9 ms·

As a federal contractor within NIH, I can tell you that the damage has already been done to the United States' dominance in science. Even if every action taken

• glitchc 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • maxfurman 1y ago
    You are aware that scientists have to eat and pay rent, right? A lack of funding in the US will draw scientists to places that do have funding. You're confusing "science in the US now" with "all science globally."
  • miltonlost 1y ago
    In your "long-term" world view, apparently the lives of scientists in the here and now doesn't matter
  • Facemelters 1y ago
    please refer to a chart of scientific progress that encompasses both those years and the post WWII expansion of the US science state
  • eig 1y ago
    The parent commenter is not speaking about science as a whole, they are speaking about US dominance in science. You state that "hiccup won't stop or even slow down science in the US. All it will do is take government out of the equation." I disagree and I would suspect most scientists reading that statement would also disagree. I too have seen many bright people turning away from the US because of this. I am personally certain that these policies will significantly slow down science in the US. After all, when David Hilbert was asked in 1934 "How is mathematics at Göttingen, now that it is free from the Jewish influence?", he replied “There is no mathematics in Göttingen, anymore”.
    • mlinhares 1y ago
      Germany could have invented the atomic bomb and decimated the world if it wasn't for the Nazi stupidity.
      • anigbrowl 1y ago
        That they didn't is not only because of German antipathy to origin of some of the ideas. Despite official condemnation, the Germans remained interested in the technology. One of the lesser-known allied successes in the war was a series of commando actions on a Norwegian power plant which was the largest producer of heavy water in the world at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage
  • bee_rider 1y ago
    Science will do fine. The US enjoyed the benefits of hosting most of the scientific progress. Americans are worried that we won’t be at the forefront anymore. It is an evergreen sentiment at this point—maybe a multi-polar world will be better. But I’m an American, I want the US to be winning.
    • runako 1y ago
      The advancement of Science as a whole will suffer because its largest funder is massively reducing funding. A multi-polar world where the same amount of resources goes into science could be great, but it is not the case that other nations are rushing in to fill the funding gap. And obviously, there are entire experiments that are (quite literally in some cases) dying right now due to sudden cutoff of funds. It could be years before those get back on track.
  • Onawa 1y ago
    It sounds to me like you might not understand the highly interconnected pipeline of scientific research. Additionally, this is much more than just a "funding cut". https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01146-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01146-4 https://archive.is/TOvAo https://archive.is/TOvAo
  • searine 1y ago
    >All it will do is take government out of the equation. The middle-class professional scientist is an invention of post-war governments to create an engine of progress. Pre-war science was a gentleman's hobby, funded by the bored rich. Corporations largely do not perform any basic science and simply reap ideas sown by academics and bring those ideas to market. Without government funding of basic science the engine of progress stops. No new discoveries or new scientists, at least not in the US.
    • jjtheblunt 1y ago
      > Corporations largely do not perform any basic science and simply reap ideas sown by academics and bring those ideas to market. Without government funding of basic science the engine of progress stops. No new discoveries or new scientists, at least not in the US. Does Google Brain and their paper that birthed all these LLMs fit this description?
      • searine 1y ago
        Standing on the shoulders of giants, the growth LLMs is built on a foundation of government funded academic training and research without which it would not have been possible. Also, I didn't say there is no corporate basic research. Things like Bell Labs and googleX have existed but they are the exception and not the rule and are dependent on a company being highly lucrative and culturally open to basic research. Certainly not reliable as a primary source of funding and almost completely lacking in training. Even something like the latest explosion in LLMs is applied science and profit motivated.
  • aaronbaugher 1y ago
    That's because the gloom and doom isn't about science itself. It's about funding no longer being taken from taxpayers and transferred to groups and organizations that are supported by those spreading the doom and gloom.
    • libraryatnight 1y ago
      There are people in my life alive literally because of government funded research. It's about the science. It's about the scientists themselves and their livelihoods. It's about the people their research helps.
• searine 1y ago
  Seconded. Everyone is just fighting for survival at this point and it will have decades of consequences.
• AlexandrB 1y ago
  I'm increasingly sympathetic to the perspective that universities cannot both exclude any questioning of their ideological leaning while also expecting republican administrations and voters to continue funding them. I've seen this best expressed here: https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-beatings-will-continue https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-beatings-will-conti... It's one thing to want public funding, but it's quite another to want that funding while expecting nakedly partisan purity testing like "DEI statements" for faculty.
  • hackyhacky 1y ago
    > I'm increasingly sympathetic to the perspective that universities cannot both exclude any questioning of their ideological leaning Well, they don't do that. The myth that universities are liberal monocultures is propagated by the right as an excuse to attack them. Let's turn your argument around: most police departments employee conservative voters. Would you be comfortable with the government requiring "viewpoint diversity" among police offices? After all, why should liberal politicians fund non-liberal institutions? The government should not discriminate based on political orientation. Government services, including government-funded universities, should serve all Americans. > It's one thing to want public funding, but it's quite another to want that funding while expecting nakedly partisan purity testing like "DEI statements" for faculty. Universities are, and should be, free to choose their own values and hiring practice.
    • ethbr1 1y ago
      There was a liberal monoculture in American universities ~2000-2023. Said as a liberal. Litmus test: Say something incendiary in a liberal direction at a university and observe reaction (i.e. "there is no such thing as biological gender"). Say something incendiary in a conservative direction and observe reaction (i.e. "life begins at conception and abortion is murder"). There absolutely was a double-standard. That said, even if liberals created consequences for conservative speech, they by and large allowed it. (While picketing and, in later years, shouting it down) In contrast to the current group of populist-conservatives who are anti-free speech and want to erase liberal ideas from existence.
• jjtheblunt 1y ago
  You didn't say what's wrong with ending up in industry, but mention it like it's bad?
  • The5thElephant 1y ago
    Not doing basic research, and your research is entirely driven by short-term profit motives rather than long term benefit of humanity.
    • jjtheblunt 1y ago
      Bell Labs is a counterexample that ran for decades, and pharma companies have internal research labs, I know Motorola and Apple have, too. In my experience, industry can be vastly better funded, but the industry labs are internal and perhaps very hard to find.
      • libraryatnight 1y ago
        [flagged]
      • whatshisface 1y ago
        Here is an incomplete list of things that it's impossible to research in industry: 1. Astronomy. 2. Physics. 3. Geophysics concerning the parts of the Earth deeper than the crust. 4. Biology aside from medicine. 5. Chemistry aside from industrial chemistry. 6. Theoretical computer science. 7. Mathematics. I'm not blaming you for not knowing this, but I am holding my head in my hands - how can people not know about astronomers? They've been a part of our culture and the prestige of civilization for thousands of years.
        • naasking 1y ago
          > Astronomy. What benefits do you expect to see from the kinds astronomy that require this sort of funding? Sure, knowing things can be nice but this ignores opportunity costs, eg. would practical knowledge like fusion research be further along if talent weren't focused on impractical knowledge? > Physics. Not strictly true, see quantum computing for instance, lasers, semiconductors and so on. There are some types of physics that aren't viable in this sense, but why does that automatically translate into some need to support them? For instance, consider the decades spent on supersymmetry which ultimately produced bupkis. In a world in which we weren't so focused on ideas so divorced from empirical data, what other types of knowledge or engineering would we have done? > Geophysics concerning the parts of the Earth deeper than the crust. What benefits do you expect to see? > Biology aside from medicine. Such as? What benefits do you expect to see? > Chemistry aside from industrial chemistry. Such as? What benefits do you expect to see? > Theoretical computer science. Untrue, Google and Facebook have advance distributed computing considerably, for instance. > Mathematics. Unclear, there's a lot of math involved in predictions of all sorts, like weather forecasting, stock market prediction. If your argument here is that math will be more application-focused, this strikes me much like the physics objection where it's unclear that we'd really be worse off. There seems to be this automatic assumption among some people that pure research with no direction or constraints is an unmitigated good and that we can't do better. I used to think so too, but I just don't see it anymore.
• jarjoura 1y ago
  I hate to be a contrarian right now, and it’s hard to disagree that an entire generation of science progress will be severely slowed because of this incompetence. However, deep scientific cultural do roots exist here and won’t be stamped out by some fearmongering. The entire western world is under populist pressure right now, not just here. So even if you imagine someone moving out and studying in a different country, it’s not a guarantee they will find stability there either.
  • voxl 1y ago
    Have you ever applied for a grant? Do you understand how science in the USA is funded? How it is unique? Will the rest of the world absorb the scientists in the US? Probably not, that is honestly their mistake and missed opportunity, but all the same probably not. Fine, so you're right? Scientists just stick it out? No. The best scientists will definitely leave. Those are the very ones we always wanted to attract. They could have always left, but didn't because the US was the best place for them. Now they leave. Everyone else will try and leave or leave for industry. Even if you only lose 20% of your scientist to other countries and sectors where they are no longer doing productive scientific work, that is a massive blow to progress. Worst case scenario is China wakes up from its xenophobia and uses this opportunity to replay the US science strategy. Suddenly 20-50% of US scientists can leave for China.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  • thisisit 1y ago
    > However, deep scientific cultural do roots exist here and won’t be stamped out by some fearmongering So, cutting off real funding is now considered "fearmongering"? Sure, scientists wont move and decades of research goes down the drain and/or will never exist. Science progress will slow down but lets be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.
  • insane_dreamer 1y ago
    > even if you imagine someone moving out and studying in a different country the problem is not students moving and studying elsewhere, it's PIs accepting a position to run a lab at an institution in another country that will fund their research; and many will definitely accept that given the prospects in the US for the next ?? years.
• robinsoncrusue 1y ago
  > the damage has already been done to the United States' dominance in science Why should my tax dollar subsidize for the dominance of US in science? How has US dominance in science helped the average American taxpayer in last decade other than funneling billions to arms or pharma industry or funding academians being out of touch with the rest of the country?
  • GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
    ... and to pharma (similar money flow to arms), banks (bailouts), big tech (tax breaks)...
  • aaronbaugher 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • ijk 1y ago
      Ah, the goomba fallacy in the wild! [1] [1] https://x.com/BruhKonata1/status/1813650893960823042 https://x.com/BruhKonata1/status/1813650893960823042
    • BLenkomo 1y ago
      [dead]
    • neaden 1y ago
      Can you give me an example of a prominent American liberal who said the US was winning too many Olympic medals?
      • daltont 1y ago
        Otherwise it is just a Strawman argument
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  • realo 1y ago
• itsoktocry 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • voxl 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • s1artibartfast 1y ago
      I watched 15 years of Alzheimer's research shut down by NSF and NIH because they refused to touch anything but Amyloid beta. the idea that they are bastions of open mindedness, ethics, or efficiency seems laughable to me.
      • searine 1y ago
        The important point here is that science corrected itself. It saw a lack of progress from a direction of inquiry and using its established mechanisms rerouted that inquiry. To expect that every effort will succeed and be perfect is just naive. What matters is that the system has a mechanism to self-evaluate its results and change the consensus. Which it did. Which means it works. We means we shouldn't burn it down.
        • s1artibartfast 1y ago
          I agree that part of science is making mistakes. I was reacting to the idea that the NIH and NSF academic ethics requirements are that critical self correction mechanism, or they that these institutions were responsible for pushing back and overturning the Aβ hypothesis. In reality, it is the opposite. Grant funding is gate held by review panels staffed by leading researchers in the field, and therefore bias towards the current dogma. I don't know if there is a better way, but it's inherently tied to the status quo. Edit: to be clear on my biases, I spent about 10 years trying to get funding for non Aβ research, and continually shut down by Grant review panels staffed by prominent supporters and authors on the hypothesis.
    • hedora 1y ago
• jsbg 1y ago
  > realize that you will most likely end up in industry. > Things are quite bleak right now... you think it's bleak that one's research now has to be profitable rather than being subsidized by people paying taxes?
  • russdill 1y ago
    Yes.
    • jsbg 1y ago
      what are your thoughts on the replication crisis?
  • BowBun 1y ago
    If it results in megacorps 'forcing' papers that misrepresent the truth for their own gains, yeah that's pretty bleak. Think weed killers, sugar, etc.
    • jsbg 1y ago
      this is a major misperception of what private research output is actually like
      • const_cast 1y ago
        Yes, and no. It's no secret that corporations will purposefully play ignorant when a profitable product has safety concerns. J&J kept their asbestos baby powder out of the public eye for 50 years. 3M knew about forever chemicals in their adhesives for decades. Bayer knew their drug had been infected with HIV and they sold it anyway. That's not to say all private research is untrustworthy. But, we should be skeptical.
  • fzeroracer 1y ago
    Why does research have to be profitable? There are many, many smaller diseases and cancers which affect a small subset of the population which will never be 'profitable', but it's important to research for the sake of scientific progress. I fundamentally do not understand how one can be so enthralled by capitalism that they believe we should not research anything unless a shareholder can generate a profit somewhere along the way.
• lynndotpy 1y ago
  You are entirely correct. The massive investment in science (and the culture of valuing scientific knowledge) that started with the cold war is coming to an end. It turns out that destruction is far easier to do than creation. I was a PhD student in machine learning during the first Trump administration, and even then things were on very shaky grounds. The Muslim ban alone hit really hard, and was a boon for research institutions outside the US. (Look at Canada's Google Brain branch, for instance.) But, until recently, there was still the plausibility that the whole Trump thing was a flash in the pan. When Trump lost in 2020, there was a sigh of relief that science would continue in the US. This is on top of plummeting educational attainment in the US and the as-of-yet uncertain ramifications of students widespread reliance on LLMs. It is very difficult to imagine a path of returning to the good reputation we had in science.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• disambiguation 1y ago
  How is "scientific dominance" defined? Dollars per Papers per minute?
  • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    The qualitative definition, that of practically every major technological breakthrough of the last half century having emerged from America, even if it was later capitalised on by others, more than suffices.
    • gnatolf 1y ago
      As disrespectful as it is wrong and overly generalized.
      • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > As disrespectful as it is wrong and overly generalized How? Since the fall of the USSR, what major technology took a lab-to-living-room path where the “lab” bit wasn’t American?
        • ethbr1 1y ago
          Lots of things: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions#Contemporary_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventi... Still, the statement that a large (but not all) portion of them were American inventions is probably defensible. On the other hand, the American economy was one of the few major ones unravaged by WWII conflict.
          • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
            I’m talking about paradigm-shifting conventions. Microprocessors. LLMs. The Internet. Lithium-ion batteries. Our institutions reliably did the basic research to bias us (and the USSR) towards discovering their underlying phenomena and then maturing that into technology. Today, the only real player in that space is China.