US Science Funding - Proposal for a Better Alternative

The Shutdown Game

Let us play a number-guessing game. Pick a number between 1 and 1000. Did you select 723? If not, you are a loser and the game is over !!

If you think the whole point of the game is to make you feel bad, check the following figure. That is how unlikely NSF (National Science Foundation) is to get shut down in its entirety, if one throws random darts on the chart. Try it yourself by printing out the original from here.

The whole point of the ‘shutdown’ is to make scientists feel bad, and the process is highly targeted. If government agencies were closed indiscriminately, a much smaller fraction of NSF would have been closed.

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