The question is posed by a story in today’s Syracuse Post Standard that deserves national attention. Money graf:
The National Institutes of Health, the country’s top research agency, is awarding recovery money to projects proposed long before the recession. With $8 billion extra dollars to spend on research, agency officials went back to the list of projects that had been turned down.
They looked for projects that could be done in two years, with no special emphasis on job creation and no requirement that the scientists buy equipment made in America.
Scientists whose ideas did not make the cut last year are answering surprise telephone calls from government officials, announcing the projects would be funded after all.
It seems rejected research ideas conveniently translated into “shovel-ready” research ideas.
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