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  1. #16
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    Re: Susan Alberti hip and shoulders Julia over funding cuts

    Quote Originally Posted by Lantern View Post
    I refrained from posting previously as I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you knew what you were talking about, but this post shows a less than average understanding of the topic at hand, so I hope I may be able to add some value to the discussion:

    Australia (along with, among others, the US, UK, France and Germany) is a major international hub of medical research with world leading institutions that attract top practitioners and researchers from around the globe. My wife is an intensivist (intensive care specialist) who has worked all around the world, and she can tell you that our medical research institutions routinely rank among the top in the world. Medical research is not a singular global 'cause' so much as a varied range of research streams (of which Australia is a world leader in at least two dozen of them), and international public research, while competitive, involves broad cooperative discourse rather than blind duplication of effort (ie. researchers from around the world are not competing to come up with the same cure, they are building on each others' work). To suggest that we may as well not do it because others will is an argument for all countries to stop medical research altogether and just rely on someone else.

    $400 million in cuts will not simply 'slightly lessen the number of people researching', it will fundamentally change the funding mix of medical research in this country, forcing most researchers to either drop out altogether or compete for private sources of funding, and [sarcasm alert] we all know that Big Pharma ie. pharmaceutical megacorporations have our best interests at heart. Medical research, like education, is a public good, and public funding ensures that effort is directed where it is most needed, not where profits are greatest. It is well-documented that that the overwhelming proportion of pharmaceutical megacorporation research funding goes into profitable first-world 'medication' such as diet pills and impotency drugs like Viagra instead of into AIDS or cancer research.

    I also don't understand how one can blithely assume that medical research in this country has been 'unsuccessful'; Australia has pioneered cutting-edge therapies and treatments in many fields of medicine and is currently at the forefront of efforts in a number of fields, including alzheimers, cardiology, neglected tropical diseases, neuroscience etc. It is also one of the most efficient industries around, where every grant dollar is highly contested and meticulously accounted for. I've been heavily involved in the Australian Research Council grants process in the past, and the medical field puts most others to shame in their level of professionalism.

    As previously suggested by another poster, this is nothing more than a Julia suburban poll-tester -- there is evidence of declining support for science funding from conservative Australians, which parallels a similar trend in conservative US politics (hello Sarah Palin), and Julia has shown that she is nothing if not willing to court the reactionary vote.

    By your own standards of epistemological methodology ie. 'weighing in all of the experiences and knowledge that usually go into making such an assessment', do you truly think that you possess the necessary 'experience and knowledge' to make a call on the effectiveness or otherwise of $400 million of research funding? I would suggest not, and a quick and simple Google search survey of medical research in Australia may open your eyes and change your mind.
    To be honest Lantern I feel indifferent towards this budget cut, my arguments so far have stemmed from a longing to play devil's advocate rather than a true passion for the policy itself. It would have killed me to see a thread like this go by in mindless agreement without any sort of sensible argument either for or against the policy itself, simply because of Susan Alberti's involvement. Judging by your well informed response, I'd say this is a success on my part. What I don't appreciate is the superior tone in which your post is set. Your knowledge on one aspect of this subject does not make you correct and I would suggest that you too consider whether your experience and knowledge put you in a fair position to 'make a call', and an apparently definitive one at that, on the effectiveness of $400 million not only in regards to research funding, but to our whole society.

    Again, I do not profess to know enormous amounts about this subject, but I do take a very keen interest in fairness and equality, and how they are influenced by common human perception and/or bias.

    One thing's for sure, if the government proceeds with this cut, they won't be doing it for votes, but for the merit of the decision, which is why whatever merit is in that decision deserves to be reviewed.

  2. #17
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    Re: Susan Alberti hip and shoulders Julia over funding cuts

    Quote Originally Posted by Scorlibo View Post
    To be honest Lantern I feel indifferent towards this budget cut, my arguments so far have stemmed from a longing to play devil's advocate rather than a true passion for the policy itself. It would have killed me to see a thread like this go by in mindless agreement without any sort of sensible argument either for or against the policy itself, simply because of Susan Alberti's involvement. Judging by your well informed response, I'd say this is a success on my part. What I don't appreciate is the superior tone in which your post is set. Your knowledge on one aspect of this subject does not make you correct and I would suggest that you too consider whether your experience and knowledge put you in a fair position to 'make a call', and an apparently definitive one at that, on the effectiveness of $400 million not only in regards to research funding, but to our whole society.

    Again, I do not profess to know enormous amounts about this subject, but I do take a very keen interest in fairness and equality, and how they are influenced by common human perception and/or bias.

    One thing's for sure, if the government proceeds with this cut, they won't be doing it for votes, but for the merit of the decision, which is why whatever merit is in that decision deserves to be reviewed.
    Surely you're not serious.

  3. #18
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    Re: Susan Alberti hip and shoulders Julia over funding cuts

    Quote Originally Posted by Scorlibo View Post
    One thing's for sure, if the government proceeds with this cut, they won't be doing it for votes, but for the merit of the decision, which is why whatever merit is in that decision deserves to be reviewed.
    They'll be doing it because they have said they will return to surplus and they need to cut, cut, cut.
    For those who were always the underdogs and wore it as a badge of honour.

  4. #19
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    Re: Susan Alberti hip and shoulders Julia over funding cuts

    Quote Originally Posted by Scorlibo View Post
    Judging by your well informed response, I'd say this is a success on my part.
    Well player, Aker.

    You totally pwned me but only because I was so right?

  5. #20
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    Re: Susan Alberti hip and shoulders Julia over funding cuts

    Quote Originally Posted by aker39 View Post
    They'll be doing it because they have said they will return to surplus and they need to cut, cut, cut.
    And they are making a decision to cut on medical research, instead of on any number of other causes.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sockeye Salmon View Post
    Well player, Aker.

    You totally pwned me but only because I was so right?
    Sorry, didn't mean to sound like that, just pleased to get some reasonable discussion on the issue.

  6. #21
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    Re: Susan Alberti hip and shoulders Julia over funding cuts

    The NHMRC (National Health Medical Research Council) receives something in the region of $750 million a year in government funding and that funding has gone up 10% every single year so for the supposed leaks saying that $400 million of cuts were possible was a bluff. My guess is the government have no intention of giving the research industry another 10% increase so they leak out that there could be cuts of up to $400 mill so when the budget actually comes out and there is no increase in budget the fact there is no cut to the budget will soften the blow and have everyone thankful they still have a job.
    If that actually happened the medical research industry would be in ruins. I work in this industry and in the last 12 months we have only started to see the effects of the GFC afew years ago with researchers finding it more difficult to get funding as it is. As a few have already intimated, Autralia is one of the leading countries in the world in this area and we have top researchers from all over the world coming here to their research and if these cuts happen then we would not only lose these top researchers we would lose our own researchers as well and this field will literally go backwards.
    Medical research is a growing industry with new facilities being consructed all the time. Across the road from the Royal Melbourne Hospital were the old Dental hospital used to be will be a new state of the art research building that has already had the funding approved so if these cuts went ahead you would have a brand new facility with nobody in there.
    As Mofra has suggested, research has found that every dollar the government puts into research we'll save us $5 down the track.

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