My wife operates an optical trap (a sophisticated microscope, she uses it for studying gene/dna physical properties) and she's pretty good at working with that instrument. The number of people good at working that microscope are in the ballpark of 2000 (+- 1000) in the world! She has cried a lot in the last one year for the mess science research has become. We are moving out of the country at the end of August.
There are many biotech startups and private research labs thriving and paying high salaries with excellent benefits for that specialty right now - focused on genetic testing, editing, and longevity. Before moving abroad, widening the search outside of academia and considering moving internally might be worthwhile.
I'm surviving on consulting income for a wide variety of clients right now in this space, and let me tell you it's brutal and extremely difficult to get entry to this space for people that don't have a wide network and lots of industry experience. Academic experience typically doesn't count.<p>In addition there's a severe "passion tax" for these sorts of jobs, the salary difference for a "Data Scientist, Computational Biology", and "Computational Biologist" is pretty big, and hiring is also brutal.<p>I know a ton of extremely talented people who have been locked out of employment for a long time now. The high interest environment means that biotech investing has been hit extremely hard, as biotech is even higher risk than most software and AI spending (thanks for the correction, Schlagbohrer). Pharma companiees with big hits, like Lilly with GLP1 agonists, are hiring a bit as they try to move into the modern era of pharma with lots of AI tools, but it's still brutal.
Did you mean to write, high interest rate environment?
I don't know if it's so much that talented people are being locked out, as much as it is that communities everywhere, not just industry, are requiring a level of people skills that academic people lack but nonetheless thrive without.
We are not convinced that we will be happy in the industry and part of it is the visa issues. She currently has a valid visa until 2029 but she just doesn't want it anymore.
Why assume that this is about finding a job?<p>I happily had a job in academia in the US. Probably what most would call “successful” after exiting a startup and getting a PhD I was US engineering faculty for 8 years.<p>We picked up our keys to our new house in another country a few days ago and I start next month with a faculty promotion. Many of my colleagues are or are looking to follow.
You are a fool if you think these companies are hiring enough to meet the labor needs. So many Phds I know are looking for work and yes they’ve applied to probably 500 jobs mostly in industry.
> She has cried a lot in the last one year for the mess science research has become.<p>At least it's a good thing that we're able to a) observe and b) talk about and c) acknowledge openly(ish) that academic, mainstream, practicing "science" (including as visible to microscopists and all that entails) is currently a "mess".<p>This allows us to, eventually, address those issues (or die trying!).<p>Science used to move at a pace of one lifetime after another (pearl clutching 'til the end and confirmation bias and careers built on saving face and economic entrenchments all that).<p>But I hypothesize that with AI, we can point to "a thing that is not a person with all that is bundled up with that" and say "look, maybe this other train of thought is worth entertaining". Not to say the AI is right. Ideas will stand or fall on their own merit. Just that an AI is not a person outside the field. Normally, an outsider says something, nobody listens. But, if an anonymous AI says something (of course, cleaned up for voice and concision and validated by a human as a first pass), the worst you can say is "ok prove it" or "here is where that is wrong". Instead of: deafening silence.<p>In other words, I hope AI augments our ability to have those hard conversations that need to be had. Without people losing their jobs due to their prior (understandable) errors, and within the spirit of always using the best available information.<p>I shared this optimistic indirect use-case for AI with (less technical) friends recently, and they literally were speechless and finally one person said "you're the only one who thinks that".<p>Am I right, though? There's a there there, isn't there?
where to?
My family is looking at Missouri to Spain.<p>Why Spain: Expat communities, cost of living, friendly visa options, beautiful climate.<p>Why leave: Sick of U.S. politics and the way it directly and indirectly affects us and how difficult it is to escape from it - it’s a major point of conversations with family and friends, it’s on the local radio, local subreddit, local social media pages, etc.<p>Also, I have over $7k in personal medical costs annually (out of pocket). That’s just me, not my family cumulatively. For Ostomy supplies, iron infusions, and more.
Last year, the mood in my field, that has been relatively isolated from many of these impacts, was still very "these are uncomfortable times, but it's still possible to pull through".<p>Recently, you can cut the tension in a room with a knife whenever matters relating to government decision making come up. Some coworkers are leaving science, promising phds and postdocs leaving to other countries, many of the more established scientists are maintaining backup options.<p>I too have re-evaluated my feelings and decided that while I am not yet at the point of actively looking to leave the US, besides the hassle of moving itself, I would be fine with having to do so.
My friends from grad school who went on to become professors tell me that not only did their grant funding dry up, but they were unable to follow through on hiring many of the grad students they had planned to hire, since the students came from foreign countries and faced new visa restrictions. So the money for science is gone, the people to do to the science are gone, and the institutions continue to not support their researchers, workers, and communities. It's the death of research in the usa.
Americans voted to bring the country back to the 1950's and the plan is working perfectly
The institutions and trust that generations of Americans carefully built has been gleefully torched by cruel incompetents in the space of a handful years. The damage, physical and social, is incalculable. The unpunished crimes, endless.<p>The reconstruction, if it happens at all, will take decades. It was all so unnecessary, so foolish.
The fifties are when a lot of this infrastructure got its start.<p>They want the 1850s.
The retrogression perception is correct; but the specific timeframe is so incorrect that the back of my head blew out like a pinata.<p>The goal is - and I am not picking on the reactionary wing alone, this impulse has broad support across our ideologies - <i>de-industrialization</i>. The complexity of post-Enlightenment civilization is being rejected, in favor of some hypothetical state. This puts the past timeframe as far back as the 17th century.<p>But not a "real" past. No one can recreate the past. Only their idea of the past.<p>And of course, when you "create" anything, too much and too quickly, you risk systemic collapse. Not a problem if you imagine you will be Immortan Joeing around in your Death Wagon, but odds are, I'm sorry to say, against it.
Trump is a populist doing populist things, including attacking the intellectuals.<p>Conservatives have been basically purged from academia over the last 30 years, which frankly was a pretty dumb "victory" to celebrate, because now they voted in a dumb gorilla that is just smashing things as revenge.
The US in 1950s was very big on science. Nuclear, space, biology, etc, etc. Science seemed to have an answer to everything. I frankly don't remember a time when science was in such a low regard among the US public; maybe in the Deep South in 18th century.
Back to the 1930s.<p>People in the 1950s were convinced that the nuclear family was a disaster and the leading cause of divorce/poverty.
The institutions that built US science dominance were built in the 1950s. A fraction of Americans voted to bring America back to a cartoonish pastiche of images of the olden times (from 1950s, 1920s and 1800s) that they didn't know never existed and they didn't know that partly 'cause of education cuts starting in the 1970s-1980s.
In the 1950s the US had lots of foreign scientists.<p>In fact if the US hadn't had its huge influx of foreign scientists fleeing the Nazis, who knows where we'd even be today.
They don’t want the 1950s. We were pretty science forward then. The problem is they don’t really want to live in a world driven by facts because it eats into their privilege and they would rather have that.
Even the 1950s allowed for Operation Paperclip. This time is different.
> they were unable to follow through on hiring many of the grad students they had planned to hire<p>Most of the "research" done by graduate students and even tenured faculty as a whole is laughable at best. For every lab that produces groundbreaking output, there are countless humanities graduate programs that do nothing but produce and spread left-wing propaganda.
As a side-gig I taught within the doctoral education program for several high-ranking universities in Europe for about a decade (over a thousand PhD candidates). My impression is that nearly all funding for PhD projects flows to fields like medicine, physics, chemistry, computer science, electronics, and so on. Spending on humanities is absolutely minuscule compared to those.
Then it should have been easy to cut only those grants instead of the "real science", right?
"R&D is a cost center" what an insightful take.
What a depressing view of the world.
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As a US citizen with a PhD, I didn't experience any clear discrimination in favor of foreign students during grad school.<p>I think the main reason so few US citizens get PhDs is because PhD "student" (they're actually workers) positions pay so poorly. Make PhD student positions have non-poverty wages and you'll see a lot more interest from US citizens.<p>On the flip side, I think foreign students experienced a lot of abusive conditions that I could more easily say no to because I didn't have a visa that required me to work at the university. I've seen some of that first hand. I don't mean to imply that there would be no cost to me saying no, just that I wouldn't have to leave the country if I said no.
I've seen clear discrimination in favor of foreign students, but it was specifically because of those abusive conditions. I know of professors who exclusively tried to recruit specific foreign nationalities (their own, typically) because they could get away with treating them worse than American students. I wouldn't have been able to get into those labs, but I also wouldn't want to.
im referring to the admissions process, and this discrimination has been present for decades
Are you thinking of affirmative action?<p>Affirmative action is by design discriminatory, but not against nationality. It's discriminatory based on race and sex. So I think your grudge is not striking the right target. And in any case, affirmative action has been mostly wound down, which began to happen when Obama was President. Not because he did anything, but because SCOTUS declared that his election was evidence that affirmative action was no longer required and thus ruled against it in new cases.
Stop vagueposting and make a proper argument. This isn't X where you get paid for posting bait.
Any source? In my field US Citizens and permanent residents are actually preferred for at least two reasons, first they are eligible for graduate grants like NSF so they are not using department's money; second upon graduation they are eligible for more jobs because places like national labs do not hire foreigners.
I don't think I experienced discrimination during admissions either. Off the top of my head, I don't know any US citizens who told me that they wanted to go to grad school but were unable to be admitted to a school.
When I was in grad school (2008-2011), of the 60 people in my program only 5 were American. The vast majority were Indian or Chinese (~50). I wouldn't say there was discrimination, though. The matriculation statistics were interest-based, mostly. A lot of the Americans who received their BS went immediately to industry.
My understanding this is because being a grad student is hardly an economically good deal for a typical American student, but for the sort of foreigner who can afford to send their child to school in the US, it can still be valuable.
During my engineering grad program I was fascinated by the gender disparity among americans (almost no women) versus the nearly equal gender balance among engineering grad students from India, the Middle East (including Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia), and China.<p>The engineering gender imbalance seems to be almost unique to the USA. Countries with awful records on women's rights sent just as many women to get PhDs as men.
yeah most people are normal human beings, im saying the discrimination happens in getting admitted into the program
Not really true but white Americans love to say that. Americans are the biggest bullies and and victims.
I know a ton of people who would love to get their Phd. When they can't make it work but see graduate programs heavily populated by foreign students (who may or may not stay) funded by (what they see as) their tax dollars, some become resentful. That's a pretty normal human reaction, not a uniquely white or American one. Understanding human realities and optics might have helped here. But instead you chose 'white people evil, Americans suck'. Not productive and in part how we got here with those positions now unfunded, and just as small minded as the attitudes you're condemning.
Well why Americans are not willing to take those PhD offers that pay barely above poverty line for 5 years or so? The answer is obvious, they would rather take a job in industry that pays miles better.<p>There is really no reason to be resentful because it is a voluntary choice, and foreign students are worse off in every aspect to start with. Leaving friends & family behind, travel often involves long-haul flights, different culture to blend in, not eligible for NSF grants and national lab jobs, etc.<p>Situation is really similar to H1B workers discussed here a while ago. The options for Americans are plenty while for foreigners very scarce, and with the recent change it is getting even more so without giving Americans a bigger incentive, so it is really a lose-lose outcome.
I think it is misunderstanding to think that Phd Salaries will increase to high level if immigrants left. Will NIH or NSF dump 3 x more money? If that is the case are civil servants in USA getting super great salary (a friend works for DMV in NJ and she says pay is awful)
I get all that. I grew up in Santa Cruz and wish I could go home but can't because of the cost. I can't imagine having to leave my entire country. I'm not trying to put down immigrants in those positions. I am inspired by immigrants. I am inspired by foreigners who come here.<p>But none of that addresses that many Americans <i>dream</i> of being in those positions, and seeing foreigners who are doing it and are being funded by government dollars instills a human (not just white American) reaction. Human nature is our <i>reality</i>. It's not good or evil, it's just human. Feeding into it is evil. But that there <i>are</i> feelings is just natural. Responding to people feeling that with 'entitled white' does not improve anything. Does not encourage them to reflect on it, or realize 'yeah, it's a dream, but I saw the reality and chose something else'.<p>I'm not saying it's fair. I'm not saying immigrants/foreign visitors should be maligned/made to feel bad. But if we don't address it in a productive way, those human feelings become identity, become politics/actions, become toxic and destructive.<p>H1-B I would like to see addressed, I feel it is abused by companies to exploit people. But at the same time it's so toxic now it can't be addressed because the racism is too entrenched now. My fear is the same is being put in place with Phds. We need to not push it into identity with things like 'white entitled Americans' but push the reality that it's a nice daydream but people realize they don't want the reality (and not just in a 'American's don't want to do it' way, because again that isn't productive, because people do want it, just not enough to accept what comes with it).<p>OP is (knowingly or not) making the US more xenophobic for no productive reason. Labeling people doesn't help anything and we shouldn't do that, just like we shouldn't feed <i>human</i> but negative responses to other's doing things we wish we could do.
A good and balanced take, this. Too bad we don't even allow those on the political stage anymore :(<p>All we get is candidates who scream that the other side is stupid fascists or degenerates and that all their opinions are obviously stupid, since they came from obviously stupid irrational people.
> There is really no reason to be resentful because it is a voluntary choice, and foreign students are worse off in every aspect to start with.<p>> Leaving friends & family behind, travel often involves long-haul flights, different culture to blend in, not eligible for NSF grants and national lab jobs, etc.<p>Long flights and leaving friends/family behind? You mean like... most undergrad students in the US? Sitting on a plane is the argument?
What tax dollars are you referring to? America famously does not pay for people to go to higher education at any real scale.
I'm a white American and I've heard a handful of my fellow white Americans say this, but they can't actually show me real world examples or show me how it actually affected them.<p>It's willfull victim hood. It's a viewpoint of "I'm a victim in a system that has benefited me, why isn't it benefiting me over those other people anymore?" White Americans are so acquainted to benefitting the systemic issues that hold others back that equality seems unequal to white Americans. "Why is that immigrant applying for a PhD? They're pushing out a good white American!!"<p>When I go to academic events in the US(less often now since Trump) it's still 95% white folks. Wild how that happens.<p>Lol constant victims. I'm not trying to be a dick or rude. It's just that white Americans have no idea how entitled they are. The second someone else gets a morsel of a crumb it becomes a question of "Why did this person get something?" This is the <i>exact</i> thing trump and conservatives say to rile up their base and it works. It's endemic to American culture so there's no denying this. It's a question of "How much?" not if.
None of this addresses that it's basic human nature. Nor provides any way to improve anything.<p>"I'm a victim in a system that has benefited me, why isn't it benefiting me over those other people anymore?"
Again, it is <i>normal</i> for people to respond when a system changes to their detriment. Not a white people issue. It's also not wild/"white people" to think citizens should be favored over non-citizens by government funded programs. We have to lead people to a better position. Attempts at shaming them into it isn't going to work. Telling them 'things are just going to be worse for you you whining entitled white boy' isn't going to improve anything.<p>"Lol constant victims. I'm not trying to be a dick or rude."
Pick one of the above. You can't pick both.<p>"It's endemic to American culture so there's no denying this."
It's endemic to human nature, not just white American culture. You might want to broaden your human experience if you truly think this.
I work at a research lab that was previously supported by an R01 grant that did not get renewed last year. It’s been tough and the staff (including me) have been moved to part-time employment.<p>However, it also made us put ourselves out there and fundraise, which led to new connections and new opportunities.<p>So yes, it’s been chaotic, but like Petyr Baelish says, chaos is a ladder.
> whether there are black holes at a redshift of 10 or not is not a partisan issue.<p>Anything that depends on a basic understanding of the scientific process, and resulting scientific facts is <i>absolutely</i> a partisan issue right now.
It certainly is when people are typing the word "black" into the search field when deciding what programs need to be cut...
And the real partisan question is ”should the US fund studying the black holes”, not the actual science question
The <i>real</i> "partisan" question is, "What can the GOP leadership and their owners loot without immediate negative consequences for themselves?"
Which really tells you more about the state of mind of people asking that question. What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence, or the nature of the physical reality they live in (and yes, by "being curious" I mean "being willing to put a tax dollar amount to them")?
>What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence<p>A person who struggles to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, for one.
That's foolish. There is certainly an amount of money on funding research that is unreasonable! Determining where that line should rest is an inherently political question. Determining who should get funding for that is also a political question. The latter question was able to be papered over for many years because the scientific community generally contained roughly equal members of both parties. Since that isn't true any longer now "science" is getting treated like interest group just like all the other groups within the country. It's definitely going to hurt the country in the long run, but acting like this wasn't going to happen eventually when the university system purged itself of moderates and conservatives is foolish and obscures the part of the problem that came from the universities themselves.
lol, are you implying science is dying because, you believe, less and less scientists are “conservative”. Do you have any notion of how ridiculous that sounds?
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if they thought it was a DEI thing.
> When the shutdown ended in mid-November, Reynolds’s team had just two weeks to get on budget. It failed. The plan the group submitted would cost too much and take too long. “Our last hope was that NASA headquarters would understand what had gone on and give us some leeway,” Reynolds says. NASA did not. After nearly 10 years of work, AXIS was dead.<p>If the scientists haven't left science behind after an experience like this, probably nothing will. What an absolute kick in the nuts to have a decade of your life erased because someone did a keyword search for science projects to stop, in the name of saving money, while at the same time wasting even more money on other things.<p>I think I should feel angry, but I just feel sad for all the humans involved here, I hope they manage to come out with a more positive perspective than I'm able to here.
Oh scientists are leaving science in droves, certainly. Often becoming sales-people for deep-tech companies, which is rather sad.<p>This is the most recent shock, and probably the biggest one, but academia has been becoming toxically metrics-driven, authoritative and political for a long while, weirdly more than in industry.<p>It has nothing to do with scientists of course, they are the last ones that would want this. It's a never-ending squeeze from the top.<p>And also the fact that so many students were pushed to study pure sciences, which is great in principle, but some of these degrees only prepare you to stay in university as an academic, and there's only so much budget for that.
True, also very precarious and unstable. It is now common not to get a long-term contract until your 40s.<p>Given the massive pay gap with industry and scarce funding, it's natural lots of innovation has shifted to industrial labs.
In EU there are laws that force universities to give researchers a permanent contract after a couple years. The result? Everyone gets fired every couple of years. In certain fields, this implies changing country every couple of years.<p>Not that the university is paying much anyway, often the opposite: the researcher gets their own grant and they are forced to pay a cut to the host university, or to their group leader. It can get rather feudal.
We all should feel sad and angry. That said, this was never about saving money. This is about keeping scientists under tight control by the government, in order to suppress research on climate change and other controversial topics. If the government can cut your grant at any time without notice or appeal you will think twice before publishing results that go against their ideology, or even before publishing a criticism on Twitter. This is true especially if you are not tenured, which accounts for the majority of the academic world.
I just want to vent: climate change is not a controversial topic, it's an inconvenient topic for people making a lot of money.
Maybe off-topic, but sadly, climate change is an inconvenient topic for everyone. There's one thing that the poor, angry, ready-to-eat-the-rich masses hate more than the world warming up, and that's higher gas prices. Polices to reduce fossil fuel usage by making them expensive are strikingly unpopular across the world, regardless of how much they say they hate fossil fuel CEOs.
The controversy is over whether we should learn more about it and take appropriate actions, or ignore it. This fundamental disagreement makes it a controversial topic.<p>Reminds me of the when all the catholic priests were molesting kids and being moved around instead of outed and prosecuted. This was also a controversial topic too for the same reasons. Some people wanted to take action, while other (more powerful) people wanted to ignore it.
In the US, sure.<p>In Australia we established a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, looked at all the schools and institutions regardless of creed (and, it turned out, the Christian Brothers were the clear worst of the worst - although few came away unscathed) and then put a senior Vatican Cardinal on trial.<p>TBH it's been a <i>lot</i> harder to get the worst carbon offenders under close scrutiny in a very public eye.
Check out the timing. The sex abuse scandal broke in the US in the late 90s/early 2000s and the fight went on here for many years before it spread to the rest of the church.<p>The church in Rome was blowing it off as an <i>American</i> problem for many years.<p>That Australian commission was established in 2012. The battle had already been going on for well over a decade in the US.<p>If you want to see how things were going early on you can look at things like Sinéad O'Connor stuff from <i>1992</i>:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9ad_O'Connor_on_Saturday_Night_Live" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9ad_O'Connor_on_Saturd...</a>
Is that better than the US response? By the time the Royal Commission started, the total amount the Catholic Church in the US had paid out was approaching a billion dollars (back when a billion dollars could buy you instagram). Dioceses have continued to pay since then and many had to file for bankruptcy protection in the US.<p>That seems like a more severe response than a single cardinal getting arrested.
As a leading exporter of <i>coal</i> Australia isn't really a good example of a serious climate actor.
Australia's a <i>good</i> example of a country that sells out its resources for a pittance NSR in exchange.<p>We can talk about Indian coal companies (Thermal), global steel demand (Metallurgical), US natural gas extractors, etc.<p>Still, at least we have the vast areas untouched by modern man: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh9IkUUgaww" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh9IkUUgaww</a>
It’s true. In the US reality itself has become controversial. Maybe the oligarchs’ lies are just as valid as objective reality? Who can say!
I see no controversy there, yes we should take some very strong action since we literally crap where we live and we only have 1 self-contained room for it all, the debate (not controversy) should be about which steps are most efficient, while not ruining the economy albeit some acceptable setback is probably unavoidable.<p>So no to dumb fuckery EU did with biofuels (for which vast rainforests in ie Borneo had to be cut down forever), no destruction of local automotive industry while rest of the world couldn't care less. And Yes to many other, saner activities, of which some are done, in some places.
You're being downvoted, probably for being abrasive, but I agree with your overall point.<p>When I was younger and more naive, this
> "the debate (not controversy) should be about which steps are most efficient") i<p>is what I thought (american) politics meant. When people talked about things being political or arguments related thereto, this is what I imagined happening.<p>Then I grew older and saw it was mostly people whining about gays getting married or who was allowed to have an abortion or what activities minorities were allowed to participate in.<p>Very depressing, frankly.
It's a propaganda talking point. "Controversy" is generally as much a manufactured product as possible, because it assists propaganda goals.
Indeed! Not scientifically controversial at all, but politically controversial, unfortunately.
Yes, the controversy is political because it's about controlling people. There's never a right answer to political problems because they're at the edge of deciding what the objectives should even be and how the good and bad outcomes should be distributed among people. Didn't you ever look at history and think "those silly people 100s or 1000s of years ago made a mistake and ruined everything"? Those people were no different from you - they believed their political beliefs were the right ones. There will be beliefs you hold which future historians will look at as mistakes too.
So scientists are getting a reality check. Even scientists have customers, in their case the government. In the private sector a customer can change their mind, even often for a retarded reason, and suddenly decide to stop employing your services. Turns out that happens in government to. We're all employed at the convenience and service of our customers, if they change their mind, ultimately that's their decision that can be made at any moment at which point the most practical next move (assuming the customer is unwilling to change their mind) is to either find another customer or offer a different service.<p>Probably a good opportunity for them to stop and reflect that they're not from a special caste or class, and gravity / global warming / all the rest effect them and the plebs all the same and that includes their exposure to the labor market. Their pleas that it is somehow special when it happens to them falls on deaf ears considering the government funded or employed scientists who have any expertise or position to comment on economics (like Milton Friedman) would preach with their loudest voice from the ivory tower that the plebs duke it out in Darwinistic free-market competition.
I think this misses the mark. The outrage or sadness is not primarily over "I'm going to lose my job", but the harsh reality that much of your country is not that interested in scientific reality and realizing that your country actually is solidly on the decline.<p>If I had to choose, I'd rather I lost my job for some reason, but my country is passionate about science and curiosity and understanding, compared to living in a country where I kept my job but the culture was inimical to science.
What a wonderful example of why we need <i>more</i> scientific education in this country, not less.
It is often hard to put an economic value on research in general. That makes the whole "labor market" highly different from the rest of the world.
And these same people likely fund "reports" and "news" with misinformation to make it confusing for the average person.
In theory it can also be beneficial to historical cold countries like Russia and Canada.<p>It’s entirely possible Russia will find itself with a pacific warm water port.<p>Perhaps tons of tundra frost will become fertile farm land.<p>Of course this is at the costs of billions of climate refugees having to migrate as well as a bunch of other side effects
> It’s entirely possible Russia will find itself with a pacific warm water port.<p>You are 100% right. Yes, some people could believe that huge mistake.<p>Global effects will still catch them. The atmosphere and the oceans are global systems that don't care about frontiers. Warm oceans in Russia means extra hot waters in the equator belt, that means Hurricanes on steroids. This nice Russian port in Putingrade could be destroyed each year by the extreme weather. And nobody could navigate safely in huge stormy areas of the oceans.<p>> Perhaps tons of tundra frost will become fertile farm land.<p>Perhaps we will find that the peat soil starts releasing methane at a level never seen before. And that we enter in an unstoppable cycle of global extinction, just after dismantling science for fun. Weee!. This planet has resorted to that nasty trick a few times before.<p>Once it starts and self-feeds there is not enough money in the planet to bribe the ecosystems. They will fall until the next stable level of energy available. A level that may grant, or may not grant, minimum conditions for plant survival. Humans can't live without plants.<p>But a few rich choosen ones will go to Mars, party all night and it will feel like a Tattoine's adolescent dream!<p>Being rich only works if there are a much bigger amount of people that fix your needs and breeds your food. Money in Mars can't buy you a tuna sandwich when all tunas went extinct. Mars will became a very disappointing place in no time. A place that hates us with passion, with probabilities of survival abysmally lower than the earth. This people will be done the first time that the life-supporting machines will fall. Something that would never happen in the Earth.<p>The earth? will be fine. Go fast-forward several million years in the future and some organism will be seen traveling in machines fueled with petrol made of human corpses.
It is best to say that it is a religious topic. Everybody has strong opinions about it, but nobody has ever bothered to look into any details of atmosphere physics.<p>Everybody thinks he knows everything about the subject, but nobody ever checked anything. If people go into the details of some absorption spectrum they risk to get cancelled.<p>It's religion - and a strong one. With dogmas, taboos and holy authorities.
If the bible cited even 1/1000th as many studies and experiments as the IPCC Reports, it would be a very different book.<p>> If people go into the details of some absorption spectrum they risk to get cancelled.<p>On the flickering smidgen of a chance that you are making this complaint in good faith, the reason why nobody feels obliged to walk you through the science is because for decades there has been a raging denial-of-service battle where the anti-climate-activist side spams questions under the pretense of "I'm just a curious individual, just asking questions" (JAQing off) when in fact they are exploiting the asymmetry between asking and answering a question. It takes 1x effort to ask and 100x effort to compile a good answer and you can only tell that the question was being asked in bad faith at the end when, after having the question thoroughly and convincingly answered, the JAQ-off completely fails to update their priors and immediately rotates to another misunderstanding that validates their politics. And then another, and another, indefinitely, because the JAQ-off never wanted to learn, they always just wanted to promote their politics.<p>If the science community opens its arms to this, it gets stabbed in the heart. Ask me how I know. Our response is twofold:<p>1. Don't assume good faith until someone invests effort to demonstrate it<p>2. Point to the IPCC reports, which are one of the most monumental assemblies of knowledge, observation, and experimentation in human history.<p>These days, "the simplified IPCC reports are still too hard for me" isn't even an excuse because LLMs exist and are good at explaining the scientific basis for climate issues. Whichever detail of whichever absorption spectrum you have in mind has almost certainly been studied by a hundred authors across a dozen labs who have also studied and answered 5 more questions about the absorption spectrum that you didn't think to ask. But the information is out there: go get it!<p>Once you have invested effort in digging into the IPCC report, finding a study, reading it, building a question -- then you can go to a particular researcher and ask a particular question. You will get an answer, because you pass gate #1. But right now you are very far from passing gate #1 because you have put in no work to formulate a good question.
Interestingly, the IPCC reports themselves (not the summaries for policymakers) are quite optimistic. IIRC something like, if we do nothing to abate emissions, climate damages in 2100 will cause damage equivalent to ~3% of GDP per year. (With GDP being many times higher than now per capita). Hardly a catastrophic prediction!
I know, right? They bend over backwards to not be "alarmist," even perhaps a bit more than they should. But of course this wins them zero credit from their political opponents, which is an important lesson about politics: seeking middle ground with someone bent on destroying you is a fool's errand.
The IPCC has been in defensive mode for a few years now. They made claims that absolutely made no sense and haven't answered to obvious criticism for years now. Only now they are very slow in backpedalling. Why should anyone still trust them? You can read IPCC reports all day long - if they still contain obvious flaws - it's not going to impress... If you check related websites you find a lot of propaganda - and very little science. They stopped caring about using arguments years ago. I looked for science there and only found low quality rubbish.<p>The only thing going for them is the argument from authority. But once you know people in academia this doesn't work any more. I personally know a climate scientists (he published 40 papers). He showed a lot of signs of mental issues - most likely he is completely nuts - From experience I've seen that competent guys don't go to work in academia - it's mostly a cargo cult society for guys from the 2nd and 3rd intellectual league. Just look at them - I've seen more religious nuts and real flat-earthers there than anywhere else. I know a lot of guys in academia and even the most sane one is still leading the UFO-club...
On one hand we have the IPCC with concrete claims, detailed explanations, piles of survey papers expanding the details, and piles of novel and confirming work behind each survey.<p>On the other we have adornKey, with vague accusations and smack talk that feel like they came from a LLM, still stuck at gate #1. Sad.
> The IPCC has been in defensive mode for a few years now. They made claims that absolutely made no sense and haven't answered to obvious criticism for years now. Only now they are very slow in backpedalling. Why should anyone still trust them? You can read IPCC reports all day long - if they still contain obvious flaws - it's not going to impress... If you check related websites you find a lot of propaganda - and very little science. They stopped caring about using arguments years ago. I looked for science there and only found low quality rubbish.<p>> The only thing going for them is the argument from authority. But once you know people in academia this doesn't work any more. I personally know a climate scientists (he published 40 papers). He showed a lot of signs of mental issues - most likely he is completely nuts - From experience I've seen that competent guys don't go to work in academia - it's mostly a cargo cult society for guys from the 2nd and 3rd intellectual league. Just look at them - I've seen more religious nuts and real flat-earthers there than anywhere else. I know a lot of guys in academia and even the most sane one is still leading the UFO-club...<p>Thank goodness honest citizens like "AdornKey" are around to pinpoint the precise reasons why the international community of climate scientists are crazy, stupid, closed-minded, and ignorant. I am certainly glad that "AdornKey" made this laser-focused contribution to my understanding.
While I wouldn't argue that academia is "crazy, stupid, closed-minded, and ignorant", I would absolutely argue that they are ideologically homogenous. The whole community is rife with political signaling and affinity groups.
Please refrain from personal attacks.
> It is best to say that it is a religious topic. Everybody has strong opinions about it, but nobody has ever bothered to look into any details of atmosphere physics. Everybody thinks he knows everything about the subject, but nobody ever checked anything. If people go into the details of some absorption spectrum they risk to get cancelled<p>Wat<p>I am just a climate science hobbyist: my graduate work was in another science field, but I follow the field a bit and read some of the hot papers. But even in my day job we still use a fair bit of atmospheric physics.<p>I have to run into atmospheric physics a fair bit and it's <i>not</i> my area of training. I know that the friends and colleagues who are in research deal with it much, much, much more intimately.<p>This comment is wildly, and weirdly, off the mark. Atmospheric physics is no more a religion than steel metallurgy or rainforest ecology is. It's grounded in hard experimental data and observations.
It's only a religious topic to climate change denialists.
By your rethoric, do you consider yourself as climate alarmist?<p>Maybe try to be honest to yourslef first and then you'll understand, why it is really just about opinions that vary. No need to labeling opposition.
So you're labelling me a climate alarmist before I have made a single statements about the climate crisis?<p>I have also not used any rhetoric that wasn't first introduced by the parent, so you also have no evidence of my rhetoric.<p>Do you see how that is a dogmatic (some might call it religious) response?<p>To the point: the evidence is overwhelming, and there is nothing alarmist about reacting rationally to it. Anyone denying human-caused climate change is also doing so in the face of this overwhelming evidence, so the label is rather accurate. I would happily label climate deniers with any negatively charged label you can think of: simpletons, propagandists, accelerationists, fundamentalists, reactionaries, fascists, useful idiots. Depends a little on what their role is which label sits best, but they all apply.
> nobody has ever bothered to look into any details of atmosphere physics.<p>I’m sorry but this is demonstrably wrong as the simplest search of reputable scientific journals would show.
You’re clearly referring to something specific, what is it?
One example is that whenever patents expire on some refrigerants or related process somehow magically at that same exact moment Dupont or other chemical IP behemoth magically find a new one safe for the ozone, the science magically all aligns at that moment, and congress/EPA finds the time to change the law before one iota of generic industry can squeeze out.<p>I think the generic idea of the science and global warming is real but there is a whole industry around gaming the conclusions and gamifying what concern pops up when to magically align with whatever the guy with the most influence and self-dealing is hawking at that time.
Ozone is an interesting topic. CFCs seem to be very potent climate gases. But I haven't checked any calculations about them, yet. I'd love to see a good analysis of the absorption-spectrum. Adding something new to the atmosphere has a lot of warming potential - but the question always is how fast it reaches a level of saturation. For ozone and CFCs years of media coverage haven't brought any insight. Having 3 different updated versions of Dupont-products in the atmosphere could be good or bad - most likely people haven't bothered to check, yet... But they're all full of furious knowledge. People "know" that banning CFCs "cured" the ozone hole - but they don't ask why it shrunk too early, and why the situation hasn't changed at all for decades now...<p>I think most likely the banning was good - but the reasons don't really make sense.
> most likely people haven't bothered to check<p>Searching "cfc concentration in atmosphere" on scholar.google.com returns 60000 papers. Cruising the first few pages, most of them easily qualify as "bothering to check." Your estimation of the scientific community is five orders of magnitude off.
The problem you're describing is non-scientific interests putting their thumb on the scale of scientific questions. The solution to that problem is more science, not more politicized control of science.<p>Elsewhere in this comment section you're defending politicians as customers of scientists demanding politically convenient science. But that's exactly what produces the non-scientific conclusions you're talking about in this post. What you really should want is for science to be held to a gold standard of fidelity to the facts, and for politicians who push them in other directions should be voted out of office.
>The problem you're describing is non-scientific interests putting their thumb on the scale of scientific questions. The solution to that problem is more science, not more politicized control of science.<p>You won't likely "more science" your way into thumbs off the scale, that is going to have to be achieved from largely non-scientific means.<p>>Elsewhere in this comment section you're defending politicians as customers of scientists demanding politically convenient science.<p>This is a cleverly packed lie, one attempted to paint me as a hypocrite, that you not only not quote but also chose to not address directly. The reason why is obvious -- flood the zone with indirect pointers to supposed lies to wear down the counterparty. But just this once I'll entertain it, though I know this deceit doesn't stop once engaged.<p>> defending politicians as customers of scientists<p>I am stating the politicians are the customers of the government-employed scientists. What I am "defending" is not living in a fantasy. Of course you can wax philosophical about "we the people" or whatever but at the end of the day the summation of congress+executive has constructive possession of the purse and executive management of scientific employ.<p>> ... demanding politically convenient science.<p>and I used the verbatim word 'retarded' alluding to what I thought of it ... a very strong defense of that particular customer, after which I suggest they might get a new one.<p>> ut that's exactly what produces the non-scientific conclusions you're talking about in this post.<p>There's a genius amount of terse deception to unpack here. The slight of hand is you use 'customers of scientist demanding politically convenient science' but then claim 'exactly what produces' these conclusions are ... the non-scientific output of work of <i>scientists</i> rather than the output of politicians who are customers. If they are producing non-science they are not acting in capacity of scientists yet somehow they escape your damnation here despite being the very people producing it by reading of your statement. Your sentence is one tightly packed logical contradiction that simultaneously guards scientists as providers of facts while simultaneously claiming the scientists themselves are producing non-scientific conclusions by chaining that as the output of the work. If they are scientists of fidelity acting in capacity of such then practically by definition they aren't to be blamed for non-scientific conclusions and are not the "producers" of such regardless of whom their customer is.<p>> What you really should want is for science to be held to a gold standard of fidelity to the facts<p>The scientist who depends on a salary to survive who wants fidelity of facts should look for customers demanding that. Expecting to produce fidelity from someone demanding infidelity means you end up broke or you become corrupted. The demand from government is infidelity. In fact what I'm "defending" is looking elsewhere away from politicians at this time because your aspiration of "should be voted" is at odds with the current reality of "they were not."
This will go too far, but if you want to understand things, maybe HITRAN Database is interesting for you. There've been detailed calculations what is going on with absorption. How the absorption spectrums of relevant gases look like is a start. The next question is to check how much potential a gas has (how much energy is available in that spectrum?). HITRAN is an extensive database for the relevant lines. The results are interesting and a bit surprising...<p>But all this has been explained and cancelled again and again... It's no good topic in any religious environment where nobody has bothered to get basic knowledge about the physics before.
dude make an argument or dont, this kind of half assed "I know something but the man won't let me talk about it" is annoying and useless.
> I just want to vent: climate change is not a controversial topic, it's an inconvenient topic for people making a lot of money.<p>If you’d like to do your part against climate change, you can start by walking everywhere today, avoiding heating and cooling your home, and never flying a plane again. These are changes I’m not willing to make, so the issue isn’t just inconvenient for the wealthy—it’s inconvenient for everyone. It’s easy to shift the problem onto others without doing anything about it yourself.
What a pointless comment.<p>"Climate Change" isn't caused by flying a plane, it's caused by flying <i>thousands of planes every day</i>. This is a real distinction because the individuals you are talking to do not have any meaningful way to affect the 40,000+ flights <i>per day</i>. Just as a random example.<p>If your next response is going to be "well if <i>everyone</i> stops taking flights that would affect them all", then yes, congratulations, you've discovered what laws are and how democracies work.
Username checks out. I <i>do</i> live that sort of lifestyle and I think your agument is bogus. Different people engage in different amounts of carbon-producing consumerism, but it's notable that different developed countries have quite different carbon outputs, indicating that it's possible to achieve the goal of lowering the collective carbon footprint without immiserating the population.
Indeed. File under "bitter pills to swallow."<p>It's so easy to sit in an air-conditioned house, with our 2-day delivered Amazon stuff, and just make pronouncements like degrowth, etc.<p>Meanwhile about 99% of the humans who live in places that haven't fully industrialized are either working feverishly to industrialize like us, or are trying to find a way to move to an industrialized country because of how incredibly hard it is to live where they are.<p>I also suspect that our most committed enviro-leftists genuinely believe that their lifestyle is already fully aligned to their values -- they don't even own a car, take transit everywhere! They pay an extra $25 for carbon offsets when they fly, and they "recycle everything"! They live in a blue state that mandates high levels of "clean energy" in the power grid.<p>They do not ask themselves where the factories are built that make the wind turbines or solar panels, what powers their buses and trains and makes the cement that the streets are paved with. What powers the diesel trucks that bring their organic produce and manufactured soy products to Whole Foods for them.<p>All this isn't to even comment on where climate change actually is on the 2 axes of "Non-issue ----> existential threat" and "Completely avoidable if we start now ----> Entirely outside human control." I'm just saying that I suspect nearly every Western climate change activist would be filled with regret if we started making every societal decision to truly optimize for climate concerns to the exclusion of all other priorities.
> if we started making every societal decision to truly optimize for climate concerns to the exclusion of all other priorities.<p>Effectively no one is arguing for this. You're ranting about a ghost.
> I also suspect that our most committed enviro-leftists genuinely believe that their lifestyle is already fully aligned to their values -- they don't even own a car, take transit everywhere! They pay an extra $25 for carbon offsets when they fly, and they "recycle everything"! They live in a blue state that mandates high levels of "clean energy" in the power grid.<p>You did it, you torched the strawman.
That's a straw man argument.<p>Voluntarily opting out of a high-CO2 lifestyle will do exactly nothing. Demanding that anyone recognizing the threat of climate change and demanding a different approach "first change their lifestyles" or using their lifestyles as an indicator of commitment is ludicrous. This is a global systemic issue that cannot be fixed by individual action. Game theory tells you why.<p>Besides that; all the nice and shiny things you mention - the busses and trains and the cement - can be produced and operated at fraction of their current CO2 cost. Wind mills and PV panels offset their CO2 cost by magnitudes if they are replacing fossil fuel industries.<p>There's a middle ground between "lets burn it all to the ground" and "let's go back to the savanna".
> This is a global systemic issue that cannot be fixed by individual action. Game theory tells you why.<p>Nothing will change (and nothing has fundamentally changed since the climate scaremongering started), because people in the West do not want to change their lifestyles, and people elsewhere aspire to a Western lifestyle. There is nothing you can do about this. I am not not going to eat less meat or drive my car less than I find convenient to please some leftist eco-warrior.
This is just a poor strawman/false dilemma: you don't have to be 100% or 0% for something to be effective or true. You're not addressing the actual claim (_why_ climate change is controversial, and particularly why the current structure makes it particularly controversial to corporations, etc.), you're just making a non-sequitur that everyone is affected by it.<p>It's like someone saying "tax fraud by billionaires is a massive issue" and responding "well, did you declare every single dollar on your tax forms hmm?": they're both issues, but the former is obviously a much more impactful, structural and relevant one. You're trying to nullify their argument by attacking the "purity" of the person, but that doesn't negate the truth of their point. This is like a greatest-hits of common logical/debate fallacies (strawman, false dilemma, non-sequitur).
Sure we can all do our part as best possible, but this requires systemic change.<p>Required reading: <a href="https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-showers/" rel="nofollow">https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-showers/</a>
That's a ludicrous proposal.<p>A whole planets' society's structural problems cannot be solved by an individuals action. Your own attitude explains the 'why'.<p>This is a systemic issue that needs systemic fixing.
Even if you leave intent aside, the effect is the same: it teaches researchers that funding is conditional on staying within an invisible and shifting political boundary
One of the researchers in my department had a study canceled because something they did "engendered a robust hemodynamic response".<p>Whoops, keyword match.
And scientists are often exactly the kind of people who will try to keep going anyway
Such is life in fascism. This is why we used to try to avoid fascism. It sucks.<p>Not only is it destructive, it's randomly destructive, nothing is sacred, there's no stability at all. Why would you invest or take out a mortgage if dear leader could destroy your life for no reason at any moment? It's like living in space where a random piece of debris could puncture any point on your hull at any moment and there's nothing you can do about it.
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You seem strongly in favor science that you understand, and opposed to research that you don't take an interest in or have read.<p>I don't think you'd accept news media accounts of space science. But you're accepting their synopses of social science without looking deeper.<p>Perhaps I am wrong and you're actually an expert on sociology or some related field. But you are not accurately describing how the field works and what it does. It's hard to make the case for it when you're willing to dismiss its existence based on such a limited view of it.
> You seem strongly in favor science that you understand, and opposed to research that you don't take an interest in or have read.<p>Just say it the clear way, so that everyone can see what you're doing: <i>if I don't like it, it must be because I don't understand it.</i>
I'm not well-versed in social science either so I don't have a slam dunk here, but I'd be very willing to bet it's more involved than you're portraying.<p>To flip it on your space telescope, another one? They've been doing this for years, they're just going to tell us there's a lot of galaxies out there, boring.
> To flip it on your space telescope, another one? They've been doing this for years, they're just going to tell us there's a lot of galaxies out there, boring.<p>You’re not “flipping”, you’re just making a silly reduction.<p>There’s tons of things we don’t know about black holes. We don’t need another study to tell us that poor people are sicker due to past racism.<p>(One can certainly argue that it’s not worth the money to know more stuff about black holes. I am agnostic, but at least I see the difference in kind between the quality of the questions.)
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I don't follow. Are there not sciences that primarily study a type of human relationship? Economics, for instance, which covers our financial relationships with each other.
Having mingled and worked at length with PhD-level folks in both STEM and the social sciences, rest assured: social scientists are some of the smartest researchers out there, almost to a frightening degree. So your dismissal is genuinely chuckle-inducing to me.
Perhaps better than "if I don't like it, it deserves to have its funding cut"
The replication crisis in science is particularly bad within the social sciences, and also particularly bad within sociology. When experts within a field are unable to converge on a result, it's pretty decent evidence that the field has a major problem. And for sociology, the problem isn't that the math is too hard, it's that the practice of sociology is pretty much a political exercise masquerading as science.
> work which burns through money repeating things we already know (racism is bad! poor people are sicker!) and accomplishing exactly nothing<p>Why do we need to study the sun? We already know it goes around the Earth.<p>Flippant, but the point should be clear. Some of the most taken for granted things can also be the ones least studied... And least understood. Wouldn't you like to know <i>why</i> being poor leads to worse outcomes? Perhaps confounding factors?
Do you have a specific example of a wasteful STEM research project that was cut?<p>My (perhaps wrong) impression was that <i>wastefulness</i> was given as the reason for making the cuts, but that the cuts were done broadly and indiscriminately [1].<p>In other words, the actions don't match the stated goal of reducing wastefulness. They seem more like a punishment for the members of all scientific institutions, and deterrence for curiosity-driven research.<p>[1] For example, the cuts to the STEM grants & projects didn't seem attached to any evidence of said projects' wastefulness.
Like that program to study the mating patterns of sterile flies in Panama, right? They cut that because it was a $300k waste of money. Do you know what happened after they cut it? The US got a $300m infestation of those flies.
Yours is an "ends justify the means" argument, but are you comfortable with the way these cuts were done? Would you approve so robustly of your own research being cut with a keyword search for government-unapproved terms?
> Yours is an "ends justify the means" argument, but are you comfortable with the way these cuts were done?<p>Generally no. But I also think that certain classes of keyword filtering were probably a good idea. Filtering for any grants with "structural determinants of health" and reviewing them <i>intensively</i> with the goal of defunding 99%, for example, is probably a good idea.<p>> Would you approve so robustly of your own research being cut with a keyword search for government-unapproved terms?<p>I mean, there's <i>zero</i> chance my research would have fallen afoul of any such terms, but let me put it this way: my field was <i>completely up-ended</i> by DeepMind. They not only won a Nobel for that work in record time, but used an approach so severely out of fashion that it couldn't really get any attention.<p>I guess I'm saying: I don't think it would have been so bad to cut most of it, if it meant that we got more actual diversity in the field.
> I mean, there's zero chance my research would have fallen afoul of any such terms, but let me put it this way: my field was completely up-ended by DeepMind. They not only won a Nobel for that work in record time, but used an approach so severely out of fashion that it couldn't really get any attention.<p>Someone else mentioned that a project got cut because they used the term "engendered".<p>The keywords search cuts were not exactly skillfully enacted.
> Someone else mentioned that a project got cut because they used the term "engendered".<p>Well, assuming that this is not an apocryphal story, and that there's no other relevant missing details (e.g. "research into silly topic X <i>also</i> used the word engendered"), etc., then that's dumb. I'm not going to argue about hearsay.<p>I will say this: before you believe such claims, you should verify them. They're often misremembered or completely made up. <i>In particular</i>, I'm not sure how anyone would know what keyword search was used to target their grant for review.
Thank you for providing your perspective. I really hope HN has a 'pre-vouch' button as I know your comment will be flagged in no time, even though it's quite articulated.
A fair bit of "science" is about providing training to the following generations. Sure, your example isn't going to turn up any new insights into structural racism but it is something that you can point grad students at to learn how to capture data.<p>Diabetes is getting worse, just saying that "we looked at poor people's problems 50 years ago so don't need to look at them again" isn't going to flag it up.
> Diabetes is getting worse, just saying that "we looked at poor people's problems 50 years ago so don't need to look at them again" isn't going to flag it up.<p>Great! Do <i>actual research</i> into curing/treating/preventing diabetes. Do randomized trials on nutritional interventions in poor communities! Do any of <i>a million other things</i> that might actually affect the problem.<p>Do not: perform another observational study to see if poor people get diabetes more than rich people.
I agree that pure science should not be cut and prioritized. The more frustrating thing about the type of sociological research you critique is that it feels like that data already exists somewhere - between health insurance companies, google, social media, etc. We know that we can de-anonymize data to get very specific actionable data for advertising. American scientists should have a Mega API from Palantir to ask their questions as well, and it ultimately won't cost as much.<p>Side tangent, I wonder how much China does these kinds of sociological studies, and the differences in infra/how they conduct the research. Lord knows we're not the only ones getting fat over here.
> Side tangent, I wonder how much China does these kinds of sociological studies, and the differences in infra/how they conduct the research.<p>I mean...not to be too flippant, but they <i>don't</i>. They're busy with hard problems <i>to actually get people out of poverty</i>, and don't have to worry about pesky partisan politics getting in the way. Plus, like, Mao is not that far in the rear-view mirror, y'know? It would be at least a little bit ironic to spend a lot of time researching that question.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_in_China" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_in_China</a><p>Data and research are actually useful when you're working on getting people out of poverty. It seems like you're hung up on some American culture war shit but this is a common sense observation.<p>(Parenthetically, the reason poor areas of China are poor is that they were <i>always</i> poor. They didn't have 2-car garages and color TV and then Mao made them into peasants. They were always peasants. This is obvious. Mao made a lot of mistakes because he believed in ideology and rhetoric over reality and measurable fact. That's the lesson to learn.)
Medium effort flame bait
So where are researchers who want to study topics you don't personally like supposed to get funding, in your view?
> So where are researchers who want to study topics you don't personally like supposed to get funding, in your view?<p>I'm sorry, was I not clear enough? Bad research should not get funding. Or at least, it shouldn't get it for <i>decades and decades</i>, while producing no results [1].<p>One's desire to do research into irrelevant questions does not entitle you to support in the name of "science".<p>[1] I'm OK with some crap science getting funded if every renewal is random!
Just because the medical system hasn't adapted to the (frankly astounding) findings produced by SDOH research doesn't mean it's not valuable or should be stopped. The takeaway from SDOH is that social determinants are <i>by far</i> more powerful forces on people's health than <i>actual medicine.</i><p>You would prefer we spend all of our money on the 10-15% of health outcomes determined by actual medical care and simply ignore the remainder, and you argue this from a point of "logic?"
> (frankly astounding) findings produced by SDOH research<p>I'm telling you, these same "astounding" findings were around 20 years ago. I learned about them when I was an undergraduate. They haven't changed.<p>Things can be astounding and still be old news. Quantum mechanics were astounding in 1930. Doesn't mean we should firehose money into standard model research. The world moves on.<p>> You would prefer we spend all of our money on the 10-15% of health outcomes determined by actual medical care and simply ignore the remainder, and you argue this from a point of "logic?"<p>No. Next question.
I suspect, based on your disposition towards it, you actually are not keeping up with the latest in SDOH research, and so I'm not sure where your confidence comes from as to whether we're firehosing money into "standard model research" or whether we're building a more refined and useful picture of stuff that was more vaguely understood 20 years ago.<p>Is this a field you've been following closely, or am I listening to the equivalent of a person with no interest in quantum mechanics complaining that nothing new has happened in quantum mechanics?
> I suspect, based on your disposition towards it, you actually are not keeping up with the latest in SDOH research,<p>Man, you guys keep finding fun new ways of saying <i>"if you don't like what I like, you must be uninformed".</i><p>Instead of doing that, inform me: what revolutionary new finding in SDOH have we discovered in the last 20 years? Prove me wrong.<p>> I'm not sure where your confidence comes from as to whether we're firehosing money into "standard model research" or whether we're building a more refined and useful picture of stuff that was more vaguely understood 20 years ago.<p>That's called <i>a metaphor.</i> Feel free to substitute any other example that you feel better illustrates the concept of "studying a question we already know the answer to".<p>Knowledge is always fractal, so it's not particularly responsive to argue that there might be something we don't know about the thing we've already intensively studied. Of course there <i>might</i> be...but when there are lots of questions we <i>don't</i> know the answer to, it's smarter to focus on those, instead.
Sure here's one revolutionary new finding in that timeframe: that a person's social/cultural environment affects DNA methylation and gene expression for the rest of their lives.<p>Here's another one: a person's <i>perception</i> of whether they "are" rural is actually a better predictor of their health outcomes than whether they <i>actually are</i> rural. I.e. two neighbors living side by side in suburban America, the one who <i>perceives themselves</i> to be rural will have dramatically worse outcomes than the one who <i>perceives themselves</i> to be urban/suburban.<p>These are both potentially useful things to know as we try to eliminate extreme health disparities between Americans.<p>You seem to think we have all the answers though, so what's the answer? How do we do it?<p>FWIW, the specific cited research where she's trying to quantify the health impacts of living near pollution sources is actually important for e.g. lawsuits where people try to hold corporations accountable for poisoning their children. Any value in that?
> Sure here's one revolutionary new finding in that timeframe: that a person's social/cultural environment affects DNA methylation and gene expression for the rest of their lives.<p><i>This isn't revolutionary.</i> But it's a perfect example.<p>This is a completely derivative conclusion from something I learned in molecular biology as an undergrad. The only "new" thing here is saying that poor people live in environments, since we've known for literally decades that DNA methylation is affected by environment.<p>> a person's perception of whether they "are" rural is actually a better predictor of their health outcomes than whether they actually are rural.<p>OK. Great. I'm poor if I think I'm poor. Roger.<p>> These are both potentially useful things to know as we try to eliminate extreme health disparities between Americans. You seem to think we have all the answers though, so what's the answer? How do we do it?<p>I don't know! You tell me how your "potentially useful" information provides a solution. Win me over!
> This is a completely derivative conclusion from something I learned in molecular biology as an undergrad. The only "new" thing here is saying that poor people live in environments, since we've known for literally decades that DNA methylation is affected by environment.<p>Yes, just like approximately everything we've learned about cosmology in the last 100 years are completely derivative conclusions from relativity lmao. There's what, <5 things we've discovered that are not completely derivative over 100 years and billions of dollars of research?<p>> I don't know [how to mitigate health disparities]! You tell me how your "potentially useful" information provides a solution. Win me over!<p>Huh? I didn't claim to have all the answers lol, <i>you did</i>.
> Yes, just like approximately everything we've learned about cosmology in the last 100 years are completely derivative conclusions from relativity lmao.<p>OK, cool. Let's not do more of that, then. I just said that I could see the difference between the questions, and that they're not likely to get funding elsewhere, not that we should <i>absolutely</i> fund more black hole space telescopes.<p>> There's what, <5 things we've discovered that are not completely derivative over 100 years and billions of dollars of research?<p>No. Not in the same class as "are poor people sicker than rich people", or "does gravity cause things to fall down". Next question.
I understand <i>you personally</i> are of the opinion that it's bad research, but thank God you're not in charge of funding research, because I pay taxes too and I think it's good.<p>But that begs the question -- how do you determine what is relevent and irrelevant research, beyond just consulting your personal feelings? Because if you have a sure and nonbiased way to do that which will satisfy all the current stake holders (the entire tax base and US population), I think everyone would agree we should that!<p>But if you don't have a proposal beyond "I don't like it, it's bad" then I'm sorry, the current system with all its flaws (delegating funding decisions to renowned experts in their respective fields rather than the sensibilities of the HN comment section) is far superior to that.
> but thank God you're not in charge of funding research, because I pay taxes too and I think it's good.<p>Oh stop with the silly straw men, already. I think research is good. <i>I did research for decades of my life.</i><p>I am against <i>bad</i> research.<p>> how do you determine what is relevent and irrelevant research, beyond just consulting your personal feelings? Because if you have a sure and nonbiased way to do that which will satisfy all the current stake holders (the entire tax base and US population), I think everyone would agree we should that!<p>Well, I proposed one way (which you completely ignored, in order to accuse me of being biased): just fund stuff at random.<p>I don't think you're being a sincere interlocutor, but you've stumbled upon a legitimate class of argument: how does <i>anyone</i> separate their personal bias from objective evaluation of science? The current system sucks at this, and is not only loaded with bias, the <i>bias is built into the system</i>.<p>We probably not do worse to just set some minimum objective bar for competency (degrees, institution, basic review for research viability, etc.) then fund whomever passes the bar at random.
From anywhere except from the tax payer. Lord knows there are academic institutions sitting on a lot of cash.
Why not, I pay taxes too and I want researchers to study things you don't like. I don't want to fund the military, should they get their funding from Lockheed? Lord knows they have enough...
What the fuck
Intelligent response.
It's actually more contrusctive to outline what the post you both are replying to you don't like and more specifically why?
> It's actually more contrusctive to outline what the post you both are replying to you don't like and more specifically why?<p>Come on. I wrote a multi-paragraph post with an argument (I am the OP), and the parent wrote: "what the fuck" in response.<p>Reply to him and ask him what he thinks is so offensive, don't ask me to make an intellectual rebuttal. I honestly shouldn't have responded at all, but I couldn't resist because of the commenter's profile. It's just so common to see someone in science who won't even engage with an argument like mine, and dismisses it with profanity/insults.
My bad, on mobile, I think your stance deserves a more thoughtful critique.<p>Source: was in academia for a bit post 2010 and pre-2024, there was some seriously weird unscientific stuff being peddled.
Note: There is always some seriously weird unscientific stuff being peddled literally all through the entire course of scientific history.<p>Did you not study the history of science at all during your jaunt through academia?<p>Not to say we need to just lay down and accept the badness, but it's total nonsense to suggest that your exposure to some badness is an indictment of the enterprise.
America is facing a multi-generational technical decline never before seen that will do irreparable harm across all fields of research, let alone the human cost especially borne by young scientists who have more to lose, and your grand insightful take is that well, some of it deserved to get cut, when you're not even the one making the decisions of which ones do receive funding.
> America is facing a multi-generational technical decline never before seen that will do irreparable harm across all fields of research<p>This sounds very bad! But since I'm not arguing in favor of technical decline and irreparable harm, it doesn't mean that my argument is wrong.<p>> let alone the human cost especially borne by young scientists who have more to lose,<p>I'm confused: is science funding a welfare state for people who want to be scientists, or is it a meritocracy by which we fund the development of science?<p>> and your grand insightful take is that well, some of it deserved to get cut,<p>Well...yes.<p>> when you're not even the one making the decisions of which ones do receive funding.<p>Erm, so what? I can't have an opinion on bad science?<p>You're not making the decision either, but apparently you're allowed to have one.
The arrogance and ignorance so voluntarily put up on display is mind numbing.<p>Not only have I worked as a science funder for the past 15 years as the founder of Experiment.com and with countless partner foundations and grant programs, having personally funded and peer reviewed thousands and thousands of projects, I've also sat as a member of countless NBER meta science panels alongside NIH and NSF directors where everyone's main pressure is earnestly trying to improve the efficiency and returns of science funding. Mainly to combat the false beliefs around science funding that people like you have spread.<p>The number one universal lesson of funding basic research, going back from Vannevar Bush to Carl Sagan to small risky out-of-bounds research, is that you don't pick and choose where impact comes from. You don't get to try and justify based on your political preference where you think the most progress will come from. That's not any of this works. The funding of a random jellyfish protein that eventually turns into the discovery of GFP only ten years later is not the kind of thing you can try and predict ahead of time or concoct on paper.<p>If you don't understand how basic research and impact works, then yeah you shouldn't be allowed to have hot takes about the system that millions of scientists rely on. You're dressing up anti-intellectualism behind a sham of commitment towards meritocracy when you won't even support the people who deserve it on merit. Get lost.
> The arrogance and ignorance so voluntarily put up on display is mind numbing.<p>Well golly. Mind numbing!<p>> Mainly to combat the false beliefs around science funding that people like you have spread.<p>What "false beliefs" are those?<p>> The number one universal lesson of funding basic research, going back from Vannevar Bush to Carl Sagan to small risky out-of-bounds research, is that you don't pick and choose where impact comes from.<p>You literally just bragged that you were a member of countless NBER meta-science panels alongside NIH and NSF directors.
Tell me more about how the "universal lesson" is that you don't pick and choose. We do it all the time.<p>You just <i>don't like my opinion</i>, but you can't argue on the merits, so you resort to this stuff.<p>> You don't get to try and justify based on your political preference where you think the most progress will come from.<p>Great. I'm not doing that.<p>This isn't hard: there's such a thing as derivative, bad science that is unlikely to lead to novel results. It's fair to critique research on those grounds. "Social determinants of health" is a perfect example of this kind of science. <i>I don't even disagree with the conclusions.</i> I just think the science is terrible and shouldn't be funded. It's not just this area: observational nutrition research is generally abysmal science, and shouldn't be funded, yet is common. There's a replication crisis across the sciences, with certain fields being overrepresented.<p>This is not an imaginary problem.<p>Arguing that we don't filter science for quality, is of course, dumb and wrong. We do it all the time. It's just that some <i>fashionable</i> fields are able to bypass this test, because some folks substitute politics and indignance for logic.<p>> You're dressing up anti-intellectualism behind a sham of commitment towards meritocracy when you won't even support the people who deserve it on merit. Get lost.<p>You know, for a person who wants desperately to appeal to scientific authority, you resort to personal insults a lot. You'd think, if you were truly on the winning intellectual side of this, you could deal with the actual argument.
There is a far deeper problem, a systemic and foundational one; and unfortunately the whole system and all its components are all so vetted to the current rotten and distorted system that no amount of good intentions or personal dedication or will can overcome it. Unfortunately for us all we are at the precipice of a chasm and the forces of nature are upon us.
Well, unfortunately, this is completely normal in science and it happened, basically forever.<p>Scientific projects, especially the massive ones, go through several cycles, and they get completely stopped or even canceled during their life, and then later, sometimes decades later, they do restart.<p>This happened with the LHC, ISS, James Webb telescope, the Hubble telescope, ITER, etc, etc, etc<p>Now, I know that in certain circles is very common these days, to go around pretending that the likes of many current decisions never happened until now and that whoever is governing the USA is doing something unheard of and absolutely terrible that nobody else would even think of. But it's not, this is something normal (I'm not saying it's good, but it is quite normal in science).
Quoting the article:<p>> Applying for highly competitive grants with limited funding is what scientists have always had to do to carry out the science—a flawed process with few alternatives. <i>But arbitrary cancellations and delayed disbursements are unprecedented. And justifying them on the basis of politics—prohibiting, for instance, grants that include language referencing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)—was unheard of until now.</i>
> prohibiting, for instance, grants that include language referencing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)—was unheard of until now.<p>This is great news. It was "unheard of until now" because everyone before this madness started ~ 2010, was sane enough to not put DEI criteria in grant allotments.<p>I'm glad something is finally being done about these appalling discriminatory practices. The grants should go the best proposals, not to those with the proper genitalia, melanin content of the skin, and correct religion of those applying.<p>Let's take this moment to welcome real science back.
I'm not going to bother to write an essay like the other person.<p>Here is a scientific outcome that directly impacts the quality of medicine a majority of American citizens receive:
<a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2808735" rel="nofollow">https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...</a><p>Research in progress to address these issues was cancelled by DOGE because "melanin content of the skin." "Do your own research" if you care to, or fuck off.
> "Do your own research" if you care to, or fuck off.<p>Oh yes, the false moralizing fake outrage trick. Very good. But now that we addressed your attempt at diverting the issue:<p>People in this thread are complaining about canceling DEI initiatives targeting the melanin levels of the researchers, not of the test subjects. In fact, the lengthily answer from the grandparent that you praise, says exactly that.<p>Sorry if it was too simple to call out your attempt at confusing the subject of the discussion.
Mate, if you had to make a new account just to try posting this nonsense, it might be time for some self-reflection.
Just to show how DEI works at NASA, I share a DEI plan we wrote for a proposal just before the change of administration. This plan was rated highly by the agency. Which parts are "appealing discriminatory practices"?<p>Inclusion Plan
Both PIs and collaborators recognize the negative effect that systemic barriers have on academia and the importance of facilitating the full participation, belonging, and contribution of different groups and individuals within our work environment in general and the proposed project in particular. The proposed project is small in scope with few paid contributors and a well-defined group of collaborators, but it is always important to have a strategy in place to develop a positive and inclusive work environment. The PIs identify three areas where systemic barriers may affect our working environment or where questions around inclusion are critical:<p>1 Hiring strategies.
The most obvious barrier against inclusivity in academia and STEM is bias (whether explicit or implicit) in recruiting staff and students. They will work closely with the recruitment and Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) offices at their respective institution to create recruitment strategies which are as unbiased as possible. One of their affiliations is a minority (Hispanic) serving institution – a transformative engine of social mobility – that offers a remarkable opportunity to (i) ensure student recruitment plans include underrepresented individuals and (ii) increase participation of a diverse and inclusive talent pool in climate change science. Both PIs will also participate in hiring workshops and training offered by their respective universities. Finally, they will leverage each PI’s background and earlier experiences by providing feedback in recruitment strategies and hiring decisions to each other, along with collaborative feedback from the associated offices at their institutions.<p>2. Work relationships with Post Docs and between collaborators
It is also critical to create an inclusive working environment between PIs and Post Docs, enabling a positive collaboration between all members of the team. The two PIs will work with the hired Post Docs to write a career development plan during the first three months of their employment. They will also actively promote external mentorship for the Post Docs, either informally or via established mentorship programs, including AGU-endorsed programs Mentoring365 (a free and global mentoring platform for the Earth and space sciences community) and Mentoring365-circles (a peer-to-peer group mentoring program that allows early-career scientists to build skills and grow their network around common interests and objectives). Finally, they will ensure that the Post Docs are informed about how to report discrimination and how the University can support them during onboarding.<p>Both PIs have participated in management leadership training and have experience in organizing the kind of collaborative work that the proposed project requires. They will continue their learning process by participating in leadership workshops with a focus on DEI provided by their institutions.<p>3. Interactions with stakeholders.
Inclusivity in stakeholder interactions is critical for a successful result. PI 2 will be the main lead for working with stakeholders, and as such leverage their experience and expertise from earlier projects where stakeholder inclusivity has been a critical component.
Don't feed the trolls... MemoryHoleHQ is not arguing in good faith.
Bless you for trying, but that's clearly just a troll you are responding to.
I'd like to add that "DEI" is, in this administrative environment, often reduced to a collection of terms searched for and flagged without regard for context. Such that "diversity" might be flagged in a grant application that has nothing to do with racial or ethnic diversity.<p>USDA is doing the same thing with ag funding, though I don't think the same level of chaos is appearing because there are still at the moment competent people below the true-believer management. But not for long, as soon as they complete their return to Kansas City, inevitably losing DERP holdouts (exactly as happened during the last Trump admin).
Oh, if that's really your complaint about this all businesses, then yeah, let's all work together to clearly separate the DEI terms that apply to people and those that are actually scientific (like the diversity on crops someone mentions below).<p>Then we can more easily get rid of these discriminatory measures in practice (the real DEI ones) and keep the false flags.<p>Is that fine for you? Or that was just some red herring you were trying there?
Yeah, but, like, what's the <i>worst</i> that could actually happen by eliminating crop diversity?<p>Potato monocultures fed literal <i>millions</i> for a good while, Shirley it can't hurt to see grain cropping go that way.
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> Yet again, who is paying for this? This is a modern witch hunt.<p>Since this can only mean the DOGE witch hunt we all clearly remember, I think Elon Musk was paying for it? But now it's just taxpayer money (if there is anything left after "contributing" to all of Trumps many funds).
> The grants should go the best proposals, not to those with the proper genitalia, melanin content of the skin, and correct religion of those applying.<p>I'm confused. At least at the NSF, about 60-70% of their awards go to white men. Are those the appalling discriminatory practices, or what do you mean?
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> Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) enough, blind tests did exacerbate
> this issue, so, far left ideologues started calling to an end to
> blind auditions since they ended up making orchestras "less diverse"
> instead of more<p>You should really shouldn't subtly misrepresent the argument. The article states that blind auditions made orchestras <i>much</i> more diverse in some categories, but did not make much of an impact in others.<p>As far as I can tell nobody except Anthony Tommasini is calling for blind auditions to go away. His position position is just <i>weird</i> and using it
to represent the opinions of most of the left is more than a bit disingenuous.
You know you can't just put one topic into the grievance bucket (science funding), shake it around, then pull out a different topic (orchestral hiring practices) and expect to have a conversation, right?
Seems like you didn't read the thread properly, but who transformed this subthread into a discussion about DEI, was someone else.<p>Now, I know that people that defend these discriminatory practices love to put them all into tiny boxes and prevent any proper comparisons, but what can I tell you, I just the kind of person that doesn't change their principles based on the target.<p>So yeah, in a discussion about DEI, when someone complains that area A has too many "white men" and that's due to discrimination, it's completely valid to point you that when people with the same ideology tried to impose blind testing in area B, they ended up hiring even more of those, very awful, "white men" because it turn out they were the best ones for the job and where already being discriminated against.
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> But arbitrary cancellations and delayed disbursements are unprecedented. And justifying them on the basis of politics—prohibiting, for instance, grants that include language referencing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)—was unheard of until now.<p>It is odd how removal of DEI is framed as being political, when it is the other way round. DEI schemes were deeply political, and depended on who can claim to be the biggest victim.
I don't think requiring prospective hires to write a DEI statement is equally as political as illegally cancelling already funded and approved research into e.g. racial disparities in maternal mortality, or health equity gaps for rural Americans (yes, it's DEI even if it's for predominantly white people).
It's not odd. If the institution of it is political, the removal of it is therefore also political.<p>It is not, however, based on who can claim to be the biggest victim. It is based on a simple statistical analysis of demographics.
In a previous project I ended up talking with a scientist who couldn't shut up about how she was 1/4th Indigenous and how many grants that could open for our collaboration.<p>If I wanted racial purity in my collaborators it get a time machine to 1930s Germany. That someone was doing this in 2022 was extremely off-putting. That they were getting government support because of it makes the me not care much about the fact the system is being burned down today.
The statistical analysis is step one, but those stats are (or were?) used as proxies for quantifying a persons victimhood. I dont actually think "victim" is quite the right word here, but the OP used it and it fits well enough.
I would have supported reforming the way science is funded in the US, but the way republicans did it is far worse than if they had done nothing at all.
What's a better way, that's not the Chinese way?<p>What I mean is more centralized oversight over research priorities, metric-driven rewards, and preference for political favorites?
What made places like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, IBM Research, etc thrive? What happened to that mechanism, and can we have it back?
A research system can adapt to lower funding if the rules are stable. What it can't adapt to is grants being frozen, staff disappearing mid-project, forbidden vocabulary changing
the recent drama about science funding to me highlights one of the main problems with our grant-based distribution system: which is that it is unsurprisingly very frail to fast-moving changes in government and society at large.<p>science as an apparatus often works on timescales that are decades, not 4 year political cycles. so rapid pendulum swings are particularly dangerous to the pursuit of science as a whole. you could just as easily describe a scenario where the pendulum has swung left instead of right and a bunch of right-leaning research gets cut and people lose their jobs, we lose progress etc.<p>these days i'm pretty in favor of a system where funding is guaranteed and investigators are allowed absolute academic freedom. think something along the lines of each principle investigator gets $Xmillion to study their research topic in perpetuity without fear of reprisals or sudden funding cuts.<p>i naively think this would solve a LOT of the issues in academia currently, which already in the absence of the recent Trump shake-ups has devolved into a metric chasing, paper-mill, grant funding behemoth whose sole purpose is to churn out papers of dubious quality, game metrics, and bring in research funding to the university. the modern professor's job is not to advance our understanding of the natural world, but to generate positive KPIs and bring in as much revenue as possible to the university in the form of overhead costs (66% of all the federal funding we bring in at my institution goes directly to the school). it's a business, and that's not what basic science research is supposed to be in my opinion.
> a system where funding is guaranteed and investigators are allowed absolute academic freedom. think something along the lines of each principle investigator gets $Xmillion to study their research topic in perpetuity without fear of reprisals or sudden funding cuts.<p>you can do this, you just need to find a chump who is willing to spend the money.
There's an emergency!!! To find out what it is, pay me!!!
You probably don’t need the word science in the headline.
Administration remains undefeated - in its ability to score own goals
They're not own goals, they're achieving what they set out to do.
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Unironically parroting uniparty lines is moronic. Sure there are problems with the Democrats, but both-sideism is at this point being wilfully blind.<p>As an external observer to US politics it would be great for the country to move past the two-party system, but to say they are the same is ridiculous.
You have to remember that many of us are worried about the effects on <i>everyone</i> but the people pulling the levers are only worried about effects on themselves, and (at least in the short term) they are absolutely benefiting (e.g. enriching) themselves, regardless of how much damage it does to everyone else.
Academic Science in the U.S. was pretty ill and needed a lot of reforms. We can all admit that.<p>But this solution is absolutely not the way to go about doing that.<p>From my psuedo-outsider [0] perspective, the capable and good people are fleeing or being forced out, but the jerks and asshats that were ruining it all are staying. If you thought in the late 2010s that we were boiling low tide in the ivory tower, then today we're just concentrating raw sewage. The abuse cases are exploding among grad students, anecdotally.<p>[0] I have a lot of friends and family in academia
I think all the following can be true simultaneously:<p>The whiplash cuts are stupid, short-sighted and causing major damage<p>The bullying tactics around protests and immigration are villainous and are eroding one of our greatest institutions<p>Science and higher education have fallen short of their ideals and need reform
No wonder Trump is referred to as “nation builder” in China since he’s building them up by tearing down America.
Nearly 40 trillion rollers in debt.
Reminder that the most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.<p>Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans.<p><a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts-are-fuelling-far-right-rise-warns-un-expert" rel="nofollow">https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...</a>
and it's 100% Russell Vought<p>most people know who Stephen Miller is but the real monster is Russell Vought<p>Heritage Foundation's #1 enforcer, the destruction of science and academia is their top 10<p>If Vance somehow gets the reigns and/or 2028 it will be even worse because Vought will get even more power/control<p>* <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/russ-vought-trump-shadow-president-omb" rel="nofollow">https://www.propublica.org/article/russ-vought-trump-shadow-...</a><p>* <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga" rel="nofollow">https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-v...</a>
It's 100% christian evangelicals (bible fundamentalists) that inserted themselves into the republican party after the counter-culture movement of the 60s. They hate freedom and liberty, full stop.
Vought has openly declared himself as a Christian Nationalist. Christian Nationalism as a whole is dead set against scientific research.
Many people became millionaires last week during SpaceX IPO.<p>Surely they will "give back" to the giants whose shoulders they were standing on, and start creating foundations to hire back those researchers, grant them enough money to continue their deep work, file plenty of patents, and let the society keep reaping benefits from its greatest minds.<p>I mean, what else would they do, invest in cryptos and trophy partners and sport teams and ad-based time waster and surveillance ? Naaaaah
<a href="https://archive.ph/zn6FI" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/zn6FI</a>
This administration is both fundamentally anti-science and wants to enforce political control over all government institutions. Science was never a particularly stable work environment, but the sheer insanity you have now makes it a deeply unattractive place. You have no idea if your grant might be denied, or even canceled at any point later by some political commissar that doesn't understand science.<p>And it's not just particular topics they hate, they hate the entire system and institutions. And they try to either break them and force them to adopt their political views, or they attack their funding or use any other powers to dismantle them.
It is far worse than "this administration", the population in general are vastly undereducated, to the degree they do not even realize how serious this is.<p>There has been a massive, decades long educational failure in the United States, and probably the entire western hemisphere of culture: no where are people taught how to manage disagreement. due to that, we have this moronic destruction taking place where "idiots of authority" see no reason not to dismantle anything that irritates them, and nobody has the langage to explain nor the peer power to stop the desolation of our entire supporting infrastructure. All because idiots of power do not like being told and proved they are wrong. So, power removed the education that taught people how to debate without emotions, and here we are.
Science, or more specific to what we're talking about, public research which happens mostly in universities, has turned political long before this administration.<p>That's the simple reality. Administrations impose their politics, but also universities do the same, and they're not any more noble for doing so.<p>Research groups need to have more independence and that can only happens through a very meritocratic funding process, and also, at the risk of sounding like a STEM lord, by being very cynical and realizing that not all fields of research merit the same amount of funding. Countries like China have already realiezed this.
> realizing that not all fields of research merit the same amount of funding<p>Unless america does it _very_ different than the rest of the western world, this is already the case. STEM research receive way more public funding and have way more PhDs than other fields, in my country it's almost two order of magnitude (this has to do with the cost of instrumentation mostly, but not only).<p>On the "science have turned political", yes, but that has always been the case. You can be political and non-partisan. UNSCEAR has been political from its creation, but is still non-partisan, anybody can use its research to make partisan proposition on nuclear. Same for WHO, it was _obvisouly_ political, advanced the interest of the first world in poorer countries, but it stayed non-partisan. This is probably the same for any medical research: obviously what is researched is political. Non-partisan though. Just because heart attack research was done by, with and for men, women also benefit from the research (although to a way lower degree until like 2010).<p>The only counter-example i can think of is the GIEC group3. I don't think it is partisan, but i can hear arguments that say that it is, and debate. But it has the lowest amount of funding of the 3 groups, and Group 1 and 2 are not partisan at all.
What happens right now is vastly different than before. Of course there are different priorities in funding for each administration, but those are usually more gradual shifts and especially don't cancel running grants arbitrarily.<p>And if you think this administration is prioritizing science with actual applications, I have a bridge to sell to you. The cuts they made are not sensible policy, they are inherently destructive and wasteful. They aborted studies that were still running, so a lot of money was spent and we'll never get any results from that because they were not finished.
Just lies upon lies. Always the same weak rhetoric of "it's both sides!". The truth is that science didn't get more political, the right is just going in a direction orthogonal to material reality.<p>Science <i>will</i> appear political to you if you claim that climate change isn't real, that vaccines and Tylenol give autism, that oil prices will soon go down when the wells are destroyed, that the economy is hotter than ever when everything's going to shit, that the weather channel is just anti-American and woke when they predict rain for the UFC Freedom 250 held for the emperor's birthday...
The fact that people think the current state of chaos is a consequence of recent developments clearly tells us more about why it is in chaos than those types of people have the capacity to hear or understand.<p>It also tells us that it’s very unlikely going to be resolved on this side of some catalytic event. If reason prevailed, we would not be in this state of chaos.<p>People who think this is a consequence of merely the last 10 or 40 years, clearly have no understand of cause and lagging effects.
Yeah, while it's particularly bad lately, I'm remembering Richard Hofstadter's book, "Anti-intellectualism in American Life", which one the <i>1964</i> Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction for tracing the religious, cultural, and economic roots of american anti-intellectualism.<p>These problems are not new.
> Hofstadter was born in Buffalo, New York, on August 6, 1916,[10] to a Jewish father<p>> [...]<p>> Influenced by his wife, Hofstadter was a member of the Young Communist League in college, and in April 1938 he joined the Communist Party USA; he quit in 1939.<p>> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hofstadter#Political_views" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hofstadter#Political_v...</a><p>McCarthy was right all along.
Currently there are lots of systems that are in chaos.<p>Rather than demand reversion back to mean, we should be asking, "Before we reset this system back to the way it was, was it working and are there improvements to be made?"<p>Because the current chaos can be viewed as an opportunity to improve, and we should take it because may of the systems in chaos today, were dysfunctional or in need of modernization yesterday.
After the election my very first thought was that this is the start of the Chinese century, since America has voted to step down.<p>Seems to be playing out.
No other country punches itself in the face as hard or as often as the usa does.
For a Chinese century you'd need there to be anyone in China in a century. With the one child policy they have run out of young women and are running out of middle aged men. The Chinese, and Asian, population pyramids make Europe look young and vibrant.
The US situation is mitigated by both Russia and China deciding to make massive, foolish maneuvers at the same time as ours. However neither can match how stupendously we are lighting our future on fire in every possible dimension.
Not to the extent I'd like — it stopped working on Huawei too.
Can you explain how funding DEI and leftist pseudoscience helps us compete with China?
Unfortunately there is another possibility: a return to great power competition.
I don't see that happening. The US debt will hinder any big expense that could keep it in any game long term.<p>Take AI for instance. The US grid is struggling to keep up with demand, while Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually, this could be solved by an increase in spending lasting a few years which would make the debt tick up, but that would've been an absolutely fine use of debt since it buys some shiny new infra that will pay dividends for the next 20ish years.<p>Now? Not possible. The US is already drowning in debt and the usual buyers are not showing up to buy it because of the Iran fiasco. With oil so expensive everyone was using their USD reserves to buy oil, not debt. Which mades interest rates go up considerably, and for a country with already ~130% of debt/gdp ratio these are terrible news.<p>So, I don't think there will be a great power race. Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of innovation. Russia is struggling already to finance a war of conquest they started. China is the only one that can run if it comes down to it (unless of course the numbers coming out of China are mega bogus, but for that I don't know enough to have an opinion).<p>[1] <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/" rel="nofollow">https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-in...</a>
> Take AI for instance. The US grid is struggling to keep up with demand, while Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually, this could be solved by an increase in spending lasting a few years which would make the debt tick up, but that would've been an absolutely fine use of debt since it buys some shiny new infra that will pay dividends for the next 20ish years.<p>I object. The CCP is much more deeply indebted than the US when taking into account provincial and local governments as well as state-owned enterprises.[0] And of course the US debt is financed in its own currency while Chinese foreign debt is financed in dollars or other currencies.<p>The problem in the US is regulation. An environmental impact study takes 54 months in the US.[1] The CCP, which has no problem poisoning its people or even launching rockets over inhabited villages, doesn't delay itself at all.[2] I'm glad we don't poison our people or place dangerous industry in places that could harm populated areas, or even perform some prophylactic measures to protect nature, but I'm confident that we could do this in less then a year (less than six months?) and make much faster progress. Even for something like nuclear, the ten years (mostly caused by red tape) are really onerous.<p>> China is the only one that can run if it comes down to it (unless of course the numbers coming out of China are mega bogus, but for that I don't know enough to have an opinion).<p>Yes, the common opinion among China watchers is that any number the CCP touches is "mega bogus." They're actually in the midst of something of a financial crisis at the moment because of the high debt.<p>[0]<a href="https://www.statista.com/topics/11662/debt-in-china/" rel="nofollow">https://www.statista.com/topics/11662/debt-in-china/</a><p>[1]<a href="https://www.rff.org/publications/reports/how-long-does-it-take-national-environmental-policy-act-timelines-and-outcomes-for-clean-energy-projects/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rff.org/publications/reports/how-long-does-it-ta...</a><p>[2]<a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/china-keeps-dropping-toxic-rocket-parts-on-its-villages/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/china-keeps-dropping...</a>
It is absolutely a Chinese century. Even the comment above isn’t <i>wrong per se</i> - great power competition is normal during the interregnum, ie as Arrighi described it - one hegemon is rising while another is declining. But eventually one of them does rise and the world conforms to that - ie America in post WW2.
The US can just hyperinflate to pay its debts.
> Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of innovation<p>Spoken like somebody who has no idea what they are talking about.<p>Apart from the large share of fundamental science which Europe has always been bigger in and better at (I mean, there's a huge tunnel in Texas to show that Americans at some point understood this and tried to compete), Europe is funding the military tools of the next generation in Ukraine.<p>Americans used to be excellent executors, then China took that role. What's left?
Look at GDP growth in the US vs EU over the last 10 years or so if you want to talk about innovation. Europe has been stagnating economically and real productivity growth is critical to a modern economy. The large hadron collider does some impressive research, but it doesn't move the sort of innovation in practical machinery and infrastructure that powers a modern economy.
As an European, yeah, we probably are doing really good with basic science, but what about innovation when it comes to productivity? Why there is no AI lab (apart from Mistral) in EU? Why there is no European model (and hasn't been probably ever) in the pareto fronteer? Or any other really innovative company in the last while (I believe Spotify was the last European unicorn that transformed the landscape in the market they operate into).<p>Don't get me wrong, I rather lose the superpower race but enjoy my privacy and work benefits that folks in the US dream of. But the topic was superpower competition and I don't see the EU going anywhere in that front.<p>We are fragmented, among the top 4 EU economies 2 are struggling with debt (France & Italy), Germany economy is stagnating and the amount of bureaucracy hinders any attempt at innovation, ... .
Maybe AI is not a good example. It is extremely efficient as money burning machine, but for everything else...
Nah, that fantasy is over, with the new Era of Moron Power. The future of humanity of absolutely Asian. Western culture is Rome on Fire.
The irony is that the people who screamed the most that Rome was on fire aggressively pushed for what you brilliantly call Moron Power.<p>They thought we were crashing, rushed the cockpit, and pushed forward as hard as they could on the stick. Forward is up, right?
> The hardest part, though, is how it happened. DOGE’s cuts sliced through American research grants like a thresher, “but this was much murkier,” Reynolds says. “We were never canceled. We were just starved to death.”<p>Maybe time to sue the richest man alive for helping destroy American science.<p>More efficient than any foreign actor
There used to be a time when you came across accounts from 100 years ago - and you'd just be flabbergasted by the whimsical stupidity when laid out so plainly.<p>Now we lament that in 70 years somebody is going to chuckle when they read such non-sequiturs as: The great Texas protein crisis of the late '20s was made several orders of magnitude worse - if not right out caused - by the first trillionaire's purge of the government. At the time justified as a cost saving measure while the president would spend >35% more than its income while saying things were going great and had never been so great at anytime in history.
But that man is a foreign actor.
The article buried the lede. DEI was the bridge too far that lit a massive tinderbox among the electorate who wanted the vast majority of what happened with DOGE, to happen. DEI was the appetizer, and once the teeth starting biting it found a lot more than anticipated (USAID). The lesson is that real scientists should have stood up en masse to the political commandeering of their institutions by fringe activists peddling pseudoscience and this would have been avoided.
This article informs a good understanding and confirms the issues I've witnessed in academia. However, I found that it didn't cover the censorship of any criticism of Israel in science and academics. This was explicitly codified into law with respect to government funding and is a major topic of scientific funding in colleges and universities. Scientific grants and researchers often require a Zionist bias to get funding, something that is unacceptable.
Reading this article, I think Elon Musk is a genius. He's truly smart. He's cutting the budget of his smartest competitor, NASA, so that when national scientists and engineers are thrown out onto the streets, they'll end up at SpaceX.<p>Not only that, but real innovations like cancer treatments require decades of unprofitable 'basic science' grunt work. Musk and his friends don't care about saving humanity 30 years from now. He talks about going to Mars with nonsense lies to fatten his own pockets. And by filling the science advisory committee with VCs instead of scientists, he has turned science in America from a 'pursuit of truth' into a 'Silicon Valley VC portfolio.'<p>Elon Musk is a genius. He will destroy the growth engines that could produce his future competitors, and he will reign forever.<p>The smart thing about Elon Musk and his friends is their ban on international cooperation among scientists and their word censorship. They seem to think that viruses like Ebola will enter the country by getting a Trump card issued. Clearly, smart people like them cannot understand ordinary people like us. To them, it's only natural that everything comes through a visa, so they probably think viruses come through visas too.
Elon Musk's lecturing about border etiquette for viruses can be described as a kind of elite duty. Indeed, injecting morality into something immoral is 'noblesse oblige.
First of all, NASA is the main <i>client</i> of SpaceX. They pay SpaceX money. Sabotaging NASA is sabotaging SpaceX. If NASA can (or want to) compete against SpaceX directly it probably wouldn't have fund half the R&D cost of Falcon 9.<p>The rest of your comment is just nice fiction.
What DOGE has actually struck is not the procurement budget for launch vehicles, but the destruction of the internal engineering capability to design them. The benefit of destroying that capability, in turn, greatly favors SpaceX. SpaceX doesn't want NASA to be a smart partner that builds its own rockets; it wants NASA to be nothing more than a giant wallet that just pays money.<p>This is a classic monopoly strategy that cloud companies used to employ all the time: destroying the customer's internal capabilities[1]<p>[1]<a href="https://www.medianama.com/2024/09/223-google-files-antitrust-complaint-against-microsoft-cloud-services/#content" rel="nofollow">https://www.medianama.com/2024/09/223-google-files-antitrust...</a>
To be clear, DOGE's strategy is not actually for America.<p>The bigger issue is that NIH, NSF, NASA, and public health agencies are no longer perceived by the US right as neutral expert institutions. They see these institutions as strongholds of left wing elites. So this is less about fiscal policy and more about cultural policy retribution.<p>That's why from the perspective of an outsider like me, it looks like 'they are killing their own country's science,' while someone like you might see it as 'smashing the power institutions of the opposing camp.' I think this is simply a difference between an external and internal perspective.<p>Honestly, just looking at the ban on international cooperation mentioned in the article, it comes across as nothing more than a desire for control.
> The bigger issue is that NIH, NSF, NASA, and public health agencies are no longer perceived by the US right as neutral expert institutions. They see these institutions as strongholds of left wing elites. So this is less about fiscal policy and more about cultural policy retribution.<p>It's genuinely amazing(ly depressing) how quickly and effectively "certain groups" can create enemies and whip up public sentiment to attack them and gain power because of it.
I'm sorry to tell you this, but he hasn't been part of this administration for a while. And also i'm not quite sure you have his views on NASA funding (one of his main customers) right, you're just making them up.<p>He is a genius though, great results on the market.
Am scientist.
We needed change. This seems like a stupid way to get change, but it's better than nothing.<p>Academia was not doing well pre-Trump. The DEI infection ran deep - and it still does. Complete nonsense was getting funded in the social sciences and cognitive science / psychology. It was really tragic. And now all these institutions are saddled with personnel debt. The morons they hired during the DEI moral panic - some of them are even tenured by now. People who <i>overtly</i> aren't even doing science - they are performing their politics with science. Overtly.<p>This is a blunt instrument, yes. But things were going very poorly overall, and we needed a shake-up.<p>Given the choice between: Biden (or later Harris) is elected and things keep going the way they were going, or the current timeline, I choose the current timeline.<p>(P.S.: Scientific American is trash now, you shouldn't read it. <a href="https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202" rel="nofollow">https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202</a> )
Yeah, it’s impossible to have this conversation until the left admits it poisoned the well with trans “science” and DEI funding and grants.
> This is a blunt instrument, yes. But things were going very poorly overall, and we needed a shake-up.<p>You do understand that what's happening isn't merely a "shake up", right? It's the coordinated dismantling of structural components of America's innovation economy in ways that will take decades to recover from, if it all (can't do much if emigrants take their talents to China instead of the USA).<p>Strong "cut off your nose to spite your face" vibes. Hope that works out for you. It's not working out for many of my colleagues, especially early-career scientists at federal labs who are hemorrhaging from the system, often moving completely out of science altogether. Great return on investment we're getting for all those GRFPs!
Is China actually particularly interested in allowing non-Chinese foreigners to immigrate there ostensibly to do science but really so they can permanently settle in China and have children who are considered fully Chinese under law?
> It's the coordinated dismantling of structural components of America's innovation economy in ways that will take decades to recover from,<p>No, that is just your opinion.
> Complete nonsense was getting funded in the social sciences and cognitive science / psychology<p>Man, if you think it was bad now, wait until you learn about lobotomies!
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You guys can't see it can you? You're just in the filter bubble. Let's take this quote from the article, shall we...<p>>“The most passionate and creative scientists are very intuitive and very driven by emotion and curiosity,” says Gregory Feist, a psychologist at San José State University who studies scientists. “Until Trump, they’d been able to keep political questions out of mind.”<p>See, that's a filter bubble state of mind. "Driven by emotion" evidently means calling anyone who disagrees with you a "science denier." You were being politcal all along. Now that the people you spent the last 30 years insulting are in charge, they want blood for all the bad things you said to them. Only now is it "Oh no! I don't like being political!"<p>"Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences." You bit the hand that feeds you and you stopped getting fed. Whether you like it or not, both sides, the red and the blue, are your government. If you attack either, you're attacking your government. That's not a wise decision when your government pays your salary. You can't just let someone like James Hansen run off at the mouth for decades and not expect blowback.
No, this isn't correct. The Scopes Monkey Trial would like a word.<p>I grew up conservative and evangelical, and there was always an opposition to "liberal science" simply on the basis of what the science presented. It didn't have anything to do with scientists being mean or "biting the hand that feeds" - the opposition was because scientists claimed that man was descended from other apes, that the Earth was billions of years old, that climate change is real and manmade and going to be damaging.<p>If scientists present information that's uncomfortable for industry or contradicts conservative religious beliefs, conservatives are going to push back against science. That's where the culture war comes from, and there's no way for scientists to avoid it except by abandoning their commitment to evidence and science.
I mean, what's more important to you, discovering truths via scientific research and reports, or conforming to your political ideology? (or getting revenge for perceived attacks, I guess)
'just let the bully beat on you, otherwise they will be justified in escalating'
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The Dow is at 50,000! Why can't we all just be happy about that?! /s
I looked at the greenland ice sheet website regularly and its defunded since last year:<p><a href="https://nsidc.org/ice-sheets-today" rel="nofollow">https://nsidc.org/ice-sheets-today</a><p>There is no reason at all that the biggest military power, richest from GDP and the biggest co2 producer country invests anything in climate research /s<p>I hope the USA goes down, fast...<p>Shout out to Elon Musk, the richest asshole on our planet who wants to leave earth to go to a planet which is not inhabitable and a planet which can't keep humans alive without our blue marble...<p>But hey when we all have starlink in every remote corner of our planet, who cares if our atmosphere is getting poisned by all these rocket starts.<p>Btw. Starlink has 10 Million customers and putting only a single 'small' datacenter into space needs over 350 starship starts. go figure
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you might be an american, and know this, but when you say "complaining" it's a negative tone.<p>If you support US Science, you need to say "more rightly pointing out that..."
Good. Very good.
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Please don't do this* here.<p>We detached this subthread from <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48568492">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48568492</a>.<p>* by "this" I mean posting ideological clichés and internet tropes - This is in the site guidelines: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>.
Science is partisan, at least the 'science' being addressed in this article, because the funding for this science comes from a finite source and there are competing demands placed on this finite source. As any competent scientist knows, taking something from a finite source leaves less in the source. There are differing ideas and beliefs, some partisan (including those of the esteemed Mr. Colbert), on how best to divide up this finite source.
Science being partisan right now has nothing to do with funding. It has to do with the disdain that the people currently in power have to live in a shared reality with the rest of the poulation.<p>Theres a monumental leap from saying "lets not invest in climate change because thats not a good use of tax dollars" to "lets not invest in climate change because its a hoax."
Science is becoming partisan not just because of funding, but because too many people have stopped trying to persuade the people who need persuading. Instead we get statements like, "It has to do with the disdain that the people currently in power have to live in a shared reality with the rest of the population."<p>If your starting talking point is that half the country is irrational or detached from reality you've already abandoned the work of building consensus. We can keep doing the "Jon Stewart" thing and scoring points by calling the other side idiots, or we can grow up, act like adults, and do the much harder work of convincing people.
> If your starting talking point is that half the country is irrational or detached from reality you've already abandoned the work of building consensus. We can keep doing the "Jon Stewart" thing and scoring points by calling the other side idiots, or we can grow up, act like adults, and do the much harder work of convincing people.<p>THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SCIENCE.<p>The science is doing research and writing reports about what they've found. Which is getting defunded and denied and destroyed.<p>Is it now partisan to say "I'm in favor of doing research into how earth's climate is changing and what if anything is causing it"??
I never said half the country is irrational. I specifically called out that <i>people in power</i> do not care to live in a shared reality with the rest of us. They lie directly [1][2], or dismantle the institutions that would be able to push back on their lies [2][3]. Countless examples of this in the last few years.<p>I do think a non-trivial portion of the population has opinions that have unfortunately diverged from what a board of climate scientists or epidemiologist would say is the appropriate state of affairs, and yes this is a problem we all need to figure out how to correct.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/06/california-slow-vote-count" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/06/california-s...</a>
[2] <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0z9nmzvdlo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0z9nmzvdlo</a>
[3] <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3xrrzdr0o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3xrrzdr0o</a>
[4] <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatories-initiative.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatori...</a>
Any “investment” here directly translates to more human activity that will make climate change worse not better. It is hypocritical to have these climate conferences and fly there burning jet fuel.
The need of the hour is to drastically reduce the GDP - we need to rewind the clock 50years. But this will never happen because folks will lose jobs and scientists will lose their funding.
Exactly. One side prefers being miserly on science while spending lavishly on needless wars.
In normal times, what you say is obviously true.<p>But specifically at this moment in time what you've written is total hogwash. <i>Currently</i> the US is spending money as if it's, specifically, an infinite resource.<p>Hence, this kaibosh on science funding can only be explained because the powers that be <i>want it dead and gone</i>.<p>Do with that info what you will. The various flavours of conspiracy-theory-leaning ideas on wanting to 'scare the scientist community away from commenting on political affairs' seem like the most likely explanation to me despite how petty and crazy that sounds.<p>If you are a scientist, get out.<p>Either out of science, or away from US-centric research systems.
Currently, in the US, money is an infinite resource. One need only look at the world's latest one point five trillionaire.<p>Where is the money coming from to support that valuation? And why is it being spent to maintain that valuation?<p>Part of it is accounting tricks (sell 5% of a company for $20, and you're worth $400 with only $20 changing hands) but there's also genuinely a massive unexplained amount of money in existence in the US financial system, that should have caused massive inflation by now but somehow hasn't. Maybe it's only a matter of time, or maybe due to class segregation, it's stable like this and will never come down the ladder to affect grocery prices?
Valuations are often an absurd fantasy. The notion is that Musk could find a buyer who would be willing to pay that based on the value of each share he owns. It’s not real money. He can borrow against it but not too much, and he will have to find a way of paying the lender back without selling stock. The money is not real.<p>If he dumped all of his shares the value of them would essentially go away, like with any commodity.
He gets to exercise power based on his valuation, and in that sense, it is real. He <i>is</i> now known as the world's richest person and first one point five trillionaire, even if he doesn't have one point five trillion dollar bills in his closet. He gets people to suck up to him for fractions of it - "do X for me and I'll give you shares worth a million"
> Currently, in the US, money is an infinite resource. […]<p>Try harder to engage in dialog. Basic economic theory contradicts your claim. You need a much stronger logical argument to have any credibility.
No, no, they're definitely correct. There's no hard limit on the amount of money created. Excess money creation just results in inflation.<p>More to the point: Congress is being profligate in other spending, and miserly w.r.t. science, so it does indeed look like the science cuts are not motivated by fiscal responsibility.<p>Your quip about "basic economic theory" doesn't really address the point they're making.
Um, "basic economic theory" would include the processes that create money and the limits on them, which can be disabled, and what happens if the limits are disabled
the US can trivially and renewably acquire infinite money (in USD). It is an infinite resource.<p>Wealth on the other hand....
> there are competing demands placed on this finite source<p>The US national debt has gone up by 2 trillion under the current administration. They are spending money they don't have at a faster rate than any time in history.<p>Whatever else you can say about the cuts to science, you can't say they're due to "competing demands." They're not cutting in order to fund better research, they're cutting (in the most counterproductive way) to send a message to scientists that politically inconvenient research is not welcome.
Certainly most universities now have a very strong liberal bias. I think most science departments were left leaning in the 1950s, but it is stronger now. (I think colleges and universities have always been more progressive than the general populous.) The administrations of universities are now very strongly Democrat leaning. I think that Trump just sees a lot of Democrat run institutions and thinks, "Why should the government support these institutions run almost entirely by Democrats."
Because until this administration, it has been considered a vital principle of democracy that the elected government supports all the citizens and institutions of the nation, not just the ones that it controls.
But principles don't exist out of nowhere. We had a very partisan country in the past. Consensus was built to get us here, then we just stopped putting in work on building/keeping consensus and resorted to Jon Stewart style calling/making people look like idiots, and expecting past consensus to hold things together in a Jon Stewart style world of mockery of each other. Consensus requires respect each way. One side threw it out the door (knowing or not) with Jon Stewart style ridicule of other but is shocked when that then got responded to X100 with Trump style politics.
Exactly man exactly, most every professor in the United States hates Donald Trump. 80, 90, 95%+ of professors at about say, 90% of all universities hates Donald Trump and the Republican party and will gladly tell you they do. The thing is, this isn't a new thing, they also hated the last R guy, and the R guy before him, and so on and so forth. What did they expect would happen? Trump to just continue funding these people that hate him? To be fair, that's what he usually does though, so I can understand being blindsided by this.
> What did they expect would happen? Trump to just continue funding these people that hate him?<p>So you believe it's expected that a president will de-fund everything that supports their opposing party? I'm sure that's a totally great idea that won't cause any issues whatsoever.<p>American politics are so absurd.
Honestly, yes. I would expect that, or at least whichever party controls Congress to defund efforts that would seek to hurt them. The real abberation is that university funding has gone unscathed for so long. It's said too much and honestly I hate it, but consider the hypothetical: what if 80% of professors expounded right wing ideologies for about, 60 years? Would you not expect some kind of backlash?
I’m sure the same justification was trotted out in Hungary when they purged the intellectuals there, too.
Eh, I think there's a bit of a logical jump between "professors hate Trump" and "professors are expounding left-wing ideologies".<p>Yes, most professors are opposed to Trump. But when you're talking to a professor of, say, metallurgy, he's not using his classroom to rant against Trump. He's using his classroom to teach students about metallurgy, which is a pretty dang useful service to a modern industrial economy. Professor's personal political views aren't interfering with the economic and scientific value he's providing to the country.<p>Which is <i>why</i> the universities and research centers have largely been untouched until now. Until Trump, both sides could recognize that even if there was political disagreement between the professors and the politicians, the professors were still doing important work.<p>Trump took it personally, and on that personal basis he's now eroding our scientific and technological future. We're eating our seed corn, here.
> What did they expect would happen? Trump to just continue funding these people that hate him?<p>Never before in my recollection has U.S. national science policy been tied so closely tied to personal fealty to the president. It is alarming that you see nothing wrong with the connecting science funding to political alignment. This is highly aberrant.<p>In any case, if a majority of academics despise Trump and lean leftward overall, then maybe it would be a moment for self-identifying Republicans to gaze into the mirror and see what might be the reasons for this. As an academic, I have a commitment to the truth. This administration has no such commitment. This has been thoroughly documented.
This is has been significantly overstated my entire life - people making this claim always point to the women’s studies faculty and don’t mention how many engineering, Econ, law, etc. faculty are more conservative — but it more deeply misses the cause, as well. As the Republican Party purged internal dissent, that pushed people out who might have otherwise been on board for things like their fiscal or foreign policy positions but weren’t willing to say gay people were less than fully human or rejected the war on science. That last one is huge for universities because for most of the current century being a Republican has required rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change, the most pressing issue of our time, as well as other topics like public health or the separation of church and state. Criticizing universities for not having more people who reject their foundational principles is badly missing the point.<p>I used to know a Republican lobbyist who worked on environmental issues. He used to represent the coalition of fishers, hunters, hikers, bird-watchers, etc. who valued healthy forests, water, etc. but that line of work disappeared when they put out the fatwa against giving Obama any legislative wins even on issues which have broad public support and it never really came back because the party leadership decide that they represented industry first and only. Those people didn’t suddenly become liberals, the party moved away from them.
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"The Cost of Excess" The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) (2021) <a href="https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Cost-of-Excess-FINAL-Full-Report.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Cost-o...</a><p>"How Much Is Too Much? Controlling Administrative Costs through Effective
Oversight" (2017) <a href="https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/ee/download/controlling-administrative-costs.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/ee/download/contro...</a><p>For the past 20 years the budgets ballooned out of control (alongside the student debt). Yes, this WH admin is anti-science but US academia is due some introspection.<p>Disclaimer: I'm not from US
Science has always been in Chaos. I know of zero laboratories doing “science” that isn’t biased or otherwise tainted with politics or money<p>The US public never cared about science anyway. Go read Carl Sagan’s 1996 demon haunted world and it’s only gotten worse from there<p>You could do a search for this headline and get a result for every year since Francis Bacon started publishing
> But arbitrary cancellations and delayed disbursements are unprecedented<p>Is it though? I would like to see more evidence. The scale of the cuts is clearly larger than what we have experienced in recent history, but this has always been a struggle. Researchers have spent an inordinate amount of time shopping projects around and writing grant proposals for a long time now.<p>> And justifying them on the basis of politics—prohibiting, for instance, grants that include language referencing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)—was unheard of until now.<p>This is disingenuous. While this new policy is clearly an overcorrection, previous policies which mandated that language clearly existed -- the political overlap is not unheard of.<p>---<p>It is hard to follow the point of the article. It appears to mostly be opposed to funding cuts. Obviously the current administration is cutting the grant budgets of these organizations. But that article seems to be making the claim that the method of selecting what to cut is being done in a particular "anti-science" manner.<p>Given that there are cuts, are they doing a particularly bad job of choosing which projects to cut? I don't see an answer to that question in any rigorous way, just insinuations.
The government can't fund everything. Too much of the budget is tied up in transfer and interest payments squeezing out other more viable research. The federal government doesn't have unlimited funds. Something has to give.
> Something has to give.<p>Just so I’m not misunderstanding, you felt that science funding should be the first thing to give? And that other recent controversial expenditures should take priority?
The president said we dropped 250 million dollars worth of bombs in a single night last week.
What’s the military budget again? How much did the war we lost in Iran cost?
Down voted, imagine that. Predictable as sunrise. So what should be cut?
US Science needed this. Racism, sexism, plagiarism, and fraud were rampant in the academic community. It's going to take a long time to fully fix the problem, but we are on the right path currently.