The High Quality Research Act: Searching for Ways Beyond "Politicization"
This post is a continuation of our on-going discussion here at American Science of Rep. Lamar Smith's High Quality Research Act (HQRA), which would cut the National Science Foundation's funding to certain kinds of research, especially in the social sciences.
It was only a matter of time before someone dropped the p-word, "politicization," in discussions of the HQRA. It's a word that haunts these kinds of topics. The first appearance of the word in this context that I noticed was in this post by Michael McAuliff and Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post.
I want to question and probe their discussion.
McAuliff and Grim use the p-word in their first paragraph when they write that the HQRA "would in effect politicize decisions made by the National Science Foundation." They never define the term. They then go on to quote approvingly from a letter that Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) wrote to Lamar Smith: "This [the HQRA] is the first step on a path that w…
It was only a matter of time before someone dropped the p-word, "politicization," in discussions of the HQRA. It's a word that haunts these kinds of topics. The first appearance of the word in this context that I noticed was in this post by Michael McAuliff and Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post.
I want to question and probe their discussion.
McAuliff and Grim use the p-word in their first paragraph when they write that the HQRA "would in effect politicize decisions made by the National Science Foundation." They never define the term. They then go on to quote approvingly from a letter that Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) wrote to Lamar Smith: "This [the HQRA] is the first step on a path that w…