Attack on Social Science Australia and the US. (September 11, 2013)

Paul Boyle^1.2, wrote in the August 16, 2013 issue of Science:

Social science is under attack in the United States. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is prohibited from funding political science, except for grants identified by its director as “promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States.” The High Quality Research Act is being drafted with the aim of guarding against “questionable projects” at NSF. A bill was proposed that would exclude health economics research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Such developments provide cause for concern.

Dr. Boyle then notes:

...there are good reasons why, in most of the world, decisions about science funding are left to the experts. In the United Kingdom, the “Haldane Principle” espouses the idea that once the overall science budget is set by the government, researchers should decide where specific research project funds are spent, so that funding decisions are autonomous.

It begins to look as though Australia may not be one of them. The Australian's Bernard Lane reports today "Anthropologist Lisa Wynn... saw her research project on Islamic attitudes to medical procedures ridiculed by the Coalition... Her research on Muslim attitudes to tricky medical matters was one of just four projects singled out by the Coalition as a waste of taxpayer's money. 'I thought it was an incredibly poor choice for them,' says Dr Wynn, who trained at Princeton in the US and teaches at Macquarie University. 'If they had taken the time to read just one page about the project, they would've seen it has very clear national benefits.'"

The title of her 3-year, $160,500 project?   Religious clerics, medical authorities and sexuality in Islamic interpretations of reproductive health technologies in Egypt.

Mr Lane notes: "As a regular visitor to an important Muslim country in some turmoil, Dr Wynn says there is much to be gained from 'having a social scientist on the ground' and capable of offering insights into what's happening. 'I think the reason (the project) got funded (after a couple of knock-backs) was because it was right after the Egyptian revolution,' she says."

And finally, shades of the attack on NSF funding by the US Congress:

Last Thursday's 12-line media release from Liberal MP Jamie Briggs, chairman of a Coalition anti-government waste committee, cites the Wynn project and three others as a waste of money because they "do little, if anything, to advance Australians' research needs".
The committee promises an audit of "increasingly ridiculous research grants" and the "reprioritising" of ARC money to "deliver funds to where they're really needed".

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1U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Swindon SN21UJ, UK.
2Science Europe, Brussels B–1040 Belgium.