69 ms·

There are going to be a lot of repercussions in the future given how many potential future scientists won’t get trained.

HarryHirsch 2y ago
Where's the pharma lobby? Pharma is the only industrial science left in the country!
- bglazer 2y ago
  They are currently on their way to Mar a Lago to ask Trump to roll back the drug price negotiation provisions that were instated by the Inflation Reduction Act https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/phrma-prepares-meet-trump-new-chair-albert-bourla-espouses-optimism https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/phrma-prepares-meet-trum...
  - HarryHirsch 2y ago
    If they are protected from competition they will end up like the US auto industry in the 1970's. They can try and do generics but Teva, Ranbaxy and Ratiopharm will eat them once patent protection runs out.
    - linksnapzz 2y ago
      Of course, that'll last until Ranbaxy kills off all of their patients.
- icegreentea2 2y ago
  They're weighing the impact on their future workforce pipeline (and probably hoping this this only represents a ~4-8 year hiccup) against whatever other benefits they can get from cozying up with the administration (whacky regulation land). https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pharma-ceos-speaking-damn-it https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pharma-ceos-speaki... And who knows, with the right wacky regulatory scheme enacted, the workforce impact will be mitigated away. Probably also banking on the size and power of the American domestic economy to still allow them to siphon talent from across the western world to help make up some short falls.
  - CSMastermind 2y ago
    I was just talking to my buddy who works in big pharma and internally it sounds like they have zero concerns about the current administration impacting them. Actually the opposite, apparently Trump rolled back the Medicare drug cost caps so they're expecting profits to go up.
    - naijaboiler 2y ago
      Pharmacy are drug marketing companies. They have essentially outsourced drug R&D to universities
- osnium123 2y ago
  Maybe they can start bringing in folks trained in the EU, Canada and China.
wendyshu 2y ago
The US graduates too many PHDs, not too few
- Unearned5161 2y ago
  do you care to elaborate? what is too many and what are the repercussions of this?
  - hollerith 2y ago
    One of the repercussions is that young people get a PhD, then cannot get an appropriate job. Also, the taxpayers are paying most of the cost of these PhDs.
    - Unearned5161 2y ago
      yes, that's the general idea, no? Further studies funded by the government. Pushing the boundaries of knowledge is expensive but critical for any country that wants to remain influential in the world. Regarding employment rates, I can't speak too broadly on that as I'm more focused on the econ field, which does not have employment issues. But I would be interested in hearing the base for you numbers.
      - latency-guy2 2y ago
        On the condition that boundaries are pushed. I say this with partial ignorance though. I don't know that particular field. Generally, the number of drop outs at grad school is notoriously quite high across the entire spectrum. How much has the needle moved given what feels like a coin flip shot of completing an advanced study in all respective fields? There's more graduates than ever before too. It will trend sharply down over the next few years, not necessarily because of the loss grants from the US government, but because of the birth glut that has been looming since 2008.
    - juniperus 2y ago
      in the case of a humanities PhD, yeah. It's probably easier to become a pro-athlete than find the handful of jobs that require a history PhD. But a chemistry PhD? Engineering PhD... agricultural sciences... geology... the job search is still a search, but these aren't degrees that have no demand. You certainly are more likely to find industry jobs vs. academic jobs with many hard science degrees. The return on taxpayer investment is sensible compared to other taxpayer funded schemes (in my view, if we're going to be a country that also funds primary and high school). and this investment is not a direct funding of PhD students, but funding projects they carry out, which in most cases is in national interest. The select number of students working on completely useless projects that are ideological dogma are definitely making the rest of higher education look useless.
jaybrendansmith 2y ago
What's going to happen is another pandemic. Millions will die, and this is what opportunity cost looks like. We recovered from the last one due to mRNA research from NIH grants (NIAID, one of my clients) and DARPA blue sky funding, almost certain to be cut. These people are literally cutting the funding that saved millions of lives from the last pandemic. Full stop. They don't wanna hear about your facts.
- pphysch 2y ago
  One day on HN I read a thread about how academia is (credibly) inundated with fraudulent research/publication practices, the next day I read a comment about how Western academia is (vaguely) the last vanguard against civilizational collapse. There seems to be a disconnect here. Disclaimer: I work in academia
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Academic misconduct is an idee fixe on HN, because (1) there is about two orders of magnitude more research occurring than the median HN commenter would guess, (2) misconduct is generally newsworthy, and (3) even a minuscule portion of fraudulent research is enough to keep a steady drumbeat of misconduct stories to vote and comment on.
    - eli_gottlieb 2y ago
      And (4) just as everyone likes to think they could have made it as a pro athlete, everyone likes to think they could have made it as an academic, but had better things to do.
    - cloudbonsai 2y ago
      But how do you explain those results? - Brian Nosek's team examined 100 studies from high-ranking psychology journals in 2015, and could only reproduce 1/3 of them. - Tim Errington did the same for cancer papers, and could not reproduce most of them either (he spent 8 years for this efforts btw) - When you aggregate the reported p-value in scientific publications, it often reveals a "funny" distribution (Leggett 2013, Ookubo 2016) They are not picking up rare misconducts by low-profile researchers. Fraudant research (from p-hacking to data rigging) is very common and a very serious issue.

HarryHirsch 2y ago

Where's the pharma lobby? Pharma is the only industrial science left in the country!

bglazer 2y ago
They are currently on their way to Mar a Lago to ask Trump to roll back the drug price negotiation provisions that were instated by the Inflation Reduction Act https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/phrma-prepares-meet-trump-new-chair-albert-bourla-espouses-optimism https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/phrma-prepares-meet-trum...
- HarryHirsch 2y ago
  If they are protected from competition they will end up like the US auto industry in the 1970's. They can try and do generics but Teva, Ranbaxy and Ratiopharm will eat them once patent protection runs out.
  - linksnapzz 2y ago
    Of course, that'll last until Ranbaxy kills off all of their patients.
icegreentea2 2y ago
They're weighing the impact on their future workforce pipeline (and probably hoping this this only represents a ~4-8 year hiccup) against whatever other benefits they can get from cozying up with the administration (whacky regulation land). https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pharma-ceos-speaking-damn-it https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pharma-ceos-speaki... And who knows, with the right wacky regulatory scheme enacted, the workforce impact will be mitigated away. Probably also banking on the size and power of the American domestic economy to still allow them to siphon talent from across the western world to help make up some short falls.
- CSMastermind 2y ago
  I was just talking to my buddy who works in big pharma and internally it sounds like they have zero concerns about the current administration impacting them. Actually the opposite, apparently Trump rolled back the Medicare drug cost caps so they're expecting profits to go up.
  - naijaboiler 2y ago
    Pharmacy are drug marketing companies. They have essentially outsourced drug R&D to universities
osnium123 2y ago
Maybe they can start bringing in folks trained in the EU, Canada and China.

wendyshu 2y ago

The US graduates too many PHDs, not too few

Unearned5161 2y ago
do you care to elaborate? what is too many and what are the repercussions of this?
- hollerith 2y ago
  One of the repercussions is that young people get a PhD, then cannot get an appropriate job. Also, the taxpayers are paying most of the cost of these PhDs.
  - Unearned5161 2y ago
    yes, that's the general idea, no? Further studies funded by the government. Pushing the boundaries of knowledge is expensive but critical for any country that wants to remain influential in the world. Regarding employment rates, I can't speak too broadly on that as I'm more focused on the econ field, which does not have employment issues. But I would be interested in hearing the base for you numbers.
    - latency-guy2 2y ago
      On the condition that boundaries are pushed. I say this with partial ignorance though. I don't know that particular field. Generally, the number of drop outs at grad school is notoriously quite high across the entire spectrum. How much has the needle moved given what feels like a coin flip shot of completing an advanced study in all respective fields? There's more graduates than ever before too. It will trend sharply down over the next few years, not necessarily because of the loss grants from the US government, but because of the birth glut that has been looming since 2008.
  - juniperus 2y ago
    in the case of a humanities PhD, yeah. It's probably easier to become a pro-athlete than find the handful of jobs that require a history PhD. But a chemistry PhD? Engineering PhD... agricultural sciences... geology... the job search is still a search, but these aren't degrees that have no demand. You certainly are more likely to find industry jobs vs. academic jobs with many hard science degrees. The return on taxpayer investment is sensible compared to other taxpayer funded schemes (in my view, if we're going to be a country that also funds primary and high school). and this investment is not a direct funding of PhD students, but funding projects they carry out, which in most cases is in national interest. The select number of students working on completely useless projects that are ideological dogma are definitely making the rest of higher education look useless.

jaybrendansmith 2y ago

What's going to happen is another pandemic. Millions will die, and this is what opportunity cost looks like. We recovered from the last one due to mRNA research from NIH grants (NIAID, one of my clients) and DARPA blue sky funding, almost certain to be cut. These people are literally cutting the funding that saved millions of lives from the last pandemic. Full stop. They don't wanna hear about your facts.

pphysch 2y ago
One day on HN I read a thread about how academia is (credibly) inundated with fraudulent research/publication practices, the next day I read a comment about how Western academia is (vaguely) the last vanguard against civilizational collapse. There seems to be a disconnect here. Disclaimer: I work in academia
- tptacek 2y ago
  Academic misconduct is an idee fixe on HN, because (1) there is about two orders of magnitude more research occurring than the median HN commenter would guess, (2) misconduct is generally newsworthy, and (3) even a minuscule portion of fraudulent research is enough to keep a steady drumbeat of misconduct stories to vote and comment on.
  - eli_gottlieb 2y ago
    And (4) just as everyone likes to think they could have made it as a pro athlete, everyone likes to think they could have made it as an academic, but had better things to do.
  - cloudbonsai 2y ago
    But how do you explain those results? - Brian Nosek's team examined 100 studies from high-ranking psychology journals in 2015, and could only reproduce 1/3 of them. - Tim Errington did the same for cancer papers, and could not reproduce most of them either (he spent 8 years for this efforts btw) - When you aggregate the reported p-value in scientific publications, it often reveals a "funny" distribution (Leggett 2013, Ookubo 2016) They are not picking up rare misconducts by low-profile researchers. Fraudant research (from p-hacking to data rigging) is very common and a very serious issue.