…is scientists:
Before I go on, I should note that my objection to Professor Weinberg’s essay is the stupidity and crudeness of its argument; I largely agree with his position about funding ambitious science. In fact, it is because I agree with his position on Big Science that the rest of his essay vexes me. His good point is wrapped in a wrongheaded and poisonous generality; it’s like serving an ice-cream sundae in a bowl shaped like Andrew Cuomo’s face.
Note also Weinberg’s ignorant bashing of ISS. It’s so funny that he thinks it’s about science.
Also read Charles W. Cooke’s appropriately pitiless (as Kevin says) take down of the Neil deGrasse Tyson cult. [Note, it’s behind a paywall]
As the article mentioned, Sagan also had the failing (especially towards the end) of believing that his scientific expertise gave him a special insight into the human condition and how we should be living. It’s a by-product of intellectual hubris that scientists who become famous can’t seem to avoid. They are encouraged along this path by an “intellectual” class who want scientific validation for their own ideas of social control.
As to Tyson himself, I have mixed feelings about him. I really wanted to like/love the new Cosmos and I was very happy when I heard he would be hosting it. Unfortunately both have disappointed me. Tyson just doesn’t have that same sense of humanity and grand scope that Sagan had. Sagan was showing us this big beautiful Universe he found, while Tyson is trying too hard to teach us what he thinks we should know. That attitude (and the really stupid cartoons) just kills the show. It’s a pity too because I’ve seen Tyson in other venues and enjoyed hearing him talk.
Big Science in terms of government funding is, like cost plus contracting, largely a result of World War II. Since physicists gave the government the atomic bomb it was they might stumble on other more useful things for national defense. But the main result of the NSF was to create a largely closed funding system with little tolerance for new ideas or directions, unlike the prewar years when most science was privately funded and nonprofits would be in competition with each other.
We see the legacy of the Manhattan Project in today’s attitudes of climate scientists feeling they should make climate policy as well as NASA’s “One Big Project” approach to space flight driven by their success with Project Apollo, which like the Manhattan Project had an unlimited budget for the purpose of achieving a critical national security goal.
After 70 years it is long past time for the government to take a new look as its role, if any, in funding science. Like NASA, the NSF may have well outlived its usefulness as an institution.
My favorite part:
“The problem with the SEC, for example, is not manpower or regulatory empowerment; it’s that the SEC is the safety school of financial careers, and it is staffed by people who are not as smart or as driven as the people who are working to subvert them, or at least to get around them.”
This nicely encapsulates my problem with all government regulation.