Month: March 2013

Tom Coburn’s Grudge, Part II

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Via Jennifer Diascro's Twitter feed: The Economist has an article up addressing the specific targeting of Political Science Research by Senator Coburn. The article addresses a point that I've brought up a couple of times in the past (see here for example). Specifically, why only political science? The Economist: The real debate seems to be over what is of value. For many Republicans the answer is nothing having to do with political science. Yet it is hard to see how that discipline is any more frivolous than—or even all that different from—economics, sociology or anthropology.Mr Coburn's measure wouldn’t touch NSF funding for Continue reading Tom Coburn’s Grudge, Part II→

Tom Coburn’s Grudge

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

So I'm a little late getting to this, but Tom Coburn is at it again—more successfully this time, it appears. The short version is that Coburn was able to get an amendment through that prohibits the National Science Foundation from funding political science research, with the exception of research that "promotes the national security or economic interests of the United States." I just have a couple of thoughts: Whose economic interests are we talking about, Tom? I mean thank god government contributes such a negligible portion of Oklahoma's economy (See page 13). Sure this is a petty point, but it does Continue reading Tom Coburn’s Grudge→

Spring Cleaning

Posted on by — 3 Comments ↓

Just a quick update. We're all hoping to resume posting more regularly later in the spring. Until that time, the impending death of Google Reader has prompted us to make a few changes that we wanted to make everyone aware of. Although there are other RSS feed readers out there, it may be easier for some folks to keep up with new material through various social networking sites. And so we've created a new Facebook page and Twitter feed for the blog. The Facebook link can be found here. Our new Twitter name is "QuantPeace".