Yes, absolutely. At the moment the postgraduate researcher who has an interest in, say, cheese-making, knows that the way to get funding is to invent a project looking at the changes in cheese-making due to global warming. The warming is taken as a given, the changes are invariably for the worse, and the meaningless results, with the obligatory boilerplate acknowledgement of how appalling this imaginary crisis will be, is guaranteed publication. Meanwhile the useful things this person could and should be finding out about cheese-making by doing real, verifiable science go undiscovered.

Coincidentally, just after I posted the previous comment I came across the following on Watts Up With That:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/17/climate-change-is-sucking-funding-away-from-biodiversity/

"Kent research suggests that recent high levels of media coverage for climate change may have deflected attention and funding from biodiversity loss."

the pROBLEMS OF FUNDING..are huge
the tools modifieRS AND MODELS ARE SIMPLY SPIN BLING[JUST TO GET THE NEXT SIN TAX IN]

BUT THE THING IS THE ONE WITH THE MONEY
CHOSES WHICH PATH THE RESEARCH TAKE'S[THEN THERE IS THE eager t0 please..scum/who will say and do anything to refute real proofs[but it works predictably[if govt noticed it*..some one plans tpo make money from it.[and if guilt can sin tax it/thats it\..next thing ya gpot a drug wart[govt actually declares ipon its masters[us]

the servbant drive us by bad law
based u[pon bad dacts[HEALTH COSTS OF SMOKING =jusat under one billion[mot 32 billion]..govt expenditure for medicine..is aqllready too huge/so they planned to steal nicoteen delivery[so how many studdies we need to get 3 billion dr roxon?]

i see the satudy[saying the numvbers wil drop
so yo ensure revenue we recomend indexation an extra 3 billion [for 3 years]..to make up for the few who will quit.[wanna bet?]..

The history of tobacco control rarely sees any single initiative produce the spectacular changes demanded by such critics. One such example is that a February 2013 Department of Finance paper shows, **without providing data,..>>

PLEASE NOTE[DATA=OPTIONAL/PLUS 'modified"[like i recall deaths from booze[ACTUAL DEATH NUMBERS*]..were modified..from 5000/year..to 3000[because of the 'deemed/benifit'..of a few drinks[really 2000 who died of booze..didnt die of booze

its too clever trev

o numbers..UET*..<<..that the unprecedented 25 per cent tax increase on tobacco introduced overnight on 29 April 2010 led to an 11 per cent fall in apparent consumption (amount smoked), nearly double the 6 per cent which had been forecast at the time of the announcement.""

This sort of information is of critical importance to assessment of policies to reduce tobacco use.

<<..Tobacco customs and excise data are absolutely critical to the evaluation of Australia's plain pack law and its total program of making smoking history. Data has been available since the turn of the last century. Without it we will see a continuation of the data-free bluster from govt and lobby wanting ever bigger tax from sin[what they legislate as sin

bah

Government has no rational way of distinguishing "good research", even in its own terms, for reasons Mises identified in his essay that exploded the intellectual foundations of all socialism: "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth": http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf . Though this categorically disproves the case for government funding of research before any is handed out, the "scientists" never refute it, because they can't. So we get the crazy situation that the scientists embrace refuted fallacies in the justification for their research in order to get to square one. Then they talk down to the rest of the population about not understanding science!

The flaw in the argument is always in assuming that the funding was worthwhile, without ever being able to demonstrate that it was in terms of whatever one defines as the ultimate human welfare criterion, once opportunity costs are taken into account. They also never take into account the coercive nature of the funding, or the sacrifice of values. So we get this irrational method, of accounting for a quantity on one side of the equation but not the other - a thumb in the scales.

It's easy to disprove their claims in every case - they can never answer how they know whether funding was too much, too little, or just the right amount.

There are also huge negative externalities to government funding of research, namely the growth of the anti-rational sector, because this sector's effect on policy is also anti-human. An example is recent policies diverting food production so well-fed westerners can feel good about themselves in their new religion of fine-tuning the weather by pouring food grain as biofuels into their cars, at the cost of starving large numbers of poor people in the third world to death.

Funding "research" is not a valid function of government, is a natural prey to corruption and waste, and should be abolished.

Don, the most significant thing that springs to mind here is the enormous demands exerted on our budget by very high immigration.

This means that the funding of basic infrastructure and services take priority over the funding of research, and will do so progressively to a larger extent in the coming years.

It means that as things become harder right across our society, and there is a greater need for good research to find solutions to our mounting problems, our research capability will be progressively reduced... or at least not expand proportional to the expansion of the population and economy.

Surely scientists and researchers of all sorts must realise this.

So I wonder why then that there isn’t a concerted and united push from all these people for a major reduction in our immigration intake, and for a stabilisation of our population…. and thus for a big reallocation of funds away from all the population-growth-supporting infrastructure and services and into things which can actually improve our society and environment.

It seems to me that the whole scientific and academic fraternity is being highly remiss in not realising the enormous significance of this.

It is doubly strange, because all of these intelligent people must know that we simply MUST strive to achieve a sustainable society, of which a stable population – or at least one that is growing at a much lesser rate than at present – is of critical importance.

<< Funding "research" is not a valid function of government, is a natural prey to corruption and waste, and should be abolished. >>

What!!??

That’s awfully extreme isn’t it Jardine?

Sure, there are inefficiencies and elements of corruption. Of course governments need to control these as best as possible. But is going far too far to project this to the extent that they should simply not fund any research!