The #IcedBudgetChallenge: Tell Congress to thaw out funding for NSF and NIH!

So a friend nominated me in this viral scheme to raise funds for ALS research, about which you may have heard lately. I’m all in favor of finding a cure for ALS—my grandfather died of it—but I’m also pretty skeptical about raising funds for research one disease-specific social media campaign at a time. So I made my own challenge: I called my Congressional representatives to ask for better funding of NSF and NIH.
The full story is at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense—but I’ll also post the video here:

Really, I don’t care if you douse yourself in ice water or not, but everyone should make the calls. Except for a one-time bump from the 2009 economic stimulus, NSF hasn’t had a significant funding increase in a decade, and NIH hasn’t even kept up with inflation. Block out some time today, look up the numbers at house.gov and senate.gov, and ask for more money for basic science. Then spread the word with my lame pun of a hashtag: #IcedBudgetChallenge.