuity and creativity while rewarding those with connections and those without a measurable degree of competence.

Another “scientific” study from a few years ago was funded by the Air Force. It was regarding telekinesis which (surprise surprise) didn’t actually seem to have a very high chance of panning out for military purposes. That study cost $25,000. That is what I earn in a year and what I pay in taxes over many years. A year of my labor will pay for one piece of paper that will state the obvious so that some incompetent academic who knows some corrupt Air Force bureaucrat will make out like a bandit (literally). Will you address this point? Will you consider the incredibly huge burden placed upon other people who must work longer hours, get a second job, go without health care or other necessities in order to pay for fraudulent science, junk science, misdirected science that creates the weapons of mass destruction, and real science? I’d love to be able to give a very generous donation to a great number of real science projects – but I am struggling to get by financially. If I didn’t have the incredible tax burden I do I’d be able to give a small donation and pick those that I believe are the most worthwhile. Instead I have to pay more than I can afford for junk science plus the interest on that amount as our government has to borrow from China, Russia, etc in order to actually pay for the current expenditures.

A compounding junk science debt – what a fabulous legacy the last several generations of American government scientists have burdened the people of today and our future generations as well.

You have now made it oh so clear that you really don’t have the first clue as to how research grants are obtained and what’s entailed in their review and awarding.

Oh, you

have a brother who works for the military-industrial complex, I’ve long studied the corruption of education and science and medicine and law and other fields by the federal government.

Yeah, it sounds like you have a truly encyclopedic knowledge of the nature of scientific enterprise.

Not even worth further reply…

I’ve never applied for a government payment. However, I have a brother who works for the military-industrial complex, I’ve long studied the corruption of education and science and medicine and law and other fields by the federal government, and I’m well acquainted with the ways of the government as well as human nature. Grants are given based upon politics – the arbitrary and often capricious whim of a committee or other group of people who all too often have conflicts of interest.

“We have to show every one of those to get a grant from anywhere, especially from the government. ”

The vast majority of government spending demonstrates consistently that there is little to no room for importance, validity, usefulness, feasibility, and practicality in any of it’s expenditures. That’s the exact opposite of the inherent nature of government to be wasteful and inefficient and counterproductive.

“So forgive them, if they’re insulting you or calling you ignorant. You clearly know nothing of the scientific field – or you wouldn’t be so quick to judge against whatever few cases of abuse of funding you might have found.”

I base my statements upon the law and the principles of life, liberty, and property for which it stands as well as my study of the effects of government upon science and the rest of our society. While unconstitutional science has become an accepted institution in our country it doesn’t make it legal, right, necessary, wise, prudent, or a good idea.

“We’re not on the same ‘teat’ as welfare mothers, trust me – or I’d be making a hell of a lot more than I do.”

Welfare mothers don’t make very much. Welfare recipients never do – they get enough to get by and enough to kill their desire to produce and innovate but they never get ahead.

So forgive them, if they’re insulting you or calling you ignorant. You clearly know nothing of the scientific field – or you wouldn’t be so quick to judge against whatever few cases of abuse of funding you might have found. We’re not on the same ‘teat’ as welfare mothers, trust me – or I’d be making a hell of a lot more than I do.

One should think that if I were so ignorant and you so enlightened that it would be no serious effort to illuminate me with some of your vast reserves of wisdom as doing so would not take a single bit of truth away from you. Instead you propose that ideally I would be deprived of medical care due not to my principled and educated position of opposing scientific welfare but rather due to my “ignorance”.