Hmm, it seems after all that, the original NSF appropriation made it throught the House/Senate conference, so assuming the Senate actually votes on the bill, we should be set.
3 thoughts on “Well, that was much ado about nothing”
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Secret Blogging Seminar 
Maybe I’m too lazy to look these things up.. but is there a direct correlation known at this time between the stimulus and things like percentage of NSF grant applications awarded, number of new NSF postdocs, and so on?
There certainly doesn’t seem to be any info on the NSF website yet. Give it a little time.
There is a serious long-term issue. The NIH/NSF funding ratio keeps increasing over time. I have had trouble finding historical figures, but I believe that 40 years ago the ratio was about 2, whereas now it is about 5. The ratio in this conference version of the stimulus is 10/3, which is better than the status quo, but is not really a rectification.
In any case the proposal to give it all to NIH must have come from somewhere. Congress is chronically tempted to define science by miracle cures, even if they chose not to beat up on NSF this time.