6 ms·

But... why? Why would anyone just destroy scientific research in their own country? What do they hope to gain from this?

makeitdouble 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward > The Great Leap Forward stemmed from multiple factors, including "the purge of intellectuals, the surge of less-educated radicals, the need to find new ways to generate domestic capital, rising enthusiasm about the potential results mass mobilization might produce
- marcus_holmes 2y ago
  Yeah, I guess. Destroying the political "enemy" becomes more important than anything else. I thought that only happened in socially backward, ideology-riddled, far-off places like Cambodia or China. Not advanced Western democracies.
  - krapp 2y ago
    "Socially backward" and "ideology riddled" describes the US pretty well. And "far off" in the sense that American culture is intentionally isolationist and separatist, and Americans tend to be aggressively ignorant about the rest of the world. Most Western democracies are more safe and have a higher standard of living and score better on the Human Freedom Index and other metrics than the US, and have "advanced" features like socialized healthcare and education, which the US does not, so one could argue the US isn't even advanced as Western democracies go. Having one's system of laws based on the vague and archaic prose of a Constitution written for an 18th century pre-industrial agrarian slaveowning society isn't very advanced as far as modern constitutional law is concerned.
    - grandempire 2y ago
      > better on the Human Freedom Index Weird that all the metrics keep telling everyone their life is better, but people don’t feel that way. You can’t summarize the human experience of freedom in an index.
      - krapp 2y ago
        I know, people felt like eggs were too expensive and brown people were getting too much of a free ride so they voted to burn the country down. One might almost infer in this post-truth age of ours that vibes alone aren't sufficient to form an objective model of reality.
        grandempire 2y ago
        Did you know these indices are invented by vibes of other people and are at best objective measurements of subjective values?
        krapp 2y ago
        You're confusing "vibes" with "data." If you disagree with the data, present data to the contrary. If you're just insisting that we believe your vibes over others, that would just make for boring conversation.
        grandempire 2y ago
        You’re confusing data with meaning, understanding, and truth. How many freedom units in the index am I experiencing right now? Will getting more units make me happier? You can measure data without that data having a meaningful bearing on the topic you care about.
        bloomingkales 2y ago
        I know, people felt like eggs were too expensive and brown people were getting too much of a free ride so they voted to burn the country down. The grand summary of America 2025. I don't think anyone has said it better than that in all of media. They gymnastics people run to avoid that simple truth just reveals their rotten core.
    - jimbokun 2y ago
      > Most Western democracies are more safe and have a higher standard of living and score better on the Human Freedom Index More safe I'll grant you. As for higher standard of living, US salaries and purchasing power are higher than almost anywhere else, so I would need to see some citations to be persuaded. How is the Human Freedom Index computed? Is Freedom of Speech included?
      - ModernMech 2y ago
        "purchasing power" and "standard of living" are two very different things. For instance, Americans have plentiful access to cheap televisions, but an ambulance ride costs thousands of dollars, even with good insurance. This leads to a situation where people have the purchasing power to own multiple TVs, but at the same time forego lifesaving medical treatment because the cost of access is too high. Is that a high standard of living, by your standards?
        jimbokun 2y ago
        It becomes a question of whether the much higher salaries outweigh the higher costs for ambulance rides. The biggest categories of higher costs vs the rest of the world is education and health care. I’m sure someone has done the analysis of calculating purchasing power including those categories.
        makeitdouble 2y ago
        That would be the Humans Development Index perhaps ? The US ranks around 20th, below a bunch of EU and SEA countries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
        jimbokun 2y ago
        Yes, that certainly at least looks like a good attempt.
  - linguae 2y ago
    A thought occurred to me as I was reading your comment: what if this thinking that what we're witnessing couldn't happen in "advanced Western democracies" that are not "socially backward, ideology-riddled, [and] far-off" is one of the factors that helped us get to this situation? All societies have "socially backward" and "ideology-riddled" aspects to them. American society has long struggled with racism, xenophobia, sexism, and anti-intellectualism, just to name a few of these ills. For example, the Eisenhower years that many people consider America's peak were also years where African Americans still had to endure Jim Crow, though to be fair this era was also the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, were many people fought to secure civil rights for all Americans regardless of ethnicity. McCarthyism and J. Edgar Hoover's abuse of authority were also happening under these times. Nixon had his infamous "enemies list." Police brutality and the violent suppression of non-violent protests have been an ongoing problem. Speaking as an American, our nation has been far from exemplary when it comes to not destroying political "enemies," from whistleblowers to protestors to entire ethnic groups. Granted, the federal government has been able for much of its history to avoid fully caving to the desires of the "socially backward" and "ideology-riddled." Unfortunately, demagoguery is sometimes an effective strategy, and to be frank, our oligarchs and our politicians in general have done a poor job since the 1970s of building an environment where everyday Americans have an opportunity to improve their material lives. The past 30 years in particular have been a bonanza for asset holders, successful entrepreneurs, and other well-connected people, but it seems that life has become harder for the average low-income and middle-class American, especially as the prices of health care, higher education, and housing have gone up far faster than many Americans' ability to pay for these things. This has left behind many people, and many people feel like the "American dream" is dying or even dead. Unfortunately this hopelessness is a breeding ground for "socially backward" and "ideology-riddled" thoughts to take root, and the resulting field has become ripe for demagogues to pick. We are now dealing with the results of this. Democracies are not immune to this; similar political movements in France and Germany have been picking up steam in recent years. I don't know how we could reverse the tide in America right now, but I hope and pray that this does not spread to places like Canada, France, Germany, and other stable democracies. I think the key lies in having leadership, not just governmental but also in business and in other social institutions, be more caring about the societies they are established in. It's much harder for demagoguery to be effective when people feel secure and hopeful about their lot in life.
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    As a disclaimer, I don't know any country that is dealing with these kind of issues really well. Some don't have the struggle, but IMHO not just because of wise government and more thanks to historic or geographic position. Destroying the political enemy has always been more important that anything else. Straight jailing "communists", jailing opposing minorities (crafting legal frameworks to do it or straight asking the army is to me the same), cutting funds from whole industries to help one's base and crush the other parties funds, taking money from enemy states to win domestic elections etc. It's a matter of what you get flack for and what flies below the radar. Developing countries have more visible incidents because their economy is more fragile and any political swing will have huge life and death ramifications. In contrast the US can afford waging trade wars without floods of people out in the streets.
- jimbokun 2y ago
  Bingo. In MAGA land, educational institutions are coded as woke and DEI infested.
acdha 2y ago
The two broad things I see are that academia has for years been claimed to be an extreme-left wing indoctrination complex, increasingly broadly targeted as things like climate change denial became Republican loyalty tests, and medicine became a special focus as anti-vaccination became a core belief. This works as a political ad telling people that they’re really hurting their enemies. The other big goal is probably financial: they really want to give rich people tax cuts, and there’s no way to do that without cutting social programs like Medicaid which even their voters want left untouched. They appear to be continuing to claim that there is so much waste and fraud that they’ll be able to pay for it by cutting that, and hoping that people will be distracted until it’s too late. Based on the 2017 version, I’m expecting some kind of time-delay where the tax cuts kick in immediately but cuts aren’t forced until after some very “optimistic” growth predictions fail to materialize.
linguae 2y ago
1. It’s about the culture wars and also “evening the score” against opponents of Trump and MAGA. The Trump administration seems to be hellbent on “sticking it” to people, groups, institutions, and even nations that opposed him. Scientists and academics in general are on his hit list. There has always been an anti-intellectual bent on American society, but never have I seen it weaponized like this. Moreover, it’s unlikely that such policies will face blowback among Trump’s voting base. There are conservative scientists and academics whose careers have been upended by these moves, but they are a minority, and there aren’t enough of them to significantly erode the GOP’s electability. 2. It’s also about power and control. “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” and Trump and his administration are reveling in their abilities to withhold federal dollars (paid for with the tax monies from all American taxpayers, Trump- and non-Trump voter alike) from targeted agencies and institutions unless they meet whatever diktats they demand. It’s a scary time for science in America now. Science is already dealing with the “publish-or-perish” culture of academia, the fact that academics are pressured to raise recurrent streams of grant money in order to earn tenure, and the fact that industrial labs are increasingly driven by short-term business pursuits instead of longer-term, more speculative projects. These disruptive freezes of NIH and NSF funds, as well as the targeted attacks on universities such as Columbia and UPenn over culture war matters, are reckless and destructive. If this does not stop soon, this could set back American science and research for decades.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  The universities took sides in the culture war instead of remaining neutral educational institutions like they are supposed to be. I have little sympathy for them now that the other side is firing back. I don't want to see valuable research at these universities cut back either, but they need to take their share of the blame and remove the political cancer eating them alive. It's not the physics department that's drawing fire from the Trump administration.
  - defrost 2y ago
    It's many departments, including physics, including education. This specific article is part of a series, this part is about the National Institutes of Health where the cuts are so deep that: People inside the Division of Intramural Research (the in-house research groups) have been told in so many words that "the vast majority of our legitimate DIR ordering needs are not currently able to be fulfilled". So they're having to triage and try to get spending done that directly impacts human and animal safety and ongoing clinical research. they are literally working out what to save that will kill the fewest numbers of people, animals, and programs down the line. > the political cancer eating them alive. This sounds hyperbolic, perhaps sourced from a Fox News or Tucker Carlson take on DEI in the sciences.
jmclnx 2y ago
Because, many autocrats do this, a recent example is the Cultural Revolution in China. It took 50 years and a lot of hard work for China to recover from that. Destroying the educational system allows these people to consolidate and maintain power.
turtletontine 2y ago
The biggest motivation IMO is just punishing universities. The first move cutting overhead costs made this pretty clear to me. It was a shrewd move: if you squint, and use no critical thinking, you could be convinced they’ll still fund science all the same but are forcing university bureaucracies to be more “efficient”. In practice it’s just a massive cut to research universities, cause they’re viewed as enemies of the current ascendant right. The other thing, IMO, is that it’s admitting we have no longer have any aspiration to technical innovation. If the tech oligarchs actually depended on hiring “the best and brightest,” they’ve be fighting this tooth and nail. Instead, they’re perfectly happy to destroy the education pipeline because they no longer need to make good products. They’ve attained monopoly status: all they need are lobbyists and a good legal team, the quality of their product is irrelevant. (The only spot where they still seem to be competing is “AI”).
- baggy_trough 2y ago
  I think your first paragraph is closer to the truth. Going after the "commanding heights" of progressivism is the goal. That's also why the federal bureaucracy is being targeted.
bloomingkales 2y ago
NIH funds a lot of studies that provides data against their political policies.

makeitdouble 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward > The Great Leap Forward stemmed from multiple factors, including "the purge of intellectuals, the surge of less-educated radicals, the need to find new ways to generate domestic capital, rising enthusiasm about the potential results mass mobilization might produce

marcus_holmes 2y ago
Yeah, I guess. Destroying the political "enemy" becomes more important than anything else. I thought that only happened in socially backward, ideology-riddled, far-off places like Cambodia or China. Not advanced Western democracies.
- krapp 2y ago
  "Socially backward" and "ideology riddled" describes the US pretty well. And "far off" in the sense that American culture is intentionally isolationist and separatist, and Americans tend to be aggressively ignorant about the rest of the world. Most Western democracies are more safe and have a higher standard of living and score better on the Human Freedom Index and other metrics than the US, and have "advanced" features like socialized healthcare and education, which the US does not, so one could argue the US isn't even advanced as Western democracies go. Having one's system of laws based on the vague and archaic prose of a Constitution written for an 18th century pre-industrial agrarian slaveowning society isn't very advanced as far as modern constitutional law is concerned.
  - grandempire 2y ago
    > better on the Human Freedom Index Weird that all the metrics keep telling everyone their life is better, but people don’t feel that way. You can’t summarize the human experience of freedom in an index.
    - krapp 2y ago
      I know, people felt like eggs were too expensive and brown people were getting too much of a free ride so they voted to burn the country down. One might almost infer in this post-truth age of ours that vibes alone aren't sufficient to form an objective model of reality.
      - grandempire 2y ago
        Did you know these indices are invented by vibes of other people and are at best objective measurements of subjective values?
        krapp 2y ago
        You're confusing "vibes" with "data." If you disagree with the data, present data to the contrary. If you're just insisting that we believe your vibes over others, that would just make for boring conversation.
        grandempire 2y ago
        You’re confusing data with meaning, understanding, and truth. How many freedom units in the index am I experiencing right now? Will getting more units make me happier? You can measure data without that data having a meaningful bearing on the topic you care about.
      - bloomingkales 2y ago
        I know, people felt like eggs were too expensive and brown people were getting too much of a free ride so they voted to burn the country down. The grand summary of America 2025. I don't think anyone has said it better than that in all of media. They gymnastics people run to avoid that simple truth just reveals their rotten core.
  - jimbokun 2y ago
    > Most Western democracies are more safe and have a higher standard of living and score better on the Human Freedom Index More safe I'll grant you. As for higher standard of living, US salaries and purchasing power are higher than almost anywhere else, so I would need to see some citations to be persuaded. How is the Human Freedom Index computed? Is Freedom of Speech included?
    - ModernMech 2y ago
      "purchasing power" and "standard of living" are two very different things. For instance, Americans have plentiful access to cheap televisions, but an ambulance ride costs thousands of dollars, even with good insurance. This leads to a situation where people have the purchasing power to own multiple TVs, but at the same time forego lifesaving medical treatment because the cost of access is too high. Is that a high standard of living, by your standards?
      - jimbokun 2y ago
        It becomes a question of whether the much higher salaries outweigh the higher costs for ambulance rides. The biggest categories of higher costs vs the rest of the world is education and health care. I’m sure someone has done the analysis of calculating purchasing power including those categories.
        makeitdouble 2y ago
        That would be the Humans Development Index perhaps ? The US ranks around 20th, below a bunch of EU and SEA countries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
        jimbokun 2y ago
        Yes, that certainly at least looks like a good attempt.
- linguae 2y ago
  A thought occurred to me as I was reading your comment: what if this thinking that what we're witnessing couldn't happen in "advanced Western democracies" that are not "socially backward, ideology-riddled, [and] far-off" is one of the factors that helped us get to this situation? All societies have "socially backward" and "ideology-riddled" aspects to them. American society has long struggled with racism, xenophobia, sexism, and anti-intellectualism, just to name a few of these ills. For example, the Eisenhower years that many people consider America's peak were also years where African Americans still had to endure Jim Crow, though to be fair this era was also the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, were many people fought to secure civil rights for all Americans regardless of ethnicity. McCarthyism and J. Edgar Hoover's abuse of authority were also happening under these times. Nixon had his infamous "enemies list." Police brutality and the violent suppression of non-violent protests have been an ongoing problem. Speaking as an American, our nation has been far from exemplary when it comes to not destroying political "enemies," from whistleblowers to protestors to entire ethnic groups. Granted, the federal government has been able for much of its history to avoid fully caving to the desires of the "socially backward" and "ideology-riddled." Unfortunately, demagoguery is sometimes an effective strategy, and to be frank, our oligarchs and our politicians in general have done a poor job since the 1970s of building an environment where everyday Americans have an opportunity to improve their material lives. The past 30 years in particular have been a bonanza for asset holders, successful entrepreneurs, and other well-connected people, but it seems that life has become harder for the average low-income and middle-class American, especially as the prices of health care, higher education, and housing have gone up far faster than many Americans' ability to pay for these things. This has left behind many people, and many people feel like the "American dream" is dying or even dead. Unfortunately this hopelessness is a breeding ground for "socially backward" and "ideology-riddled" thoughts to take root, and the resulting field has become ripe for demagogues to pick. We are now dealing with the results of this. Democracies are not immune to this; similar political movements in France and Germany have been picking up steam in recent years. I don't know how we could reverse the tide in America right now, but I hope and pray that this does not spread to places like Canada, France, Germany, and other stable democracies. I think the key lies in having leadership, not just governmental but also in business and in other social institutions, be more caring about the societies they are established in. It's much harder for demagoguery to be effective when people feel secure and hopeful about their lot in life.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  As a disclaimer, I don't know any country that is dealing with these kind of issues really well. Some don't have the struggle, but IMHO not just because of wise government and more thanks to historic or geographic position. Destroying the political enemy has always been more important that anything else. Straight jailing "communists", jailing opposing minorities (crafting legal frameworks to do it or straight asking the army is to me the same), cutting funds from whole industries to help one's base and crush the other parties funds, taking money from enemy states to win domestic elections etc. It's a matter of what you get flack for and what flies below the radar. Developing countries have more visible incidents because their economy is more fragile and any political swing will have huge life and death ramifications. In contrast the US can afford waging trade wars without floods of people out in the streets.
jimbokun 2y ago
Bingo. In MAGA land, educational institutions are coded as woke and DEI infested.

acdha 2y ago

The two broad things I see are that academia has for years been claimed to be an extreme-left wing indoctrination complex, increasingly broadly targeted as things like climate change denial became Republican loyalty tests, and medicine became a special focus as anti-vaccination became a core belief. This works as a political ad telling people that they’re really hurting their enemies. The other big goal is probably financial: they really want to give rich people tax cuts, and there’s no way to do that without cutting social programs like Medicaid which even their voters want left untouched. They appear to be continuing to claim that there is so much waste and fraud that they’ll be able to pay for it by cutting that, and hoping that people will be distracted until it’s too late. Based on the 2017 version, I’m expecting some kind of time-delay where the tax cuts kick in immediately but cuts aren’t forced until after some very “optimistic” growth predictions fail to materialize.

linguae 2y ago

1. It’s about the culture wars and also “evening the score” against opponents of Trump and MAGA. The Trump administration seems to be hellbent on “sticking it” to people, groups, institutions, and even nations that opposed him. Scientists and academics in general are on his hit list. There has always been an anti-intellectual bent on American society, but never have I seen it weaponized like this. Moreover, it’s unlikely that such policies will face blowback among Trump’s voting base. There are conservative scientists and academics whose careers have been upended by these moves, but they are a minority, and there aren’t enough of them to significantly erode the GOP’s electability. 2. It’s also about power and control. “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” and Trump and his administration are reveling in their abilities to withhold federal dollars (paid for with the tax monies from all American taxpayers, Trump- and non-Trump voter alike) from targeted agencies and institutions unless they meet whatever diktats they demand. It’s a scary time for science in America now. Science is already dealing with the “publish-or-perish” culture of academia, the fact that academics are pressured to raise recurrent streams of grant money in order to earn tenure, and the fact that industrial labs are increasingly driven by short-term business pursuits instead of longer-term, more speculative projects. These disruptive freezes of NIH and NSF funds, as well as the targeted attacks on universities such as Columbia and UPenn over culture war matters, are reckless and destructive. If this does not stop soon, this could set back American science and research for decades.

fallingknife 2y ago
The universities took sides in the culture war instead of remaining neutral educational institutions like they are supposed to be. I have little sympathy for them now that the other side is firing back. I don't want to see valuable research at these universities cut back either, but they need to take their share of the blame and remove the political cancer eating them alive. It's not the physics department that's drawing fire from the Trump administration.
- defrost 2y ago
  It's many departments, including physics, including education. This specific article is part of a series, this part is about the National Institutes of Health where the cuts are so deep that: People inside the Division of Intramural Research (the in-house research groups) have been told in so many words that "the vast majority of our legitimate DIR ordering needs are not currently able to be fulfilled". So they're having to triage and try to get spending done that directly impacts human and animal safety and ongoing clinical research. they are literally working out what to save that will kill the fewest numbers of people, animals, and programs down the line. > the political cancer eating them alive. This sounds hyperbolic, perhaps sourced from a Fox News or Tucker Carlson take on DEI in the sciences.

jmclnx 2y ago

Because, many autocrats do this, a recent example is the Cultural Revolution in China. It took 50 years and a lot of hard work for China to recover from that. Destroying the educational system allows these people to consolidate and maintain power.

turtletontine 2y ago

The biggest motivation IMO is just punishing universities. The first move cutting overhead costs made this pretty clear to me. It was a shrewd move: if you squint, and use no critical thinking, you could be convinced they’ll still fund science all the same but are forcing university bureaucracies to be more “efficient”. In practice it’s just a massive cut to research universities, cause they’re viewed as enemies of the current ascendant right. The other thing, IMO, is that it’s admitting we have no longer have any aspiration to technical innovation. If the tech oligarchs actually depended on hiring “the best and brightest,” they’ve be fighting this tooth and nail. Instead, they’re perfectly happy to destroy the education pipeline because they no longer need to make good products. They’ve attained monopoly status: all they need are lobbyists and a good legal team, the quality of their product is irrelevant. (The only spot where they still seem to be competing is “AI”).

baggy_trough 2y ago
I think your first paragraph is closer to the truth. Going after the "commanding heights" of progressivism is the goal. That's also why the federal bureaucracy is being targeted.

bloomingkales 2y ago

NIH funds a lot of studies that provides data against their political policies.