Stop Government Grants to University Research

    In a May 29th  issue of Chemical and Engineering New s, Linda Wang reports on ACS members lobbying Capitol Hill for more federal research support. One of the lobbyists said, "the vast majority of academic research is supported by federal grants".
    The basis of the ACS lobbying effort is that there is within the federal government an effort to reduce the federal budget, and this would adversely affect the funds for research in academia.  When people's incomes are cut, they tend to get excited.
    Of course, the basic problem is that there never have been government funding of academic research in the first place. However, government has been able to use academia as a political tool. For example, when Obama wants to foster the development of economic vehicles, he issues instructions to various agencies to allow grants to universities for the study of such things as the decline of the sand lizard in West Texas and the resultant need to limit oil drilling. There also may be a grant to study the economics of battery production. Some of these research grants obviously have no significance in an open-market society. Others are on subjects important for study, but should not involve taxpayer funds through government. For example battery economics could best be studied in the research departments of battery manufacturers. Companies can also farm out part of their research of the research to academia by issuing private grants.
    I am not proposing that universities give up research. I am proposing that university research can be done under the expense of the university itself and various supporting private companies, as was standard practice many years ago. It is completely unreasonable and unnecessary that taxpayers need to be footing the bill for a political football.