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Who Republicans Target in Their War on Science

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Who do Republican legislators target in their war on science, claiming that all this research is wasteful? Well, it turns out they target people doing some really important research. It also turns out they don’t have their basic facts straight when attacking these people. Shocking, I know.

In a booth across the aisle was Megan Tracy, an assistant professor of anthropology at James Madison University. During a stint with the Peace Corps, she became fascinated by the way the Chinese government regulated its food industries. The National Science Foundation gave her $150,000 to investigate the impact of a poorly regulated milk market in that country, which, sure enough, had congressional critics wondering what good it did the American taxpayers to help China with its dairy. What they overlooked, Tracy noted, is that the United States imported more than $28 billion worth of food from China in 2013.

During a House Science Committee hearing in 2013, Smith called five projects, including Tracy’s, essentially indefensible. He then sent a letter to the NSF demanding that it justify the research. It was a shock to science-research advocates who have long argued that peer review, not politics, should determine what research merits grant money.

“It made us a little tentative for a while,” Tracy recalled. “Our concern was that there would be ramifications.”

David A. Scholnick, an associate professor of biology at Pacific University, stood nearby. His was the experiment in which shrimp took to a treadmill — perhaps the most widely mocked undertaking of government-funded scientific research in recent memory (Stephen Colbert even got in on the act). What Scholnick has been uncovering, though, is a potentially monumental problem. Warming oceans are causing a growth in certain bacteria in the gills of shrimp, and the damage of that buildup is far greater than previously known.

Considering that Americans eat more than 5 billion pounds of shrimp every year, Scholnick concluded that his work could have a major influence on everything from production to food safety.

Critics accused him of wasting $3 million — a number he scoffs at. He built the treadmill himself for $47. “I would love to have a grant for $3 million,” Scholnick said.

In conclusion, many Republican legislators are very stupid and petty people.

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