During this week’s State of the Union address, President Obama announced that his Vice President Joe Biden will lead a new science “moonshot” to put an end to cancer. According to an article on Medium posted by the Vice President, this will do two things: increase resources devoted to fighting cancer and break down barriers that prevent sharing of information among cancer researchers.
The announcement drew a lot of praise from pundits—the snarkier Twitter commentators out there pointed out that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) failed to clap at this, marking him as heartless. More funding for cancer research sounds like a total no-brainer, doesn’t it? There’s just one problem—it’s a terrible idea.
At this point, let me give you a little background on where this editorial is coming from. It might be hard to understand why the car editor at a technology website is whining about science funding, but before moving to Ars full-time in June last year, I spent six years working in a policy office at the National Institutes of Health. It’s a job that gave me a front row seat into how science policy actually works in the United States. Before that, I spent another six years as a research scientist, during which time I served in a couple of leadership roles with the National Postdoctoral Association (I also used to write science content for Ars, starting back in 2004).
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