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> auditing government spending Pretending like anything Elon Musk is doing is legitimate auditing is absurd. Do you recall when he/DOGE gutted NIH and research

> auditing government spending Pretending like anything Elon Musk is doing is legitimate auditing is absurd. Do you recall when he/DOGE gutted NIH and research funding on a whim, and he didn't even know? (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888575713629925769 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888575713629925769) > super-competent outsider I'd disagree about him being particularly competent at anything other than venture capital, and auditing ≠ venture capital. Regardless, why would I trust the richest man in the world to decide what the citizens of the country need and/or want from the government? Honestly, I can keep going if you'd like, but I think this is enough to demonstrate that Elon Musk should not have illegal access to the government through his immense wealth and power (if that was not already self-evident.)

porridgeraisin 2y ago
> Gutted NIH and research funding This is simply factually wrong. The twitter-engagement-bait driven nonsense like the OP in the tweet you linked is just so bad. I only got flagged about this when talking with an acquaintance working on medical research under NIH grants in the US. (I'm not from the US) What has actually happened is adjustment of what they call the "indirect cost rate". This refers to the portion of funding you're allowed to chalk down to administrative overhead as opposed to direct research expenses. For example in 2023, of the 35billion in NIH grants, 9billion went to administrative overhead (25%). The new rule is them capping this to 15%. By the way this rate is around the standard in all private grant foundations. Here is the primary source of information: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-068.html https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-0... Now, I'm not sure if all the DEI stuff the new government doesn't like comes under "administrative overhead". If it did, it would explain the timing of the announcement. But adjusting indirect cost rates is in general a very normal thing to do, and 25% is very high, even for a prosperous grant system like the NIH. Here [2] is a university mentioning their negotiated indirect cost rate of 56%(!!!) For comparison, the NSF from 2010 to 2016 varied their rate only between 16% and 24% [3]. The NIH rates are absurdly high. News articles such as [1], that directly quote the above primary source and still misconstrue it, deserve jail time. Also, it is really disingenous to say "cutting funds for cancer research" as if it's directly targeted at cancer research. Engagement driven media like Twitter, news websites, etc, are truly the devil of the world. And the incentives are rotten, so no matter what Musk says X isn't fixing it in any way. </rant> [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-billions-dollars-biomedical-funding-effective-immediately/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-bi... [2] https://research.umich.edu/update-on-nih-indirect-cost-rate-cap/ https://research.umich.edu/update-on-nih-indirect-cost-rate-... [3] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-576t https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-576t
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - porridgeraisin 2y ago
    > Why on earth would this be the case? Do you hear yourself? Here’s the answer: no, obviously. I have no skin in the game. I just hypothesised as to why the timing might overlap with your new government's crusade > If Elon thinks they’re too high, the new administration can negotiate them more vigorously next time around. They can take a position of across the board cuts if they want, but obviously the outcome is likely to be fewer orgs accepting the negotiated rates, I.e. they have just cut research But the NSF, and every single private grant foundations, operates at ~15% rates. Why would the NIH converging to the same rate affect anything? > Are we supposed to ignore the actual impacts of a decision and instead refer to it by its alleged intent? No, you're just supposed to avoid lossy compression. "NIH cuts research funding for administrative overhead. This could impact cancer research" Is a better, factual statement. It separates the objective, factual, action taken by the NIH and your hypothesised effect of that action on two separate sentences and qualifies the hypothesis with "could".
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      You really do have skin in the game, given how many medicines you use and will use are also developed with NIH funding. Have you considered whether this was driven by the relative positions of Jupiter and Mercury? Or perhaps by the swirling of the tea leaves in Musk’s cup? It’s driven by a reckless attempt to reduce spending without having to think through the consequences because it’d take “too long.” I’m not arguing that the overhead rates are correct or can’t be lower. I’m saying if you take a sports car to the shop and they start tearing parts out because “hey that looks different than the one in the Corolla,” you’d go to a different mechanic. There is no reason to be jolting any of these systems this severely. The entire emergency is contrived in order to force through an ideological purification. All language is lossy compression, obviously. Your version just overlays wishful thinking.

porridgeraisin 2y ago

> Gutted NIH and research funding This is simply factually wrong. The twitter-engagement-bait driven nonsense like the OP in the tweet you linked is just so bad. I only got flagged about this when talking with an acquaintance working on medical research under NIH grants in the US. (I'm not from the US) What has actually happened is adjustment of what they call the "indirect cost rate". This refers to the portion of funding you're allowed to chalk down to administrative overhead as opposed to direct research expenses. For example in 2023, of the 35billion in NIH grants, 9billion went to administrative overhead (25%). The new rule is them capping this to 15%. By the way this rate is around the standard in all private grant foundations. Here is the primary source of information: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-068.html https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-0... Now, I'm not sure if all the DEI stuff the new government doesn't like comes under "administrative overhead". If it did, it would explain the timing of the announcement. But adjusting indirect cost rates is in general a very normal thing to do, and 25% is very high, even for a prosperous grant system like the NIH. Here [2] is a university mentioning their negotiated indirect cost rate of 56%(!!!) For comparison, the NSF from 2010 to 2016 varied their rate only between 16% and 24% [3]. The NIH rates are absurdly high. News articles such as [1], that directly quote the above primary source and still misconstrue it, deserve jail time. Also, it is really disingenous to say "cutting funds for cancer research" as if it's directly targeted at cancer research. Engagement driven media like Twitter, news websites, etc, are truly the devil of the world. And the incentives are rotten, so no matter what Musk says X isn't fixing it in any way. </rant> [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-billions-dollars-biomedical-funding-effective-immediately/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/nih-cuts-bi... [2] https://research.umich.edu/update-on-nih-indirect-cost-rate-cap/ https://research.umich.edu/update-on-nih-indirect-cost-rate-... [3] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-576t https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-576t

llamaimperative 2y ago
[flagged]
- porridgeraisin 2y ago
  > Why on earth would this be the case? Do you hear yourself? Here’s the answer: no, obviously. I have no skin in the game. I just hypothesised as to why the timing might overlap with your new government's crusade > If Elon thinks they’re too high, the new administration can negotiate them more vigorously next time around. They can take a position of across the board cuts if they want, but obviously the outcome is likely to be fewer orgs accepting the negotiated rates, I.e. they have just cut research But the NSF, and every single private grant foundations, operates at ~15% rates. Why would the NIH converging to the same rate affect anything? > Are we supposed to ignore the actual impacts of a decision and instead refer to it by its alleged intent? No, you're just supposed to avoid lossy compression. "NIH cuts research funding for administrative overhead. This could impact cancer research" Is a better, factual statement. It separates the objective, factual, action taken by the NIH and your hypothesised effect of that action on two separate sentences and qualifies the hypothesis with "could".
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    You really do have skin in the game, given how many medicines you use and will use are also developed with NIH funding. Have you considered whether this was driven by the relative positions of Jupiter and Mercury? Or perhaps by the swirling of the tea leaves in Musk’s cup? It’s driven by a reckless attempt to reduce spending without having to think through the consequences because it’d take “too long.” I’m not arguing that the overhead rates are correct or can’t be lower. I’m saying if you take a sports car to the shop and they start tearing parts out because “hey that looks different than the one in the Corolla,” you’d go to a different mechanic. There is no reason to be jolting any of these systems this severely. The entire emergency is contrived in order to force through an ideological purification. All language is lossy compression, obviously. Your version just overlays wishful thinking.