Earlier this morning, I saw a story at Daily Kos that really upset me. It's the sort of thing that I would hope transcends political ideology, and I thought that if I submitted it to Reddit, maybe it would eventually attract enough attention to make some kind of difference.
I didn't want to link to Kos, though, because it's a liberal website, and that would probably turn off some people the same way a conservative website would turn me off. Like I said, though, the article referenced in the post wasn't ideologically Left or Right, so I went to the source ... and discovered that the article I wanted to link was behind a stupid goddamn paywall.
Here's what was excerpted at Kos:
U.S. researchers will soon abandon their search for the most coveted particle in high-energy physics because of a lack of funding.
Researchers working at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, had wanted to run their 25-year-old atom smasher, the Tevatron, through 2014 in hopes of spotting the so-called Higgs boson before their European counterparts could discover it with their newer, more powerful atom smasher. But officials at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which funds Fermilab, informed lab officials this week that DOE cannot come up with the extra $35 million per year to keep the Tevatron going beyond September.
“Unfortunately, the current budgetary climate is very challenging and additional funding has not been identified. Therefore, ... operation of the Tevatron will end in [fiscal year 2011], as originally scheduled,” wrote William Brinkman, head of DOE's Office of Science, in a letter to Melvyn Shochet, chair of DOE's High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) and a physicist at the University of Chicago in Illinois.
Here's what you see when you try to read more, or maybe send the link to your conservative parents who wouldn't read Kos if it contained the secrets of Life, the Universe, and Everything:
The content you requested requires a Subscription to this site or Science Pay per Article purchase. If you already have a user name and password, please sign in below.
Headdesk. Headdesk. Headdesk.
Edited to add: Joe D found a link to a similar (if not identical) story at US News and World Report that isn't behind a paywall. Paul linked to Nature, via NPR.
Also, I wanted to clarify that I'm not attacking AAAS, because I'm sure someone there has what they believe is a good reason for setting things up this way; I wrote this post in frustration to illustrate why I really hate paywalls.
Also, also, I agree that the research being completed, regardless of national location, is better than the research never being completed ... but as an American, I want my country to dig itself out of the fucking intellectual basement and catch up to the rest of the world. Budget cuts like this infuriate me, especially when we have seemingly infinite money to wage endless, unwinnable wars.
