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Ishaan comments on Should effective altruists care about the US gov't shutdown and can we do anything? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I dunno, I think the interrupting of scientific experiments all across the US is pretty disastrous, in terms of long term effects. The positive downstream effects of scientific research should not be underestimated, and a large scale disruption of that seems bad.
As I said, I'm not terribly well informed about this. Is there something I'm not considering about the extent of the interruption?
Here at a major research-focused university, work goes on as if nothing happened for now.
There are however possibly going to be snarls in the grant-application process if this goes on for a while and much of my lab's funding does come from the federal government in one way or another, causing further problems in the event of truly long showdowns. I don't know the grant distribution schedule off the top of my head.
Luckily we have all our new expensive equipment on hand as of a few months ago and ongoing costs are for things like yeast extract and disposable test tubes and tiny bits of custom DNA. And all our pay, of course...
EDIT as of 10-5-13 It would appear that those of us who have grants paid out for multiple years as lump sums from the NIH are doing okay. Those of us who charge things to an external account are having a difficult time. And those of us who get yearly infusions of money and get the infusion in the fall are doing particularly badly. My lab seems to fall in the first two categories, thankfully enough.
So, a lot of people here have been saying that my notion that there is a high probability that this entire thing has had lots of very negative effects (taking into account the exponential returns on research) are hyperbolic and silly.
When I read this, I feel like I was right about the negative impact, even if I was wrong about the possibility of effecting the outcome. (My notion was that perhaps labs which were in keen need of small funds to tide them over could be supplemented, perhaps with pay-back-if-you-can loans)
I would really like to avoid feeling that I was right if I wasn't actually right, so can I ask after your estimate of how much difficulty these people are in and what the rough ratio of effected / not effected is among those who you observe?
It's not like scientists sit around and do nothing when they don't get funds. The might not be able to buy fancy new toys but they can still use their brains. Not having to waste as much time with writting grants is also a plus. They might even start thinking about applications of their knowledge to make money by solving real world problems.
It reminds me of Bruce Sterlings book Distraction.
Sure. Those who can pick up where they left off are not going to even notice that this happening.
But there are a lot of projects that are very time sensitive, which have already had a lot of money and labor invested into them. These which might be significantly delayed or even cancelled, resulting in a loss of invested resources.
Could you give an example of such a project? I doubt that any projects will be canceled because of the shutdown.
From the linked article:
also
(A 3 year wait for something that was going to launch next month probably means wasted resources. There's also a chance that it becomes a sunk cost as better tech. comes by.)
Given the number of programs being effected, I think it's really unlikely that no projects will be shut down anywhere because of this.
I'm more worried about biology experiments-- some of them need constant maintenance. Do you know whether the folks who are feeding the animals and such are still doing so?
I did hear about this. Yes, those people were generally considered essential, so they get to work. Article link that mentions this:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/01/228208246/the-shutdown-s-squeeze-on-science-and-health
I just heard a radio report which said that animals are being taken care of, but the results of experiments aren't being collected.
Sure they can; but how many of them will be willing to?
What do you think they are going to do? Spend their time learning cooking and taking long naps?
Don't think about the first scientist you can think of, think about the marginal scientist.
I think you underrate the value of unsheduled time when it comes to coming up with new creative ideas.
I don't -- for the typical scientist. But there are a few marginal scientists out there who are torn between keeping on doing research and quitting science to take up (say) surfing, and will pick the latter but would pick the former if counterfactually the NSF were still processing grants.
Yes, but how much would they have contributed to science had they not quit science?
Actually, no. A federally-employed scientist can't "still use their brains" during a shutdown; see the Antideficiency Act.
See above. Grants have to be written eventually; not being able to work part of the year just makes the proportion of working time that has to be devoted to writing grants larger.
Huh? How does this stop them from using their brains? Nothing there is going to stop them from continuing to think about their work, mentally desigining new experiments or new hypotheses.
Admittedly no one's ever been charged under the ADA, but there are plenty of examples of people being disciplined for violating it. I've been temporarily laid-off before -- they're not joking about not being allowed to work. At all.
Even granting that our hypothetical scientist is willing to take the risk of being admonished for working during shutdown -- what exactly are they going to do without institutional support? No journal access, no computing resources, no facilities? Navel gazing only gets one so far.
Thinking about your experiments does not (in itself) involve expenditure of government money, so I don't see how they would prosecute you under the ADA for that. Yes, managers have to be very clear to workers not to use resources, just to keep them away from edge cases, but even with that level of overcaution, managers can't actually stop you.
Even if you came back and (for some reason) said, "Hey boss, I totally thought about this experiment from the couch when the shutdown was going on", they still don't have grounds unless you were using up resources. Now, they could fire you just for the defiance (maybe), but if they're that trigger-happy in the first place, then ...
How effective is the thinking that can be done if you don't have access to any of your work? I'm a gov't employee and am affected by the shutdown. All of my work is on my office computer, which I'm not allowed to even turn on during the shutdown. Yes, it's illegal for me to turn on my work computer or access work email during the shutdown.
Sure, I can think all day about how to solve the current bug in my software, but without access to the actual code on my gov't computer not much can be done.
I worked out an algorithm on paper while I was on vacation once. Once I was back, I implemented it quickly.
This doesn't seem to be that severe a grant. People go into science because they like it, not because it pays well.- for many, thoughts fields about one's subject can border on the intrusive. And as long as they come back and don't say explicitly that their new ideas were from when they were on leave, they'll be fine.
So, they can read papers they already have. They can get journal access from friends at universities. They can do computing that doesn't involve as large a scale. They can think about data they got that doesn't seem to make sense. I agree there are limits but those limits seem not that restrictive as long as the shutdown doesn't last for that long.