National Science Foundation Grant to the American Chemical Society Is Bribery

Open e-mail to Rep. Neugebauer:

Randy,

The National Science Foundation (NSF), a taxpayer supported government agency, is in the business of giving away taxpayer money. They have recently given $1 million to the American Chemical Society (ACS) to "communicate to the public chemistry's contribution to society" (C&E News August 22, 2011).

I am a chemist and an emeritus member of the American Chemical Society. I obviously believe in the benefits of chemistry to society. It has been my lifelong career. Certainly, there is a need to educate the public on what chemistry is doing, but this method is a conflict of interest.

The problem is that when the federal government gives the American Chemical Society $1 million, the gift is connected with some form of reciprocity. The American Chemical Society is now obligated to support the National Science Foundation in any kind of harebrained scheme it wants to develop. This includes global warming, automotive fuel from switch grass, and other impractical or public fear imposing ideas.

C&E News is a magazine which is intended to disseminate information among its subscribers, who are usually chemists and chemical engineers. It is an example of what we call a house organ. There are house organs for every significant organization, which would include the glass industry, the steel industry, the automotive industry, etc. These magazines also generally have the objective of promoting the industry to the public through transference of articles to other more widely dispersed media. The basic cost has been borne by the various companies, who were members of the organization. If C&E News confined its financial revenue sources to corporate members of the ACS, as it has done in the past, there would be no conflict of interest.

As it now stands, the taxpayer gives money to the NSF. The NSF gives money to the ACS. The ACS then educates the same taxpayer who gave money to the NSF.

Randy, if this sounds like a bad system to you, the taxpayers would really appreciate your efforts in having various federal government agencies get out of the grant business. It is a bribery system which leads to deception of the American public. Congress could make a specific law prohibiting grants from federal agencies or it could cut the budgets of these agencies to the bone, which would force them to cut grants as they tried to first protect their own jobs.