Thursday, May 1, 2014

Back-Scratching

I don't think that rags like Salon and the Daily Kos fully understand just how the science game (and, yes, you can rest assure that it is a game) is played nowadays. In order to even be considered for federal research money, you have to use certain key words in your proposal. You can't, for example, just say that you want to study the mating patterns of the Vietnam ferret badger, in that that will get you nowhere. What you have to say instead  is that you want to study the mating patterns of the Vietnam ferret badger AS IT PERTAINS TO GLOBAL WARMING. That, and you can totally forget about studying the PDO, cosmic rays, underwater volcanoes, etc., as those items pertaining to global warming continue to be a) lacking in cache and b) totally untaxable.

1 comment:

BB-Idaho said...

How about, "The relation of Agent Orange/dioxins regarding the recently discovered new species of Vietnamese Ferret Badger: a study
of potential phenotypical variations in xenobiotic speciation. (yeah, grant writing is 80% BS)