Fruitful fossil database targeted by US House Science Committee



When groups of people come together and pool their resources, great things can be accomplished (flinging humans onto the Moon comes to mind). In the US, the National Science Foundation is a factory of great things. It guides billions of tax dollars into university research projects each year (in 2015, $7.344 billion to be exact). And since science costs money, one unhappy necessity of the academic lifestyle is securing funding to keep the lights on and the lab running. (Give a kid a grant-writing kit to go with their chemistry set for Christmas. See if they play with it.) NSF grants are the lifeblood of many fields of science.

Getting a grant isn’t easy. In 2012, for example, NSF reviewed more than 48,000 grant proposals—each representing work that researchers were chomping at the bit to do. Less than 12,000 won approval. A number of researchers volunteer their time each year to go review grant proposals in their field, recommending the proposals they feel to be the best use of the money budgeted for their discipline. As is generally the case with peer review of papers for scientific journals, the reviewers remain anonymous. (“Oh, hi Jane! Say, I see you shot down the proposal I’ve been working toward for a decade…”)
Recently, the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, led by Texas Representative Lamar Smith, has tussled with NSF over research that Rep. Smith felt was a waste of funding. That included a broad effort to alter the criteria NSF used in judging grants to ensure they are “in the national interest,” but it also involved attempts to probe the approval of individual grants. Rep. Smith requested access to all documents pertaining to certain grants, including the peer reviews NSF closely guards as confidential. NSF was not pleased with these requests. Neither was the Association of American Universities.

Most of the grants that were picked out seemed to be judged primarily on whether their titles sounded silly to people unfamiliar with the field. That follows a long tradition, including Sarah Palin’s infamous comments about “projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good—things like fruit fly research in Paris, France." Palin, apparently, didn’t know that fruit flies are model organisms for genetic studies of the kinds of disabilities she was giving her speech about—or that the specific study she mocked was studying the olive fruit fly that has been a costly pest to California’s olive-growing industry.

The recently retired Senator Tom Coburn produced an annual list of what he believed to be wasteful government spending called the “Wastebook.” The project also picked out research grants in this manner. Last year’s edition included an NSF grant it characterized as “Fossil Facebook.” The project is actually called the “FOSSIL Project," and it was funded under the “Advancing Informal STEM Learning” program at NSF and aims to connect amateur fossil clubs around the country with each other, as well as museums and researchers. The effort is partly paleontology outreach, encouraging more people to get involved with fossil groups. The project will also help amateur fossil hunters learn from and connect with professionals, helping participants with organizing meetings, offering access to workshops and conferences, and sending speakers to present research to clubs. One product of that collaboration would be work to get more specimens digitized, bringing them out of dark drawers and putting them on the Web.

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