In January 2006, President Bush introduced the American Competitiveness Initiative, an initiative designed to help fund research in science research and education. This August, Bush signed legislation (the America COMPETES Act) toward this end, further cementing his goals of increasing research in basic science in the United States, and maintaining the country’s competitive (get it?) level of innovation. The COMPETES Act covers a lot of ground, but a clear focus was on enabling current and future researchers to tackle the fundamental questions of science.

So when the omnibus spending bill for Fiscal Year 2008 finally passed Congress last week, there were not likely to be any surprises. Given the previous commitment of Congress and the various reports contributing to the COMPETES Act, the spending bill was likely to simply put money behind the mouths of all those politicians. Unfortunately, what Congress signed was far from expected.

• Plans to double funding at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy Office of Science have dissolved
• 1% increase for the NSF
• 0.5% increase for the National Institutes of Health, which is effectively nothing
• Zero funding for the US contribution to ITER, the international fusion reactor in France
• Zero funding for NOvA, a neutrino facility under construction at Fermilab, placing it in limbo until at least next year
• $15 million ($45 million less than requested) for the ILC, the International Linear Collider, which (being three months into FY08) has already been spent, so the bill grants effectively no money for the ILC
• 10% slashing of funds for Fermilab, $65 million less than FY07 and $94 million less than requested

All of which comes soon after the news that the UK will be withdrawing a massive amount of investment in large physics projects (see also: saveastronomy.co.uk).

I would be remiss in not mentioning the increases in funding for applied sciences (for instance, increasing R&D money for renewables, energy efficiency and nuclear energy by 30%, to nearly $1.3 billion). And it is almost certainly tunnel-vision to focus on a single area of science, but it is difficult to see the silver lining past the dark clouds, especially when so many promises had been made. Furthermore, Dr. Leon Lederman, former director of Fermilab, writes in NY Times letter to the editor:

After a string of lean years, the 2008 cuts will result in a major contraction of our country’s basic research ability. The intimate connections among biology, chemistry, technology and fundamental physics make the penalties unpredictable and hurtful in the long term.

This is a big blow to fusion and high energy physics, both on a national and international level. As JoAnne at Cosmic Variance points out, pulling out of ITER is not without its consequences:

Let me remind you that ITER is the large international fusion reactor that is currently being constructed in France and is funded by international treaty. The US has signed that treaty and was set to contribute roughly $160 M this year. Apparently Congress just doesn’t understand that there are serious ramifications in backing out of an international treaty. Even one dedicated solely to science projects. This jeopardizes future international projects and provides yet further proof that the US is not a reliable partner.

The Fermilab cut means that 200 of the laboratory’s 1900 staff members will have to be laid off, and the remaining staff will be forced to take unpead leave twice a month. Notably, Senators Brack Obama and Dick Durbin, and Representative Judy Biggert are trying to get more funding for the High Energy Physics program, which supports research at Fermilab.

As Sean at (again) Cosmic Variance notes:

Lurking behind the debate over the high energy physics budget is a meta question that rarely gets addressed head-on: in a world with many things that we would like to do, but limited resources to do them, how do we decide what questions are interesting enough to warrant our attention?

There are a number of issues that get tied up in such considerations. One is that certain activities simply require certain resources, so if we judge them sufficiently interesting to be pursued then we need to be prepared to devote the appropriate resources their way. A colleague of mine in condensed-matter physics was fond of complaining about all the great small-scale physics that his community could do if they only had half of Fermilab’s budget. Which is undoubtedly true, but with half of Fermilab’s budget you wouldn’t get half the science out of Fermilab — you wouldn’t get anything at all. If that kind of particle physics is worth doing at all (which is a completely fair question), there is an entry fee you can’t avoid paying.

Obviously, $344 million (half of Fermilab’s budget) is a lot, but that big of a loss would be devastating to pure science. Hopefully we will never have to put Sean’s statement to the test and find out what slashing 50% of funds really would do to Fermilab. But unless Obama and company have some magic up their sleeves, this coming year we could be getting a taste of that potential devastation.

4 Responses to “A Dour Year for Physics”

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