News Is SOPA Creator's New Bill Trying to Cut NSF's Peer Review Requirement?

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The discussion centers on a proposal to eliminate the peer review requirement for grant awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Concerns are raised about the implications of granting significant power to a single individual in this process, with some suggesting it could undermine the integrity of scientific funding. The conversation highlights that the proposal appears to target social sciences, with a mention of the NSF's total active awards in this area being around $1 billion, which is a small fraction of the NSF's overall budget of $7 billion. This has led to skepticism about the proposal being a genuine effort for fiscal conservatism, with suggestions that it may be more about political posturing rather than a substantive critique of funding practices. The discussion also suggests that if fiscal responsibility is the goal, attention should be directed toward larger budgets in other departments like the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) or the Department of Defense (DOD).
encorp
Aimed at stripping peer review requirement from the NSF. Seems to me like it's some attempt to get religious "science" taken "seriously" ha.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/04/us-lawmaker-proposes-new-criteri-1.html
 
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Encorp, I don't think this is to get religious science taken seriously. Here peer review seems to be referring to the process of awarding grants; not the evaluation of research already done. Really this seems like political grandstanding to try and give the illusion of fiscal conservatism.

Considering their first goal of getting at the social science here are the all the active awards for the Social, Behavorial, and Economic Sciences division of the NSF. I scanned through the list and the total looks to be around 1B (allow me +/- 0.5B, haha). That's for ALL active awards, not just this year. Given that the annual budget for the past year our two for the entire NSF is 7B this seems like a pretty weak attempt at fiscal conservatism.

Hey, Smith! Try the DHHS or the DOD!
 

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