We Should Have Funded Research On Coronaviruses, Instead Of Climate Change Musicals
Research funding in the geosciences, including climate change, is certainly legitimate, but not when it goes to ludicrous boondoggles such as a climate-change musical that cost $697,177 to produce.
The primary culprit is the NSF’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. Underlying its ability to dispense grants is the wrongheaded notion that social-science projects such as a study of animal depictions in National Geographic and a climate change musical are as important as research to identify early markers for Alzheimer’s disease or pancreatic cancer – or the biology and epidemiology of coronaviruses. This is what happens when, as a former senior NSF official put it, “the inmates run the asylum.”
On the North River 