3 ms·

Medical journals hit with threatening letters from Justice Department

33 points by rolph 2y ago

msie 2y ago
[flagged]
msie 2y ago
Diversity of ideas? Bah, screw that says Trump govt.
ok_dad 2y ago
[flagged]
- Freedom2 2y ago
  It's okay because gas is 1.98 a gallon in some areas, eggs are down and wages are now up! So I'm told by the President of the United States anyway.
  - mcphage 2y ago
    I’m pretty sure that’s all true but I’m not going to check.
- msie 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - tomhow 2y ago
    We can never be sure why community members downvote or flag comments, but it could be because your comments are breaking these guidelines: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tomhow 2y ago
  > I wonder what arguments we'll see in this thread from their supporters who will have to twist reality immensely to invalidate our concerns. Will it be the "technically they didn't break the law" or perhaps the "we can't judge them until we see what they do with it" or maybe the good old "liberals/leftists did the same things under biden/obama/hillary"? Let’s not poison a thread by invoking imagined arguments from opponents in order to pre-emptively attack them. We can wait for real comments to show up before responding.
  - mcphage 2y ago
    This isn’t the first article about serious wrongdoings of the current administration, and apologists show up in every single one of the threads. Why should we pretend we were born this morning, rather than learning from what has happened before and use that to predict what will happen now?
    - tomhow 2y ago
      These kinds of "predictions" are really a signal that the story doesn't belong on Hacker News. Predictability and repetition is exactly what we don't want on HN, and is the main reason why politics-related stories are generally discouraged (the comments tend to be the same even if the specific story is different). If we're going to have politics-related stories on the front page of HN, the stories need to have something new about them that at least have a chance of cultivating curious conversation. When the top comment is this kind of pre-emptive attack, it starts the discussion by breaking the guidelines from the get-go, and from there things can only go downhill further. The relevant guidelines are: Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
vharuck 2y ago
Silver lining: future work conferences I go to will mean visiting cool cities in Canada and Mexico, the new North American hubs of medical research. Just kidding! According to the White House's proposed budget, there won't be any more chronic disease prevention programs. So my federally-funded position will be gone. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal-Year-2026-Discretionary-Budget-Request.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal... (Page 11 for the CDC)
insane_dreamer 2y ago
If the gov 1) shows that it's willing to take extreme action that is outside the bounds of the law or at the least accepted practice, and 2) makes it clear that it's not afraid of getting sued and is even willing to ignore the courts, then 3) threats of the type described in the article are very effective because you have to assume that the government will take things to the next level if you don't comply, regardless of the legality of their threats. That is how authoritarianism works. It's been very effective in China where companies and institutions are cowed into compliance. For example, censoring by social media companies. Companies self-sensor their users' content so the government doesn't have to. Why? Because if they don't, they know they will get in trouble in some way, and it may on the surface be completely unrelated (like these veiled threats about tax status).

33 points by rolph 2y ago

msie 2y ago

[flagged]

msie 2y ago

Diversity of ideas? Bah, screw that says Trump govt.

ok_dad 2y ago

[flagged]

Freedom2 2y ago
It's okay because gas is 1.98 a gallon in some areas, eggs are down and wages are now up! So I'm told by the President of the United States anyway.
- mcphage 2y ago
  I’m pretty sure that’s all true but I’m not going to check.
msie 2y ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 2y ago
  We can never be sure why community members downvote or flag comments, but it could be because your comments are breaking these guidelines: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
tomhow 2y ago
> I wonder what arguments we'll see in this thread from their supporters who will have to twist reality immensely to invalidate our concerns. Will it be the "technically they didn't break the law" or perhaps the "we can't judge them until we see what they do with it" or maybe the good old "liberals/leftists did the same things under biden/obama/hillary"? Let’s not poison a thread by invoking imagined arguments from opponents in order to pre-emptively attack them. We can wait for real comments to show up before responding.
- mcphage 2y ago
  This isn’t the first article about serious wrongdoings of the current administration, and apologists show up in every single one of the threads. Why should we pretend we were born this morning, rather than learning from what has happened before and use that to predict what will happen now?
  - tomhow 2y ago
    These kinds of "predictions" are really a signal that the story doesn't belong on Hacker News. Predictability and repetition is exactly what we don't want on HN, and is the main reason why politics-related stories are generally discouraged (the comments tend to be the same even if the specific story is different). If we're going to have politics-related stories on the front page of HN, the stories need to have something new about them that at least have a chance of cultivating curious conversation. When the top comment is this kind of pre-emptive attack, it starts the discussion by breaking the guidelines from the get-go, and from there things can only go downhill further. The relevant guidelines are: Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

vharuck 2y ago

Silver lining: future work conferences I go to will mean visiting cool cities in Canada and Mexico, the new North American hubs of medical research. Just kidding! According to the White House's proposed budget, there won't be any more chronic disease prevention programs. So my federally-funded position will be gone. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal-Year-2026-Discretionary-Budget-Request.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal... (Page 11 for the CDC)

insane_dreamer 2y ago

If the gov 1) shows that it's willing to take extreme action that is outside the bounds of the law or at the least accepted practice, and 2) makes it clear that it's not afraid of getting sued and is even willing to ignore the courts, then 3) threats of the type described in the article are very effective because you have to assume that the government will take things to the next level if you don't comply, regardless of the legality of their threats. That is how authoritarianism works. It's been very effective in China where companies and institutions are cowed into compliance. For example, censoring by social media companies. Companies self-sensor their users' content so the government doesn't have to. Why? Because if they don't, they know they will get in trouble in some way, and it may on the surface be completely unrelated (like these veiled threats about tax status).