7 ms·

I wonder how will this affect private institutions and private publications? I could imagine people moving away from CDC into private sector, and considering i

I wonder how will this affect private institutions and private publications? I could imagine people moving away from CDC into private sector, and considering it's long been a "model" US view that things progress best when done in a free market, it might actually be a boon to medical research. But, a couple of quick searches tells me 1/3rd of healthcare costs per person comes from the federal government (data from 2023), and NIH puts majority of it's $48B budget towards external (83%) and internal (11%) research. Obviously, only some research would have (or need to have) the forbidden terminology, so perhaps nothing really happens. Edit: and lest it remains unsaid, let's also take this with a grain of salt until it comes out from multiple sources or officially.

coldpepper 2y ago
[flagged]
- necovek 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - EGreg 2y ago
    [flagged]
samus 2y ago
According to TA, this also affects lots of other papers even if they are not central to the topic. The intention is to combat "woke" research, but it creates pure chaos and uncertainty across the whole field. There is no official policy, and every bureaucrat is trying to guess what is going to be permissible in the future and what not. To be on the safe side (i.e., to not get fired), the ban is interpreted broadly.
roenxi 2y ago
Hopefully not much. They'll invent some jargon if necessary and move on. The issue with banning "woke ideology" in principle is that it isn't formally defined and doesn't mean anything. And to ban a thing first it has to exist in a detectable way. My guess is there'll be a bit of flailing then everyone will default back to status quo. It isn't possible to implement incoherent policies and it isn't going to do anyone any favours in terms of image to pursue this. Might take 4 months, might take 4 years to blow over.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > Might take 4 months, might take 4 years to blow over. That’s a lot more optimistic than I fear.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > issue with banning "woke ideology" It’s the illiberal right shaking hands with the illiberal left. The problem is this time the purges aren’t just ideological, but also financial: there are winners and losers in our healthcare industry likely to be defined by their polarity to Trump.
  - noobermin 2y ago
    What "illiberal left" benefits from this? Half of the reason we are at this point is the nonstop equivocation that goes on in our discourse. Lay this at the feet of who caused it.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > What "illiberal left" benefits from this Banning terms from general and academic use originated, in modern America, from the illiberal left’s cancel culture. I’m not saying they caused this—it’s not novel that illiberalism leads to censorship. But the tactics both groups use when they get their hands on power are remarkably similar. > the nonstop equivocation You probably mean false equation. I don’t believe I am, because the illiberal left never came into power. At least not federally. Liberals on the left successfully checked our radicals in a way the right did not. (If you want policy fusion between the illiberal left and right, it’s in RFK Jr. Marin County sees eye to eye with MAGA on e.g. vaccines.)
      - asddubs 2y ago
        before cancel culture it was satanic panic from the right. This is not a new phenomenon, and I don't think it has much to do with the shift towards right wing extremism
noobermin 2y ago
Healthcare costs don't neccessarily map to funding of research. It doesn't make sense to bring that up here.
- throwoutway 2y ago
  noobermin is rihgt. I've been reading a book about gastroenterology and it is surprising how many decades occur between research, findings, medical acceptance, and then eventually application to the public.
  - spondylosaurus 2y ago
    What book? Sounds interesting.
- necovek 2y ago
  Sure, but there must be some relation as they cover the cost of drugs and any novel procedures, which are at least somewhat priced according to how much research to develop them cost. I was just looking for how much research is funded by federal government, and that number came up as somewhat unrelated — it was harder to come up with a total medical research cost number, so this was the best I could do in a couple of minutes.
- neycoda 2y ago
  If corporations are going to argue for the current regime of health care costs to stay as high as possible in the "free market" using research & development costs as an argument, then yes it makes sense to bring it up.
tanewishly 2y ago
> I wonder how will this affect private institutions and private publications? A government agency trying to enforce censorship in scientific publications outside its sphere of influence... I have to admit, that was not the first thing I wondered about.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
_heimdall 2y ago
I don't agree with how Trump and his administration are going about this, but it has been interesting to see how quickly it has pushed democrats back to a more federated approach. After the election many started looked to state's rights type issues to make change locally before Trump took office. Changes like this could very well push research back out of the centralized government back to more of a free market and federated or decentralized approach. That would at least be a silver lining in my opinion, though to a potentially very dark cloud.
- goosedragons 2y ago
  The free market doesn't support most research. Research usually doesn't end in something that's marketable, and even if it does it's often on a too long time scale to do so for companies to justify. And even if there is, it might never get published lest competitors gain anything from it. This is bad for science. At best states might step in but I imagine many won't.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    That's the conventional argument for government funded research, but is it true? The AI space is a good example of very long term research, funded almost entirely by the private sector without any clear idea of how the results would be marketed, they publish and - the key part - the work actually replicates. Nor is the AI space unique. XEROX Parc was another famous example, Big Data/Cloud has come entirely out of private sector research. Not unique to computer science either: the research work that led to Ozempic was being funded by Novo Nordisk as far back as 1998. > Research usually doesn't end in something that's marketable It usually does, even in academia. That's why they count citations. It's just that the thing that's marketed is either policy advocacy (marketed to governments) or the claims in and of themselves, marketed either to the general public in TED talk style advocacy or to other academics as work they can build on to get more grants. A lot of people don't recognize the existence of things like the profit motive, lobbying or marketing in government funded research, imagining that they don't exist, but they do. In some fields, it's common for lobbying to be like 50% or more of the word count. There's a long tail of papers that research things that nearly nobody cares about, yet perhaps one day they might. These are the "we studied some obscure fish in the Amazon and found a cure for cancer" type stories that crop up from time to time. But such claims often don't quite work out, and the private sector is easily able to fund this sort of exploratory work too.
mbostleman 2y ago
I wonder how much of the success pseudo gender “science” had in undermining the scientific and medical communities was attributed to the centralization of science authority in the federal government. It makes me wonder if there shouldn’t be a separation of science and state.
bmitc 2y ago
> it might actually be a boon to medical research. How? That seems like going out of your way to label this as not as bad as it actually is.
- necovek 2y ago
  If you get really good researchers away from cash-strapped CDC into private sector — not sure if this will play out, and if private sector would be interested, or if their research even has earning potential — but it "might", right?
knodi 2y ago
A lot of research NIH funds because there is low outcome of a market product at the end of that research. This is because investors won't spend the money or only fund research that has no money incentive in its outcome. The way I see is it is progress is about to stop because investors will only fund thing that can have a direct money outcome for them in the future...
EasyMark 2y ago
I think that's the only option. We need the truth, we currently have a deranged President leading the blind who would rather believe in a sky daddy and the lies they tell themselves than reality. I could see an oligarch that actually might choose to do the right thing, along with a group of high end Universities to replace CDC and NIH at least for the next 2-4 years when we can reestablish some sanity. While I'm fine with rescending bad papers and false information, these blanket attempts to normalize thought crime from the new regime to destroy science and the truth and replace it with their own distorted world view needs to be met with resistance.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- emchammer 2y ago
  Whether they believe in God doesn't have to be part of the equation though. You can believe in God and also in trans rights and science and everything.
  - SauciestGNU 2y ago
    It's possible but somewhat rare. I've met religious research scientists before, but in general principles of faith and the scientific method are at odds with each other.
Snowfield9571 2y ago
Interesting thought, but significant technologic “break throughs” almost never come from the private sector. A “break through” is just luck, and countless years working on a problem incrementally. That doesn’t typically return profits.

coldpepper 2y ago

[flagged]

necovek 2y ago
[flagged]
- EGreg 2y ago
  [flagged]

samus 2y ago

According to TA, this also affects lots of other papers even if they are not central to the topic. The intention is to combat "woke" research, but it creates pure chaos and uncertainty across the whole field. There is no official policy, and every bureaucrat is trying to guess what is going to be permissible in the future and what not. To be on the safe side (i.e., to not get fired), the ban is interpreted broadly.

roenxi 2y ago

Hopefully not much. They'll invent some jargon if necessary and move on. The issue with banning "woke ideology" in principle is that it isn't formally defined and doesn't mean anything. And to ban a thing first it has to exist in a detectable way. My guess is there'll be a bit of flailing then everyone will default back to status quo. It isn't possible to implement incoherent policies and it isn't going to do anyone any favours in terms of image to pursue this. Might take 4 months, might take 4 years to blow over.

lostlogin 2y ago
> Might take 4 months, might take 4 years to blow over. That’s a lot more optimistic than I fear.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> issue with banning "woke ideology" It’s the illiberal right shaking hands with the illiberal left. The problem is this time the purges aren’t just ideological, but also financial: there are winners and losers in our healthcare industry likely to be defined by their polarity to Trump.
- noobermin 2y ago
  What "illiberal left" benefits from this? Half of the reason we are at this point is the nonstop equivocation that goes on in our discourse. Lay this at the feet of who caused it.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > What "illiberal left" benefits from this Banning terms from general and academic use originated, in modern America, from the illiberal left’s cancel culture. I’m not saying they caused this—it’s not novel that illiberalism leads to censorship. But the tactics both groups use when they get their hands on power are remarkably similar. > the nonstop equivocation You probably mean false equation. I don’t believe I am, because the illiberal left never came into power. At least not federally. Liberals on the left successfully checked our radicals in a way the right did not. (If you want policy fusion between the illiberal left and right, it’s in RFK Jr. Marin County sees eye to eye with MAGA on e.g. vaccines.)
    - asddubs 2y ago
      before cancel culture it was satanic panic from the right. This is not a new phenomenon, and I don't think it has much to do with the shift towards right wing extremism

noobermin 2y ago

Healthcare costs don't neccessarily map to funding of research. It doesn't make sense to bring that up here.

throwoutway 2y ago
noobermin is rihgt. I've been reading a book about gastroenterology and it is surprising how many decades occur between research, findings, medical acceptance, and then eventually application to the public.
- spondylosaurus 2y ago
  What book? Sounds interesting.
necovek 2y ago
Sure, but there must be some relation as they cover the cost of drugs and any novel procedures, which are at least somewhat priced according to how much research to develop them cost. I was just looking for how much research is funded by federal government, and that number came up as somewhat unrelated — it was harder to come up with a total medical research cost number, so this was the best I could do in a couple of minutes.
neycoda 2y ago
If corporations are going to argue for the current regime of health care costs to stay as high as possible in the "free market" using research & development costs as an argument, then yes it makes sense to bring it up.

tanewishly 2y ago

> I wonder how will this affect private institutions and private publications? A government agency trying to enforce censorship in scientific publications outside its sphere of influence... I have to admit, that was not the first thing I wondered about.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

_heimdall 2y ago

I don't agree with how Trump and his administration are going about this, but it has been interesting to see how quickly it has pushed democrats back to a more federated approach. After the election many started looked to state's rights type issues to make change locally before Trump took office. Changes like this could very well push research back out of the centralized government back to more of a free market and federated or decentralized approach. That would at least be a silver lining in my opinion, though to a potentially very dark cloud.

goosedragons 2y ago
The free market doesn't support most research. Research usually doesn't end in something that's marketable, and even if it does it's often on a too long time scale to do so for companies to justify. And even if there is, it might never get published lest competitors gain anything from it. This is bad for science. At best states might step in but I imagine many won't.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  That's the conventional argument for government funded research, but is it true? The AI space is a good example of very long term research, funded almost entirely by the private sector without any clear idea of how the results would be marketed, they publish and - the key part - the work actually replicates. Nor is the AI space unique. XEROX Parc was another famous example, Big Data/Cloud has come entirely out of private sector research. Not unique to computer science either: the research work that led to Ozempic was being funded by Novo Nordisk as far back as 1998. > Research usually doesn't end in something that's marketable It usually does, even in academia. That's why they count citations. It's just that the thing that's marketed is either policy advocacy (marketed to governments) or the claims in and of themselves, marketed either to the general public in TED talk style advocacy or to other academics as work they can build on to get more grants. A lot of people don't recognize the existence of things like the profit motive, lobbying or marketing in government funded research, imagining that they don't exist, but they do. In some fields, it's common for lobbying to be like 50% or more of the word count. There's a long tail of papers that research things that nearly nobody cares about, yet perhaps one day they might. These are the "we studied some obscure fish in the Amazon and found a cure for cancer" type stories that crop up from time to time. But such claims often don't quite work out, and the private sector is easily able to fund this sort of exploratory work too.

mbostleman 2y ago

I wonder how much of the success pseudo gender “science” had in undermining the scientific and medical communities was attributed to the centralization of science authority in the federal government. It makes me wonder if there shouldn’t be a separation of science and state.

bmitc 2y ago

> it might actually be a boon to medical research. How? That seems like going out of your way to label this as not as bad as it actually is.

necovek 2y ago
If you get really good researchers away from cash-strapped CDC into private sector — not sure if this will play out, and if private sector would be interested, or if their research even has earning potential — but it "might", right?

knodi 2y ago

A lot of research NIH funds because there is low outcome of a market product at the end of that research. This is because investors won't spend the money or only fund research that has no money incentive in its outcome. The way I see is it is progress is about to stop because investors will only fund thing that can have a direct money outcome for them in the future...

EasyMark 2y ago

I think that's the only option. We need the truth, we currently have a deranged President leading the blind who would rather believe in a sky daddy and the lies they tell themselves than reality. I could see an oligarch that actually might choose to do the right thing, along with a group of high end Universities to replace CDC and NIH at least for the next 2-4 years when we can reestablish some sanity. While I'm fine with rescending bad papers and false information, these blanket attempts to normalize thought crime from the new regime to destroy science and the truth and replace it with their own distorted world view needs to be met with resistance.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
emchammer 2y ago
Whether they believe in God doesn't have to be part of the equation though. You can believe in God and also in trans rights and science and everything.
- SauciestGNU 2y ago
  It's possible but somewhat rare. I've met religious research scientists before, but in general principles of faith and the scientific method are at odds with each other.

Snowfield9571 2y ago

Interesting thought, but significant technologic “break throughs” almost never come from the private sector. A “break through” is just luck, and countless years working on a problem incrementally. That doesn’t typically return profits.