You can track the specifics (or should be able to) on both Recovery.gov and USASpending.gov, but for the big numbers right now, check out the following sources:

AAAS R&D Budget breakdown

American Institute of Physics analysis

Science Progress

The AIP report is the most thorough, including relevant language on the U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of Defense.

The National Institutes of Health comes out way on top in the stimulus package, receiving $10 billion, most of that targeted for research.  If reports are accurate, you can credit the massive increase (it was originally slated to receive $3.5 billion) to cancer survivor Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania).  Advocates for the physical sciences really need to rethink their strategy and tactics, because they continue to be outshone by their biomedical counterparts.  Perhaps their case is harder, because I can think of no easy equivalent to a disease in physical science research.

While I’ve said it before, the federal budget is sufficiently confusing that it bears repeating: this is not a budget, but a supplement to the budget.  The stimulus money is intended to be spent over the next two years (which suggests grants currently in the pipeline stand to gain most of the R&D money), and is in addition to the current budget and the one for the next fiscal year that Congress will once again fail to pass (or at least fail to pass on time).

The Obama Administration has belatedly posted the text of the stimulus package, with the President signed earlier today.  You have the opportunity to review the law and submit comments, though the timing is lousy.  As suggested by an earlier post here, the Obama Administration is likely to stumble through its efforts to make government more available and accessible to the public.  While some think this an unrealistic project, I think the effort is worthwhile and should be encouraged.

As part of the law, there is now a website, recovery.gov, intended to track the progress of the law.  It’s unclear whether the Congress will have a similar online presence for the stimulus package, but I wouldn’t rule it out just yet.  The idea behind recovery.gov reflects another website tracking government spending, USASpending.gov, established by legislation sponsored by then-Senator Obama and Senator Coburn, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act.  The goal of USA Spending is to track the spending of federal agencies online.  For instance, you can look at the National Science Foundation’s grants from 2000 to the present.  Hopefully recovery.gov can grow into something at least as sophisticated as USA Spending.

Noting the various online urgings over science funding and the stimulus this weekend, I have a few quick observations:

Some people are confusing the stimulus with the budget.  The explanatory postings at ScienceDebate (scroll down to LATER) suggest this disconnect  – people don’t get that funding in the stimulus is in addition to amounts in the budget.  Some advocacy is at least a little misleading on this point.  We’re dealing with a supplementary bill, much like those that handled appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Hurricane Katrina.  If a program is zeroed out in the stimulus, that doesn’t mean it disappears.

Science advocates are still better being reactive than proactive.  Noise from the communities was loudest this past weekend, when it had been telegraphed for a long time by President Obama that he was seeking a stimulus bill.  Why not mobilize the masses for a push starting January 21st rather than February 6th?  Hopefully they can ride whatever momentum they have, since they’ll need it.

Get ready for two more rounds.  Next month the continuing resolution that funds the government will expire.  Most funding for the last half of this fiscal year will be debated over the next few weeks.  If science is a tempting target for cuts in the stimulus, I have a hard time seeing a different outcome over the budget for the second half of FY 2009.  And we should see a preliminary FY 2010 budget by the end of February.  Sadly, appropriations is now a perpetual, rather than an annual, process in Washington, and science advocates need to shift tactics and employ better strategies to adjust to this state of affairs.

ScienceInsider has all the gritty details, but there are a series of policy changes on the books in France that have its country’s scientists set to strike next week.  In short, France is trying to shift its state-controlled research system to a more traditional Western model.  What strikes me as particularly odd, and perhaps uniquely French, is the tone taken by both sides (or their representatives) in this debate.  The ScienceInsider piece has English translations of the argument (and if accurate, that seems the best word for it), but those that can parlez francais should read the speech by French President Sarkozy and the response from the scientists’ groups to get a better sense of the nuances involved.

I just have a hard time seeing how a dispute of this tenor could happen anywhere else.  Maybe it’s because I’ve spent my graduate education as a non-resident and haven’t been directly exposed to American academic squabbles.  Of course, it’s also a bit of a struggle for me to get my mind around a researchers’ union (not in the sense of it being a good or bad idea, but simply in its existence).  But the equivalent of shouting matches via public statement?  I have a hard time seeing anyone from the Union of Concerned Scientists or Research!America or any other science advocacy organization doing something like this in the United States, their obvious frustration with American research aside.

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The Scientist reports on a recent decision by Research Councils UK that grant applicants must submit an impact summary, describing the broader impacts of their research.  While this bears a strong resemblance to the National Science Foundation’s broader impact criteria in their grant requirements, I cannot find the specific text of the UK summary to make the direct comparison.  As a result, if there is an economic angle to the impact summary, I can see the criticism raised in The Scientist piece about the difficulty of predicting economic impacts of research.  However, I think any measure encouraging researchers to think of what happens (or could happen) with their work should be encouraged.

Perhaps a surprise to nobody, Battelle has released a report (H/T Science|Business and Nature’s The Great Beyond) predicting that U.S. R&D spending will decrease in 2009, by an inflation-adjusted 1.6 percent.  Keep in mind that this report considers R&D funding from all sources, not just government.  Global R&D funding is expected to be flat (adjusted for inflation) in 2009.  R&D spending is expected to grow in Asia, as well as in sectors related to renewable energy.  As science policy often focuses on government spending to the exclusion of other sources, this report provides a good overview of other R&D spending and associated issues.

From The Scientist we have a report of testimony before Parliament about how well UK research councils are transferring the knowledge generated through research to business *and* broader communities.  Yes, this is from 2006.  However, I found the report noteworthy in that it did not limit considerations of knowledge transfer to just business.  In other words, the examination is a bit broader than the traditional treatment of this topic in the United States.  We’re typically focused on commercialization in the U.S., which is why the phrase knowledge transfer is rarely heard here – our term of art is technology transfer.  In an age where broader impact criteria are more common, and funded research programs are more tightly coupled to public policy goals (see the NSF’s Science of Science Policy program), questions of how well knowledge of all kinds is transferred deserves additional attention.  But I will not hold my breath in anticipation of these questions being asked.

According to this Times article (H/T Nature News), the pending release of a research evaluation will ruffle plenty of university feathers in the United Kingdom.  I posted about the research evaluation last month, and the release is not yet official.  The main objection appears to come from the top-tier universities, which may lose research funding because universities outside of the top tier have performed well in the evaluation. I don’t think there’s a good analogous situation for the U.S., as the federal government provides research money directly to institutions via individual researchers or earmarks.  The closest I could think of would be a major expansion of the EPSCoR program (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) – which targets research in states that don’t receive much research funding – at the expense of other major research programs.

The Times article does not explain any rationale behind the criticism, outside of a general disbelief on behalf of the top-tier schools that more even funding levels for British universities can be a good thing.  If there are criticisms of the methodology of the evaluation, they aren’t raised in the article.  The evaluation was conducted through peer review, so I’m hard pressed to think of methodological problems with the evaluation.  Regardless of the outcome, I expect the top-tier universities to argue strenuously that the next evaluation – which will use metrics instead of peer review – will include measure that will favor them over the smaller, less reputable institutions.

Based on the materials available on the House Appropriations Committee website, we have the specifics of science and technology funding in the current draft of the stimulus bill.  You can read the full bill, a summary, the report (a staff developed document that describes the history of the bill and the rationale behind various provisions), and an economic analysis.  The research section of the bill is summarized after the jump.  Again, this is a draft bill, and while the Obama team has indicated they will have no earmarks in the bill, things can change.

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The Obama draft stimulus legislation is circulating around D.C. (see the ScienceInsider blog for some breakdowns overall and by agency).  This is a separate pile of money from the second half of the TARP money approved by the Bush Administration.  Scientific research (in contrast to other science and technology intensive programs) is slated to get $13.3 billion, primarily for research and infrastructure spending.  This is a funding spike, so anyone assuming these increases will persist is in denial.  An important point that I’ve only seen in Kei Koizumi’s analysis at the AAAS website (H/T ScienceInsider) is that the stimulus is looking for the research equivalent of ’shovel-ready’ projects.  The key language:

“The bill requires nearly all of the funding to be awarded within 120 days of when the President signs the bill into law, with staggered deadlines of 30 days for formula funds, 90 days for competitive grants, and 120 days for competitive grants in brand-new programs, with the intention of spending the funding as quickly as possible to provide immediate economic stimulus. Nearly all of the money is designated as FY 2009 money, with agencies allowed to obligate funds until the end of FY 2010, but there are numerous ‘use it or lose it’ provisions in the bill to ensure that the funds are awarded, obligated, and spent as quickly as possible.”

If this bill is signed by the President’s Day recess (the current goal, slipping from Inauguration Day), funds will need to be awarded (not applied for), depending on the program, as soon as the middle of March, and at the latest by the middle of May.  The rationale here is that the stimulus needs to be quick, and the money dispersed into the economy quickly.  I can see that for the infrastructure investments, but I’m not convinced that the multiplier effect of research spending either increases with speed, or expresses itself in anything resembling the short term.