5 ms·
US science is being wrecked
- billy99k 1y ago[flagged]
- pknomad 1y agoHow so?
- mindslight 1y ago[flagged]
- leovingi 1y agoall you had to do to stop him was actually enforce the law and protect the borders, as that was the main driving force behind his popularity, yet you couldn't even be bothered to do the most basic task of governance you deserve him and everything that follows
- Nasrudith 1y agoReminds me of the one bit of memorable insane 'logic' I heard once blaming Kinsey for the rise of Adolf Hitler by claiming 'sexual depravity' of recognizing LGBT was somehow responsible. Ignoring that even if the reaction was literally true in causation it would still be the fault of Germans who considered 'uncomfortable knowledge about sexuality' as more objectionable than fascism.
- breakyerself 1y agoThere's no amount of border security that is enough for the xenophobic right. As long as they see brown people in our communities there's reason enough to claim there's open borders any time a democrat is in power. Regardless of the fact that the US Mexico border is one of the most militarized borders in the world regardless of if Obama, Joe Biden or Trump is in office.
- msgodel 1y agoIt's hard to be patriotic for an empire. This isn't a new problem that's unique to the US. People often forget there's an actual country here and not just a collection of corporations and research institutions. When the institutions stop serving the country (or are perceived to have stopped) they go away.
- mindslight 1y agoAs you've said, the problem is perception. Our academic and scientific research institutions are one of the pillars holding up our economic empire, supporting our extremely high standard of living. We can rationally discuss the replication crisis, perfunctory DEI rituals, overgrown humanities departments etc. But as I said, at the moment these concerns are being used to empower a madman who is not looking to reform but rather wholesale destroy them (and at best, install his own flavor of Lysenkoism into what remains), to cripple our country. We are long past the political point where the criticisms are doing anything productive, and as I said it is time to pull up out of the destructionist movement. And yes, the pisser is that if we successfully save our institutions, then these concerns will be taking a back seat for quite some time, having had their political capital exhausted. See also freedom of speech and every other lofty ideal put on the bad faith bonfire by the destructionists. If we had wanted to avoid this, then we needed to pull up much sooner from the easy answers of destructionism.
- rexpop 1y agoThis is a pretty shocking allegation. Do you have evidence of this conspiracy?
- GJim 1y agoThere is no need to provide evidence anymore. Each side simply makes up their own 'facts'.
- hshdhdhj4444 1y ago> We wouldn't be in this position, if… > I believe they were… So much confidence about what the cause is. Such little confidence in the actual evidence.
- rossant 1y agoSo depressing. Like watching a slow-motion suicide of an entire country.
- mandeepj 1y agoFascists don’t like science and education in general
- Ccecil 1y agoThis time around they don't even need to burn the books. Just shut off internet access.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- graymatters 1y ago[flagged]
- rotten 1y agoIt's the old " I never used algebra in my job, but I did use things the football coach taught me" mindset.
- dani__german 1y agoconsidering that ~50% of all of our new scientific studies annually don't replicate, its far far worse than you might think.
- elashri 1y agoAny citation for your "exact" claim here??
- jrajav 1y agoReading a few headlines about psychology and extrapolating it out to everything, including hard sciences, most likely. Ironically, shocking claims about the scope of the replication crisis are themselves difficult to replicate.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- const_cast 1y agoYes, exactly. Medicine is progressing very quickly and I don't understand where these people get this idea that modern science is fake. We have big and complex problems, sure. Yeah we're taking a stab at more complex issues, like anxiety and depression. Which, might I remind everyone, had a solution of "idk lock them up I guess" until about 40 years ago.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago“Ah! I see you’ve got the machine that goes PING!” https://youtu.be/VQPIdZvoV4g?si=19OCFyMXkpS96RWe https://youtu.be/VQPIdZvoV4g?si=19OCFyMXkpS96RWe
- sQL_inject 1y agoI think if you're against these cuts you also have to be open to finding out which of these historical investments have a good rate of return. I.e. which is more important, tax dollars spent finding out the composition of Mars rocks or spent on fusion energy? In the spirit of good science and as a happy taxpayer for the cause of these organizations, we should still be open to their scrutiny. A simple question we should ask, after all we're good scientists, is whether these groups are at their appropriate funding-to-success level or not, particularly in an era of a spiraling debt crisis.
- JohnFen 1y agoIf we predicate what things are worth studying based on expected monetary returns, then we've put a stake through the heart of scientific inquiry.
- tacitusarc 1y agoI don’t find this compelling, especially given the enormity of the replication crisis and misconduct in academia. If scientific institutions want less budgetary scrutiny and more freedom, they need to be fundamentally trustworthy, but the past decade has made it amply clear that is not the case. More rigor around funding isn’t putting a stake through the heart of scientific inquiry; fabricating data is.
- JohnFen 1y agoI was responding to the idea that science funding should be predicated on expected ROI. That strikes at the heart of inquiry for a couple of reasons. First, that the point of scientific inquiry is to try to explain the universe, not to generate returns. That it generates returns is a happy side-effect. Second, because we rarely know in advance what sorts of study will or will not generate returns. It is quite common that research that has no obvious benefit up front results in a surprising benefit or laying the foundation for such benefits through later research. I agree with you that fabricating data is bad (who would argue with that?), but that's an entirely different topic.
- ToDougie 1y agoThe US is over-leveraged and should be making spending cuts. Sorry folks.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mindslight 1y agoSorry, this is not a good faith argument, just like the rest of the destructionist narrative about "the debt". "The debt" is our currency. Calls to eliminate "the debt" are calls to destroy our currency, ostensibly for the benefit of foreign interests. The disingenuity is even more glaring when you look at the destructionists' overall budget plan, which has nothing to do with actual fiscal responsibility but instead includes further tax cuts and increased deficit spending. The boosters of the narrative haven't had anything to do with actual fiscal responsibility for decades, but at least the previous goal was merely justifying corporate welfare to domestic banksters as opposed to the plainly anti-American goals of whatever new foreign ownership the Republican party is under these days.
- const_cast 1y agoOkay, so why should these cuts, specifically, be made? And, why are we looking to increase the deficit? Are we really going to sit here and pretend this administration has desire, at all, to address the deficit? How much can we lie before it becomes so blatant it's poison to the human mind?