Steven Holt: “I thank the gentleman. Madam Chair, I should point out, first of all, that as a percentage of our economy, the Federal…”

“I thank the gentleman. Madam Chair, I should point out, first of all, that as a percentage of our economy, the Federal Government's support for scientific research is half of what it was back when I was in college many decades ago. The point is that we are not keeping up. Part of the problem is, here in this Chamber and around the country, people value the fruits of research, but they don't have a clue about how it is done. We see here, on the floor, people ridiculing research because of the title. A prominent politician recently ridiculed NSF-funded research in fruit flies or game theory. Obviously, she didn't understand that one of the principal biological organisms that has been studied is Drosophila, which is the so-called fruit fly. Social and behavioral research is important in understanding how people make decisions about energy use or about how to invest or about disaster response. It tells us a great deal about brain processes; so, in pointing out NSF studies to ridicule because they sound foolish, we here--we policymakers--can look like the fools. I am a physicist by background, so I am pleased to hear the chairman talk about research in physics and chemistry and math, but we also need studies, based on evidence, as NSF studies are, on human behavior. Let's look at library science. It would be easy to ridicule a study that I saw described not long ago in library science, which was funded by the National Science Foundation.…”