Right. Because it's not like you're trying to make a (conservative) political point every time I see one of your comments.

The problem with the data you've cited is that it actually shows the problem you're dismissing: science funding has declined in real terms (let alone inflation-adjusted terms) since the end of the Clinton administration. There's been a huge bloodletting -- across the board -- over the last 13 years. An entire generation of US scientists has been decimated by pointless budget cuts.

If you don't know anything at all about science, you might look at the overall trend of this graph and say: "science funding has gone up since 1976, so shut up and stop whining". This is the simpleton's interpretation of the graph. A more nuanced interpretation is that we invested billions of dollars into training of new scientists starting in the Clinton administration (~1996), and right about the time those new scientists hit the point in their careers when they needed funding to really get their labs started (~2000), we stranded them. There's an entire generation of scientists with structural under-employment because of this phenomenon, and yes, they're leaving the country (I personally know a few who have, and I can't fault their reasoning. You go where you can work. If I were still doing science, I'd probably be gone, too.)

But that's not even the most important story. An intelligent observer looks at this graph and says: the US budget for 2013 is $3.8 TRILLION. We spend $600 BILLION on the department of defense, and nearly $900 BILLION on Social Security (aka: old people who contribute almost nothing to the growth of the economy). Yet we're trying to "save money" by shaving a few tens of billions (that's 0.8% of total federal spending, in case you're bad at math) off of the one tiny part of our government that has consistently delivered outsized real returns to the economy. Any economist -- conservative or liberal -- will tell you that you don't make your budget by nibbling at the smallest line items while ignoring big expenses.

This is what we call "cutting off your nose to spite your face". Stupid, pointless, and definitely not conservative.

That said, every dollar we spend is a dollar that we could be spending on something else, so I think it's still fair to consider the expense of social security relative to other things we buy. We obviously can't abandon old people, but if someone said to me "we should find a way to cut social security by 0.8% to restore science funding", I'd be inclined to think it was a good idea, all other things being equal.

I'm definitely not a doctrinaire liberal -- I think we should have a social safety net (including things like single-payer health insurance), but I think we have plenty of other places we can look to balance the books before we start cutting into science and technology.

I'm not sure what political point you think I'm trying to make. As for spending on science relative to wealth transfers, I agree with you. I'm not sure why you wish to imply I don't.

Yes, that's why I said "in real terms". The situation is worse in inflated dollars -- even if we'd held the budgets steady in real dollars, we'd be losing to inflation.

"Funding rose about 50% in the early 2000's and leveled off after that."

Non-defense R&D climbed from 1996-2003, then declined. Defense R&D increased from 2001-2003 (thanks mainly to 9/11), held steady for most of the decade, and began to decline in 2010. Defense R&D is not spending on "science" by any conventional definition (most of that money goes to the defense industry), but it does employ some scientists, so we count it.

"I'm not sure what political point you think I'm trying to make."

You were arguing that the data doesn't support the thesis of the story, and implied that those who supported the thesis were making "political points" (at the time of your comment, almost all of the other comments were in support of the thesis).

Read the graphs. We increased funding 50% in real (i.e. "constant FY 2012") dollars, in nominal dollars it increased marginally more (inflation wasn't that important). The bulk of the increase was in the NIH - look at the second graph which breaks it out by agency.

Defense R&D includes a lot of basic science, I have no idea where you get the idea it doesn't. For example, this paper of mine (http://arxiv.org/pdf/0708.0635.pdf) has support from the Air Force. A lot of work in computational electromagnetism and operations research (to name two fields I know moderately well) is funded by the military.

You mean from 1976(/1996) to present? Yeah, I got that. My original comment was about why that's a pointlessly superficial way of looking at the data.

"Defense R&D includes a lot of basic science....for example, this paper of mine..."

...was mostly funded by the NSF, if the footnote is to be believed. That's not defense money.

In any case, I never said that defense research doesn't involve any science, I just said that most of it goes to defense contractors. I hate to break it to you, but the government didn't double defense R&D after 9/11 in order to increase the number of papers being written on antenna theory. Most of that money went toward things like airport bomb-sniffers and futuristic weapons systems. I'm sure you can find some pure-science papers that were written with that money, but that wasn't the point of the funding.

From about 2000 to 2010 it went from $100B to $150B and dropped to $140B after the "bloodletting".

Your "more nuanced interpretation" that "training of new scientists starting (~1996), and when they needed funding to really get their labs started (~2000), we stranded them" is simply wrong.

As for scientists leaving the country, I half-agree with you. It's not a sudden crisis in the US, but has more to do with the improving and more competitive economies of other nations, which in turn makes them more attractive places for scientists to work. In the past, you could assume that people would come to the US because it was the best place for academic freedom and to have a financially rewarding science career. Now that there is more competition, we should probably be looking for ways to maintain that status rather than resting on the assumption that we're #1.