4 ms·

Coming for the scientists themselves next? (Ref to Galileo)

swiftcoder 1y ago
It's happened under pretty much every other autocratic regime in recent history...
perihelions 1y ago
There's an ongoing and horrifically absurd witch-hunt against Chinese science grad students, led by MAGA FBI director Kesh Patel. He makes very popular Twitter threads for each one he arrests, drumming up a MAGA frenzy about how their insane conspiracy theories—the ones about an organized Chinese bioterrorism plot to kill Americans—were proven correct, again. There are young PhD students who've been imprisoned for months without bail over these fictions.
- jabjq 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    Eh, the most believable conspiracy is gain of function research accidentally escaped a lab because of poor controls and then was covered up. Gain of function research can be done for lots of reasons, one of which is offensive biological weapons, but there are others. It's pretty irresponsible to do regardless of your justification. But these were chinese researchers in china, not grad students. China has been using students to acquire US technology, but we don't need crazy bioterrorism conspiracies. They were students, they came here to pay to learn things, it is no conspiracy that people on student visas learned things at the universities they attended. On top of that there have been inappropriate, illegal, or otherwise undesirable things foreign students have done that look a lot like espionage. The basic problem is that democrats pretend problems don't exist and republicans pretend the problems are existential threat devil boogey monsters that need to be solved by sending people to gulags. There's an excluded middle here where people want reasonable responses to potential issues.
    - moralestapia 1y ago
      >Eh, the most believable conspiracy is gain of function research accidentally escaped a lab because of poor controls and then was covered up. Four years ago you couldn't even remotely mention this as a possibility; even, and particularly, among "the most educated"™ and "the most tolerant"™. Now plenty of them believe that was the case. Don't know if Overton window is behind or if there was some sort manipulation involved, but it's definitely something I've noticed.
      - almosthere 1y ago
        And yet still, your text fades gray. I think the larger announcements yet to come, will crumble the current religion we call Science. I'd like to get back to REAL science with a lower case s.
        colechristensen 1y ago
        Both of you have a screw loose and need to stop accepting the premise of the loudest idiots on social media and assuming the people who speak the loudest are representative of the feelings of people at large.
        almosthere 1y ago
        Specifically point out why you want to insult instead of argue on the facts. The screw must be loose in that direction.
        colechristensen 1y ago
        > Four years ago you couldn't even remotely mention this as a possibility; even, and particularly, among "the most educated"™ and "the most tolerant"™. > will crumble the current religion we call Science Facts: people who talk like this are pontificating nonsense and are never worth talking to because speech like this indicates a person has zero interest in an actual discussion. I want to insult instead of debate because I truly believe people who talk like this need to be publicly shamed for discourse like this. It is a root cause of the destabilization of our society and needs to be stopped. You're talking like an AM radio conspiracy call-in nutjob. If you want to be taken seriously, don't channel the ghost of Rush Limbaugh in your rhetoric.
- moralestapia 1y ago
  Source on the imprisoned students? Outrageous, if real.
  - dangero 1y ago
    How can you say outrageous to imprison students without knowing what that particular student did or is accused of?
    - moralestapia 1y ago
      I'm replying to @perihelions comment ... The context should be pretty clear. *facepalm*
  - perihelions 1y ago
    The C. elegans PhD student at Univ. of Michigan was ordered held without bond[0], in June; and the Harvard Medical School researcher was freed by a judge after being—unlawfully—caged by ICE for 116 days[1]. Here's[2] the FBI director's Twitter thread about the C. elegans researcher, for a flavor of the MAGA sociology that's driving this. [edit]: His rhetoric in the case in [3] is even less hingèd. [0] https://detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/06/27/chinese-scholar-from-um-expected-to-plead-guilty-in-smuggling-case/84390464007/ https://detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/06/27... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01958-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01958-4 ( https://archive.is/XIONv https://archive.is/XIONv ) [2] https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1932214047300079655 https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/19322140473000796... ("This case is part of a broader effort from the FBI and our federal partners to heavily crack down on similar pathogeon [sic] smuggling operations, as the CCP works relentlessly to undermine America’s research institutions.") [3] https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1930044884284523001 https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/19300448842845230... ("This case is a sobering reminder that the CCP is working around the clock to deploy operatives and researchers to infiltrate American institutions and target our food supply, which would have grave consequences... putting American lives and our economy at serious risk. Your FBI will continue working tirelessly to be on guard against it.")
- dangero 1y ago
  I haven’t followed these cases, but are you anti due process? How do you know these are fictions? Are you on the inside? It sounds like the cases will be tried in court and we will find out what’s true. Are you saying that’s not the case?
davedx 1y ago
Even the Third Reich appreciated the value of scientific research and engineering.
- edent 1y ago
  They literally didn't. They expelled anyone working on Jüdische Physik. It is one of the (many) reasons they fell behind in atomic research.
  - TheNewsIsHere 1y ago
    Ooh! This is actually a bit of a passive, niche interest of mine. It should be noted I am not a professional historian. I just read a lot of material and watch a lot of interviews and documentaries. The Nazis fell behind in atomic research for a variety of reasons, each with its own underpinnings. One of the most interesting in my mind was organizational failings. Although many different groups were working in this area, the regime leadership was rather disconnected and didn’t prioritize a coherent or integrated research effort. They didn’t provide much funding either. In some ways this created more room for unstructured scientific inquiry and creativity, but it also meant that no particular group could make any real progress toward usable reactors or weapons. Contrast this with the Manhattan Project in the US (and the UK’s efforts at radar), which was supported and managed from the highest levels of government with a figurative blank check and despite immense compartmentalization also had a high degree of integration among disciplines and sites. There was one goal. In my view this is an interesting manifestation of the foundation of the Third Reich. In Martin Davidson’s The Perfect Nazi, Davidson notes that the Nazi party was in many ways a child’s cosplay turned into a nightmare. Davidson writes that one of the key failings of the regime is that it was run by broken people who had more of an interest in catharsis than any real sense of society, advancement, or cohesion.
    - tialaramex 1y ago
      For radar, RV Jones' "Most Secret War" has an anecdote where the British raid a German coastal radar site (in France), nab the radar operator and are annoyed to discover that they know almost nothing about German radar. Pre-war Germany is already a fascist dictatorship so "ham" radio operators are enemies of the state because they're outside of your centrally controlled narrative. Whereas pre-war Britain has the usual amount of amateurs with radios. So when war broke out and they're conscripting towns at a time the British would see you're a ham and divert you from infantry training or whatever and make you a radar operator - which means the average British radar operator actually has some idea how radio works but the Germans are obliged to basically just pick a soldier and train him to operate the radar from scratch. This apparently had significant operational consequences because if you don't know how it works all you can do when there's a fault is order spare parts. So German radar stations would be offline more often and for longer. Although Chain Home's transmitters were wildly more powerful than anything even a rich British amateur might have seen before, not to mention operating on frequencies unachievable with prior technology, the principles were familiar.

It's happened under pretty much every other autocratic regime in recent history...

There's an ongoing and horrifically absurd witch-hunt against Chinese science grad students, led by MAGA FBI director Kesh Patel. He makes very popular Twitter threads for each one he arrests, drumming up a MAGA frenzy about how their insane conspiracy theories—the ones about an organized Chinese bioterrorism plot to kill Americans—were proven correct, again. There are young PhD students who've been imprisoned for months without bail over these fictions.

jabjq 1y ago
[flagged]
- colechristensen 1y ago
  Eh, the most believable conspiracy is gain of function research accidentally escaped a lab because of poor controls and then was covered up. Gain of function research can be done for lots of reasons, one of which is offensive biological weapons, but there are others. It's pretty irresponsible to do regardless of your justification. But these were chinese researchers in china, not grad students. China has been using students to acquire US technology, but we don't need crazy bioterrorism conspiracies. They were students, they came here to pay to learn things, it is no conspiracy that people on student visas learned things at the universities they attended. On top of that there have been inappropriate, illegal, or otherwise undesirable things foreign students have done that look a lot like espionage. The basic problem is that democrats pretend problems don't exist and republicans pretend the problems are existential threat devil boogey monsters that need to be solved by sending people to gulags. There's an excluded middle here where people want reasonable responses to potential issues.
  - moralestapia 1y ago
    >Eh, the most believable conspiracy is gain of function research accidentally escaped a lab because of poor controls and then was covered up. Four years ago you couldn't even remotely mention this as a possibility; even, and particularly, among "the most educated"™ and "the most tolerant"™. Now plenty of them believe that was the case. Don't know if Overton window is behind or if there was some sort manipulation involved, but it's definitely something I've noticed.
    - almosthere 1y ago
      And yet still, your text fades gray. I think the larger announcements yet to come, will crumble the current religion we call Science. I'd like to get back to REAL science with a lower case s.
      - colechristensen 1y ago
        Both of you have a screw loose and need to stop accepting the premise of the loudest idiots on social media and assuming the people who speak the loudest are representative of the feelings of people at large.
        almosthere 1y ago
        Specifically point out why you want to insult instead of argue on the facts. The screw must be loose in that direction.
        colechristensen 1y ago
        > Four years ago you couldn't even remotely mention this as a possibility; even, and particularly, among "the most educated"™ and "the most tolerant"™. > will crumble the current religion we call Science Facts: people who talk like this are pontificating nonsense and are never worth talking to because speech like this indicates a person has zero interest in an actual discussion. I want to insult instead of debate because I truly believe people who talk like this need to be publicly shamed for discourse like this. It is a root cause of the destabilization of our society and needs to be stopped. You're talking like an AM radio conspiracy call-in nutjob. If you want to be taken seriously, don't channel the ghost of Rush Limbaugh in your rhetoric.
moralestapia 1y ago
Source on the imprisoned students? Outrageous, if real.
- dangero 1y ago
  How can you say outrageous to imprison students without knowing what that particular student did or is accused of?
  - moralestapia 1y ago
    I'm replying to @perihelions comment ... The context should be pretty clear. *facepalm*
- perihelions 1y ago
  The C. elegans PhD student at Univ. of Michigan was ordered held without bond[0], in June; and the Harvard Medical School researcher was freed by a judge after being—unlawfully—caged by ICE for 116 days[1]. Here's[2] the FBI director's Twitter thread about the C. elegans researcher, for a flavor of the MAGA sociology that's driving this. [edit]: His rhetoric in the case in [3] is even less hingèd. [0] https://detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/06/27/chinese-scholar-from-um-expected-to-plead-guilty-in-smuggling-case/84390464007/ https://detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/06/27... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01958-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01958-4 ( https://archive.is/XIONv https://archive.is/XIONv ) [2] https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1932214047300079655 https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/19322140473000796... ("This case is part of a broader effort from the FBI and our federal partners to heavily crack down on similar pathogeon [sic] smuggling operations, as the CCP works relentlessly to undermine America’s research institutions.") [3] https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1930044884284523001 https://xcancel.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/19300448842845230... ("This case is a sobering reminder that the CCP is working around the clock to deploy operatives and researchers to infiltrate American institutions and target our food supply, which would have grave consequences... putting American lives and our economy at serious risk. Your FBI will continue working tirelessly to be on guard against it.")
dangero 1y ago
I haven’t followed these cases, but are you anti due process? How do you know these are fictions? Are you on the inside? It sounds like the cases will be tried in court and we will find out what’s true. Are you saying that’s not the case?

davedx 1y ago

Even the Third Reich appreciated the value of scientific research and engineering.

edent 1y ago
They literally didn't. They expelled anyone working on Jüdische Physik. It is one of the (many) reasons they fell behind in atomic research.
- TheNewsIsHere 1y ago
  Ooh! This is actually a bit of a passive, niche interest of mine. It should be noted I am not a professional historian. I just read a lot of material and watch a lot of interviews and documentaries. The Nazis fell behind in atomic research for a variety of reasons, each with its own underpinnings. One of the most interesting in my mind was organizational failings. Although many different groups were working in this area, the regime leadership was rather disconnected and didn’t prioritize a coherent or integrated research effort. They didn’t provide much funding either. In some ways this created more room for unstructured scientific inquiry and creativity, but it also meant that no particular group could make any real progress toward usable reactors or weapons. Contrast this with the Manhattan Project in the US (and the UK’s efforts at radar), which was supported and managed from the highest levels of government with a figurative blank check and despite immense compartmentalization also had a high degree of integration among disciplines and sites. There was one goal. In my view this is an interesting manifestation of the foundation of the Third Reich. In Martin Davidson’s The Perfect Nazi, Davidson notes that the Nazi party was in many ways a child’s cosplay turned into a nightmare. Davidson writes that one of the key failings of the regime is that it was run by broken people who had more of an interest in catharsis than any real sense of society, advancement, or cohesion.
  - tialaramex 1y ago
    For radar, RV Jones' "Most Secret War" has an anecdote where the British raid a German coastal radar site (in France), nab the radar operator and are annoyed to discover that they know almost nothing about German radar. Pre-war Germany is already a fascist dictatorship so "ham" radio operators are enemies of the state because they're outside of your centrally controlled narrative. Whereas pre-war Britain has the usual amount of amateurs with radios. So when war broke out and they're conscripting towns at a time the British would see you're a ham and divert you from infantry training or whatever and make you a radar operator - which means the average British radar operator actually has some idea how radio works but the Germans are obliged to basically just pick a soldier and train him to operate the radar from scratch. This apparently had significant operational consequences because if you don't know how it works all you can do when there's a fault is order spare parts. So German radar stations would be offline more often and for longer. Although Chain Home's transmitters were wildly more powerful than anything even a rich British amateur might have seen before, not to mention operating on frequencies unachievable with prior technology, the principles were familiar.