10 ms·

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine

220 points by karakoram 10mo ago

charcircuit 10mo ago
[flagged]
- vlovich123 10mo ago
  You realize that despite the claims there’s been no compelling evidence presented that there’s been any meaningful widespread abuse that amounted to anything much? The telling evidence that’s the case is that most (all) the stories the Republicans in congress trot out turns out to be horribly misrepresented (like the treadmill for shrimp which was actually built by the scientists for cheap and was important for figuring things out about how bottom feeders are responding to disease and pollution ) and/or not that much money. But mostly it’s finding things that sound crazy when communicated in a headline, not actual fraud or abuse.
  - 3D30497420 10mo ago
    Not to mention that there is plenty of research, especially foundational research, which is not being funded by corporations. Often this research provides the foundation for significant breakthroughs.
- ascendantlogic 10mo ago
  > If they didn't abuse the system Who is "they" and where is the proof there was widespread "system abuse" that warrants voluntarily abdicating any lead we have in research to other countries?
- biophysboy 10mo ago
  You can draw explicit links between NIH/NSF grants, publications, patents, and private stock valuation. Companies are not going to invest in non-excludable, non-rival goods like basic research.
- caseysoftware 10mo ago
  For people curious on this one, google "replication crisis" and how it's been covered and described for the last 20 years. The results are damning.
karakoram 10mo ago
https://archive.md/F42n9 https://archive.md/F42n9
rayiner 10mo ago
> The new policy is being carried out as the Trump administration has tightened its hold over federal science funding Such sentences display such a weird understanding of how the federal government works. How can the administration “tighten its hold” over discretionary grants? These aren’t Congressional appropriations earmarked for specific projects. The administration is the only entity that can exercise control over these grants. It would actually be a huge problem if the administration didn’t have a tight hold on these funds. That would mean grants would be going out without close supervision by any elected officials (Congress or the President).
- gammarator 10mo ago
  The sentence is accurate, your comment is not. The administration unilaterally canceled existing grants and halted and showed granting of funds appropriated by Congress, so the money was not used as allocated. If Congress allocated $1B for medical research and the administration only releases funds for $500M, it’s ignoring the law. For example, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01396-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01396-2 As to “exercising control,” American science has been great because scientists judge which projects are the strongest. That’s being replaced by judgement by political appointees who are not experts: https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-pares-down-grant-review-process-reducing-influence-outside-scientists https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-pares-down-grant...
- dzdt 10mo ago
  In the before times the close eyes were by directors and funding committees at the institutes like NIH and NSF. Now those roles are played by political appointees and funds controlled at the whim of the office of the President and their fundamentally anti-science agenda.
- teraflop 10mo ago
  "The administration" is not a monolithic entity. For the last ~150 years, even though it's had political appointees at the top, the vast majority of its employees have been selected (at least ostensibly) on the basis of merit, not political loyalty. They're supposed to be somewhat insulated from the changing political winds. The layers of bureaucracy in between were created deliberately, to preserve some degree of decision-making independence. When people talk about "the Trump administration tightening its hold", they mean Trump and his political appointees exerting direct control over things that have a strong precedent for being out of their direct control. Using the word "administration" to conflate the presidency with the layers of organization below it is the main premise of the "unitary executive theory", which is an extremely recent development of the current Supreme Court. Previously, when Congress said "such-and-such a decision is supposed to be made by the staff of agency XYZ, not by the President/Secretary personally", the courts assumed they meant it.
amanaplanacanal 10mo ago
I expect China will pick up the slack.
- YJfcboaDaJRDw 10mo ago
  Certainly but US policy changes every 4 years and China has a gigantic one child policy issue which just can't be changed. I think it will with China somewhat similar how it was back in the day with the udssr where economists were predicting its economy would outgrow the economy of the USA by 1994 and then 1991 or so it died. Could imagine something similar might be awaiting china
  - nneonneo 10mo ago
    China no longer has a one-child policy and is now actively focusing policies and incentives on increasing childbirth. Although it’s not going to yield immediate results, the PRC operates on long time horizons and will probably succeed long-term in raising birth rates.
    - PessimalDecimal 10mo ago
      > the PRC operates on long time horizons and will probably succeed long-term in raising birth rates. That would make them the first country to do so, I think. Others have tried and nothing has worked. But China will likely become rich before it gets old, so it may not matter.
      - bpt3 10mo ago
        Did you mean to say "But China will likely become old before it gets rich"? Their population is declining already and they have a very long way to go before being considered "rich", so I haven't seen many projections for what you said. If you meant it, I'd be curious to know why.
        PessimalDecimal 10mo ago
ghjv 10mo ago
How should one orient themselves and their career if they wanted to work to increase funding to scientific development? Outside the obvious "make a boatload of money doing something obscenely profitable and distribute the money yourself" Editing to clarify: this is not a hypothetical. This is something that I've been trying to do previously and am interested in doing a better job at in the future.
- limagnolia 10mo ago
  Become a politician or a lobbyist? Possibly work in a charity that funds research, as a fundraiser for them?
- conartist6 10mo ago
  work to restore public trust in science and technology. look at the ways that trust has been lost.
  - Starman_Jones 10mo ago
    There has been a decades-long push by a consortium of the wealthiest companies in the world to undermine faith in science by pushing money directly to media companies. I'm not sure how you work to undo that, but that seems like the best place to start.
  - arunabha 10mo ago
    That is increasingly becoming next to impossible in the current environment of 'influencers' trying to capture attention by amplifing every possible conspiracy theory. The thing about science is that you need to be aware of, and accept the scientific method. There is no absolute truth, and future data can contradict established theory. Unfortunately, this is often used to attack science by claiming that 'scientists change their mind all the time', and hence <insert unwanted result here> should not be relied upon since scientists cannot 'prove' or guarantee that they know the absolute truth. Never mind that the alternate position offered often doesn't have a shred of evidence. As long as it's delivered with absolute confidence, a vast majority of people will accept it. We really need to do a much better job of teaching the essence of the scientific method in schools.
bane 10mo ago
The people I know who work in life sciences R&D (basically anything bio) have had their funding absolutely annihilated. PhDs with 20 years of experience working second jobs as substitute high school teachers, lab workers taking up tech support positions paying a fraction of what was already terrible pay. What's worse is that in most of these fields, you don't really even start working until after your PhD. 4 years is going to be a long time to underfund what's basically 4 entire classes of researchers coming out of Doctorate programs. It might take decades to recover our research programs.
- gosub100 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - counters 10mo ago
    Legitimate question: why don't you think universities already do this? It's not exactly a novel idea.
    - gosub100 10mo ago
      It can be proved by deduction based on the rate of increase in tuition
      - counters 10mo ago
        I didn't ask you to prove it. I asked why it wasn't already happening.
      - secabeen 10mo ago
        Which tuition are you referring to? Nameplate tuition is like the sticker price on a new car; few to no people pay it. Net tuition is the number that actually matters, and it's been largely flat the last 8 years.
        gosub100 10mo ago
ChrisArchitect 10mo ago
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/02/upshot/trump-science-funding-cuts.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-k8.SUW2.Yjs3oBn1x3zj&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/02/upshot/trump-...
pfdietz 10mo ago
Not caring about global positive externalities of science is the flip side of not caring about the global negative externalities of pollution. So at least the Trump administration is being consistent.
devwastaken 10mo ago
[flagged]
- biophysboy 10mo ago
  total nonsense
- sephamorr 10mo ago
  Citation needed
- indubioprorubik 10mo ago
  Should have a "You keep what you kill"- clause in academia. If you destroy somebodys hypothesis- you get to keep the grants they gained from that, deducted from their current grants. Make it viable to go headhunting and make p-hacking and other games + paper spam a risky endavour.
  - biophysboy 10mo ago
    This presumes irreproducible science is always created by poor ethics, which is not the case.
    - QuercusMax 10mo ago
      If you're going with p < .05, then 1 in 20 cases you'll be wrong based purely on probability.
- QuercusMax 10mo ago
  I'm sure you have more than just anecdotes to back this up, right....? Besides, with research you aren't guaranteed to make discoveries. That's why it's called research and not development.
- linuxhansl 10mo ago
  Can't tell if your comment sarcasm or not. But I'll bite. Sure thing. It's all fraud and conspiracy. Fundamental science is worthless if it cannot be immediately monetized. All scientist are money-hungry crooks. Let's just stop all research then. Who needs antibiotics, or vaccines, or cancer research, or food safety. Who needs to know about the universe, or about quantum mechanics. It's all just elite stuff... Let's get rid of it. Government is precisely the place to fund stuff that does not fit into the free market.
bgwalter 10mo ago
Everything is about "AI", "crypto" and substance grifting. There is no place for real science or useful economic activities like building houses. Here is the latest fake poll that the Crypto/AI/Substance czar posted and that was retweeted by Musk, who claimed to be an "AI" skeptic not so long ago: https://xcancel.com/DavidSacks/status/2003141873049952684#m https://xcancel.com/DavidSacks/status/2003141873049952684#m Getting favors for billionaires is all that these people are concerned about.
- smileson2 10mo ago
  It's like three body problem but fintech chuds are the sophons
  - indubioprorubik 10mo ago
    Well, the purpose of the whole thing is to harden humanity against downfalls, distribute it all away from the people (who might become religous fanatics and analphabets) and away from the governments these people produce (insane clerics and tyrannical military dictators). The idea is to get infrastructure and software that can keep humanity going regardless. If you get research done beneath a bhurka under the taliban after a regional nuclear exchange then we reached the mile-stone of "civilizational" root hardening this whole affair aims towards.
    - selimthegrim 10mo ago
      Hey al-Biruni and Ulugh Beg did it, why not?
- bgwalter 10mo ago
  If you need links for the "substance" part. Investments of Sacks: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/cannabis-logistics-startup-wayv-launches-dynamic-distribution-platform/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/cannabis-logistics-startup... https://sfstandard.com/2024/06/13/telemedicine-adderall-vyvanse-ritalin-done-global-brody-he/ https://sfstandard.com/2024/06/13/telemedicine-adderall-vyva... Trump relaxes cannabis classification: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/18/trump-cannabis-executive-order https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/18/trump-cannab...
oulipo2 10mo ago
We WARMLY welcome all researchers here in Europe! Please come, we love science (and arts) and want to build an inclusive, open-minded society together!
- stemlord 10mo ago
  Trust me, every scientist in America has been clawing for every eurpoean research grant opportunity there is. Competition is stiff
- parineum 10mo ago
  > and want to build an inclusive, open-minded society together! Which will be guaranteed by strict monitoring of your private chats!
  - oulipo2 10mo ago
    Well, we're still fighting against this. Still better than the US situation though
- BJones12 10mo ago
  You might welcome them all, but you don't have jobs for most of them.
  - oulipo2 10mo ago
    Still better than the US where they have no jobs AND they are persecuted...
wek 10mo ago
Funding for basic science and medicen should be a bi-partisan winning issue. It is good for America. It is good for the world. It helps eventually lift the poor. It helps business. Its something the government can and should do that is hard for private business to do. It helps human knowledge. I'm motivated to reverse this trend.
- dragonwriter 10mo ago
  > Funding for basic science and medicen should be a bi-partisan winning issue. It is good for America. “Good” is never an objective question, its always one dependent on values, and values are often not bipartisan. Everyone believes everyone should share their values, but if they did, there wouldn't be different ideological factions in the first place.
  - dmix 10mo ago
    I don't even think this one is a bipartisan issue. This just seems to just be coming from the White House. The article said > The Senate and House rejected the White House’s proposed budget cuts Since WH can't control the budget they are changing how it's doled out by giving larger payments to a smaller group.
  - spott 10mo ago
    > there wouldn’t be different ideological factions in the first place. Maybe I’m just very jaded, but I don’t think this is true. Our values are significantly more aligned than we generally believe, however as long as there is power to be gained by creating the illusion of a difference of values, there will be factions dedicated to ensuring that illusion is maintained.
- tomp 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - spwa4 10mo ago
    I find it extremely hard to believe that basic medicine and searching for cures or relieving aging is either leftist or rightist.
maerF0x0 10mo ago
As a taxpayer I'm tired of funding everyone's project. Especially in private institutions which have billions under management and are ran like hedge funds, and not increasing their intake. Time to fix the deficit and kill off our debt. If the rebuttal is "yeah but advancements improve the economy" -- The private sector can fund projects which are opportunities with an economic basis, they can take the risk and they can see if it is profitable in the market (ie beneficial) If the rebuttal is "How will America stay competitive?" We cant seem to keep trade secrets anyways. [1] [1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64206950 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64206950 Edit: Also the 4 years at a time thing is probably a better choice too, because it makes them less twitchy politically. You get your 4 years, regardless of who's team is in office. This should be a win regardless of your affiliation.
- hyperadvanced 10mo ago
  The response (usually) is “OK but whatabout the $X billion we spent on the military?” Which isn’t wrong necessarily, but it doesn’t answer why or whether we should be spending so much money on everything else
  - maerF0x0 10mo ago
    I actually agree here too. America (and Americans) spend waaaay too much, and especially on niche things that profit very specific subgroups. We need to get back to the basics. Johnny can't read[1], or do math. That should be funded long before we worry about today's PhDs, those kids are the pipeline of future PhDs. /r [1]-https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancraig/2024/11/15/kids-cant-read-books/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancraig/2024/11/15/kids-cant-...
    - dmix 10mo ago
      The state/local gov tend to be responsible for public education funding. in the US federal gov only does <10% of the funding. US public education spending is also top 5 in the world so I don't think a lack of money is why "Johnny can't read or do math", something else is going on
sebow 10mo ago
Please convince me how gov. funding is better than the private sector. Before people jump to the "late capitalism and everything will be profit-incentivized" bandwagon, I fail to see how things like finding a new good medicine/the next propulsion system/new most efficient energy solution/etc. cannot be linked into the more theoretical fields, which I'm assuming are some of, if not most of the positions/areas of science affected by this. Everything can be "sold", especially in today's age with the new methods of discoverability. But I would argue scientists don't need to "sell" something in the capitalist sense. They need to link the hope of a new discovery to inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs. Sure, some things might "fail" to continue by failing to adjust to the markets, or some scientific discoveries might be used for bad things (ethically), but this is (1) both inevitable and (2) the responsibility of the scientists & the people buying the end product/service. If I'm not mistaken, most bad/evil/etc. discoveries were made by scientists working FOR the government/king/etc. throughout history. If anything, democratizing science through the capitalist markets seems like a more beneficial way to develop self-sustaining science. The key thing is transparency, which can be less present in the private sector, especially when corruption is involved(assuming transparency is demanded by the gov.).
- watwut 10mo ago
  Cause goverments funds basic research and private sector does not. Also, results of private sector research are secret, patented and generally dont create competitive markets.
  - jandrewrogers 10mo ago
    The amount of basic research funded by the private sector has been growing for decades. It is now a large percentage of the total in the US. Government investment didn’t decline, private investment massively grew. Same thing happened in applied research decades earlier.
- Calavar 10mo ago
  Let me counter with this: Can you point out one country in the post world war era that had minimal government investment in science but had very productive scientific output? Or can you point out one country where scientific productivity increased after public sector investment in science was slashed?
jacobgorm 10mo ago
Not if you’re a vaccine skeptic and personal friends with the CDC director https://www.statnews.com/2025/12/18/cdc-grant-controversial-researchers-ties-to-tracy-beth-hoeg/ https://www.statnews.com/2025/12/18/cdc-grant-controversial-...
blindriver 10mo ago
More wood behind less arrows. This is good. Most research is universal basic income for PhDs with no really benefit. Even worse, most research can’t be reproduced anymore. We need to identify the highest quality research projects and fund those. After being associated with academia and research, the whining and crying of random PhDs are all in their own self interest but not in OUR collective self interest. Most research doesn’t deserve funding.
- great_tankard 10mo ago
  >We need to identify the highest quality research projects and fund those. Congratulations, you have described the system that's been in place for decades.
softwaredoug 10mo ago
What’s sad is how tiny an investment this is relative to their parts of the Federal budget. It will have almost no impact on the Federal deficit (which will be higher than ever this year) It’s entirely performative
guywithahat 10mo ago
A critical analysis of this article is that they got a staffing cut, and since they were afraid they wouldn't spend their yearly budget in time the Office of the director simply paid themselves 138% of their prior budget despite having fewer employees to avoid losing the money. One also wonders if the reduced funding correlates with more politically focused labs. Certainly the goal of the administration was to avoid giving money to DEI/politically adjacent research, and while I've definitely seen professors take computer science money and throw it towards social science research, I'm not sure what amount of the 8% decrease in funding that might be. One positive note is universities have been known to abuse students (particularly international/visa students) by making them work in the lab for 5, 6, or 7 years. By restructuring grants to be 4-5 years, and giving the four years of funding up front, professors will be more incentivized to get students out in four years so they can enter industry.
jp57 10mo ago
...and just like that, the reproducibility crisis is forgotten. Seriously, it's amazing how fast we can go from "man, scientific research sure is a mess, wtf are all these people doing anyway?" to "How dare you mess with the status quo?!" It's worth remembering that American academic science has for years been training far more grad students than they could ever hope to eventually give tenure to, or even place in tenure track jobs (only to be denied at the last step). Instead, PhD graduates spend years working in the precariat of "soft-funding". The result is a desperate publish-or-perish culture that leads to all the ills we see so often on the HN front page: unreproducible results, p-hacking, etc. This entire toxic environment is created and sustained by universities that demand that their faculty have independently funded research programs, that put a third or more of their grant funds into the university general fund via indirect fees. This is the status quo that is being disrupted. It is pretty reasonable to assume that the majority of young researchers whose careers are getting derailed were not going to make tenure or publish anything anyway, and they have in fact been done a favor. The counterargument to this is that we should deliberately fund many researchers who we know will never actually produce anything useful because that's how we find the few actual geniuses who will produce useful things. There is something to this argument, but we should be clear up front to the students about their true prospects.
- exceptione 10mo ago
  Academia is tough, and things are bad enough to complain about it. However, you have (understandably) fallen in a trap of rationalization. This is not an earnest effort to improve. As it stands now, the damage of the conservative rage is measured in decades needed for repair. As in: the intended effect. I have linked it a few times, but I am happy to do it once more, because I can surely understand the genuine confusion people have about these things: https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/103517-001-A/capitalism-in-america-the-cult-of-wealth-1-3/ https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/103517-001-A/capitalism-in-ame...
  - jp57 10mo ago
    "This programme is not available in your country." (i.e. USA) Oh the irony. You'll have to make the argument yourself, I guess.

220 points by karakoram 10mo ago

charcircuit 10mo ago

[flagged]

vlovich123 10mo ago
You realize that despite the claims there’s been no compelling evidence presented that there’s been any meaningful widespread abuse that amounted to anything much? The telling evidence that’s the case is that most (all) the stories the Republicans in congress trot out turns out to be horribly misrepresented (like the treadmill for shrimp which was actually built by the scientists for cheap and was important for figuring things out about how bottom feeders are responding to disease and pollution ) and/or not that much money. But mostly it’s finding things that sound crazy when communicated in a headline, not actual fraud or abuse.
- 3D30497420 10mo ago
  Not to mention that there is plenty of research, especially foundational research, which is not being funded by corporations. Often this research provides the foundation for significant breakthroughs.
ascendantlogic 10mo ago
> If they didn't abuse the system Who is "they" and where is the proof there was widespread "system abuse" that warrants voluntarily abdicating any lead we have in research to other countries?
biophysboy 10mo ago
You can draw explicit links between NIH/NSF grants, publications, patents, and private stock valuation. Companies are not going to invest in non-excludable, non-rival goods like basic research.
caseysoftware 10mo ago
For people curious on this one, google "replication crisis" and how it's been covered and described for the last 20 years. The results are damning.

karakoram 10mo ago

https://archive.md/F42n9 https://archive.md/F42n9

rayiner 10mo ago

> The new policy is being carried out as the Trump administration has tightened its hold over federal science funding Such sentences display such a weird understanding of how the federal government works. How can the administration “tighten its hold” over discretionary grants? These aren’t Congressional appropriations earmarked for specific projects. The administration is the only entity that can exercise control over these grants. It would actually be a huge problem if the administration didn’t have a tight hold on these funds. That would mean grants would be going out without close supervision by any elected officials (Congress or the President).

gammarator 10mo ago
The sentence is accurate, your comment is not. The administration unilaterally canceled existing grants and halted and showed granting of funds appropriated by Congress, so the money was not used as allocated. If Congress allocated $1B for medical research and the administration only releases funds for $500M, it’s ignoring the law. For example, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01396-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01396-2 As to “exercising control,” American science has been great because scientists judge which projects are the strongest. That’s being replaced by judgement by political appointees who are not experts: https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-pares-down-grant-review-process-reducing-influence-outside-scientists https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-pares-down-grant...
dzdt 10mo ago
In the before times the close eyes were by directors and funding committees at the institutes like NIH and NSF. Now those roles are played by political appointees and funds controlled at the whim of the office of the President and their fundamentally anti-science agenda.
teraflop 10mo ago
"The administration" is not a monolithic entity. For the last ~150 years, even though it's had political appointees at the top, the vast majority of its employees have been selected (at least ostensibly) on the basis of merit, not political loyalty. They're supposed to be somewhat insulated from the changing political winds. The layers of bureaucracy in between were created deliberately, to preserve some degree of decision-making independence. When people talk about "the Trump administration tightening its hold", they mean Trump and his political appointees exerting direct control over things that have a strong precedent for being out of their direct control. Using the word "administration" to conflate the presidency with the layers of organization below it is the main premise of the "unitary executive theory", which is an extremely recent development of the current Supreme Court. Previously, when Congress said "such-and-such a decision is supposed to be made by the staff of agency XYZ, not by the President/Secretary personally", the courts assumed they meant it.

amanaplanacanal 10mo ago

I expect China will pick up the slack.

YJfcboaDaJRDw 10mo ago
Certainly but US policy changes every 4 years and China has a gigantic one child policy issue which just can't be changed. I think it will with China somewhat similar how it was back in the day with the udssr where economists were predicting its economy would outgrow the economy of the USA by 1994 and then 1991 or so it died. Could imagine something similar might be awaiting china
- nneonneo 10mo ago
  China no longer has a one-child policy and is now actively focusing policies and incentives on increasing childbirth. Although it’s not going to yield immediate results, the PRC operates on long time horizons and will probably succeed long-term in raising birth rates.
  - PessimalDecimal 10mo ago
    > the PRC operates on long time horizons and will probably succeed long-term in raising birth rates. That would make them the first country to do so, I think. Others have tried and nothing has worked. But China will likely become rich before it gets old, so it may not matter.
    - bpt3 10mo ago
      Did you mean to say "But China will likely become old before it gets rich"? Their population is declining already and they have a very long way to go before being considered "rich", so I haven't seen many projections for what you said. If you meant it, I'd be curious to know why.
      - PessimalDecimal 10mo ago

ghjv 10mo ago

How should one orient themselves and their career if they wanted to work to increase funding to scientific development? Outside the obvious "make a boatload of money doing something obscenely profitable and distribute the money yourself" Editing to clarify: this is not a hypothetical. This is something that I've been trying to do previously and am interested in doing a better job at in the future.

limagnolia 10mo ago
Become a politician or a lobbyist? Possibly work in a charity that funds research, as a fundraiser for them?
conartist6 10mo ago
work to restore public trust in science and technology. look at the ways that trust has been lost.
- Starman_Jones 10mo ago
  There has been a decades-long push by a consortium of the wealthiest companies in the world to undermine faith in science by pushing money directly to media companies. I'm not sure how you work to undo that, but that seems like the best place to start.
- arunabha 10mo ago
  That is increasingly becoming next to impossible in the current environment of 'influencers' trying to capture attention by amplifing every possible conspiracy theory. The thing about science is that you need to be aware of, and accept the scientific method. There is no absolute truth, and future data can contradict established theory. Unfortunately, this is often used to attack science by claiming that 'scientists change their mind all the time', and hence <insert unwanted result here> should not be relied upon since scientists cannot 'prove' or guarantee that they know the absolute truth. Never mind that the alternate position offered often doesn't have a shred of evidence. As long as it's delivered with absolute confidence, a vast majority of people will accept it. We really need to do a much better job of teaching the essence of the scientific method in schools.

bane 10mo ago

The people I know who work in life sciences R&D (basically anything bio) have had their funding absolutely annihilated. PhDs with 20 years of experience working second jobs as substitute high school teachers, lab workers taking up tech support positions paying a fraction of what was already terrible pay. What's worse is that in most of these fields, you don't really even start working until after your PhD. 4 years is going to be a long time to underfund what's basically 4 entire classes of researchers coming out of Doctorate programs. It might take decades to recover our research programs.

gosub100 10mo ago
[flagged]
- counters 10mo ago
  Legitimate question: why don't you think universities already do this? It's not exactly a novel idea.
  - gosub100 10mo ago
    It can be proved by deduction based on the rate of increase in tuition
    - counters 10mo ago
      I didn't ask you to prove it. I asked why it wasn't already happening.
    - secabeen 10mo ago
      Which tuition are you referring to? Nameplate tuition is like the sticker price on a new car; few to no people pay it. Net tuition is the number that actually matters, and it's been largely flat the last 8 years.
      - gosub100 10mo ago

ChrisArchitect 10mo ago

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/02/upshot/trump-science-funding-cuts.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-k8.SUW2.Yjs3oBn1x3zj&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/02/upshot/trump-...

pfdietz 10mo ago

Not caring about global positive externalities of science is the flip side of not caring about the global negative externalities of pollution. So at least the Trump administration is being consistent.

devwastaken 10mo ago

[flagged]

biophysboy 10mo ago
total nonsense
sephamorr 10mo ago
Citation needed
indubioprorubik 10mo ago
Should have a "You keep what you kill"- clause in academia. If you destroy somebodys hypothesis- you get to keep the grants they gained from that, deducted from their current grants. Make it viable to go headhunting and make p-hacking and other games + paper spam a risky endavour.
- biophysboy 10mo ago
  This presumes irreproducible science is always created by poor ethics, which is not the case.
  - QuercusMax 10mo ago
    If you're going with p < .05, then 1 in 20 cases you'll be wrong based purely on probability.
QuercusMax 10mo ago
I'm sure you have more than just anecdotes to back this up, right....? Besides, with research you aren't guaranteed to make discoveries. That's why it's called research and not development.
linuxhansl 10mo ago
Can't tell if your comment sarcasm or not. But I'll bite. Sure thing. It's all fraud and conspiracy. Fundamental science is worthless if it cannot be immediately monetized. All scientist are money-hungry crooks. Let's just stop all research then. Who needs antibiotics, or vaccines, or cancer research, or food safety. Who needs to know about the universe, or about quantum mechanics. It's all just elite stuff... Let's get rid of it. Government is precisely the place to fund stuff that does not fit into the free market.

bgwalter 10mo ago

Everything is about "AI", "crypto" and substance grifting. There is no place for real science or useful economic activities like building houses. Here is the latest fake poll that the Crypto/AI/Substance czar posted and that was retweeted by Musk, who claimed to be an "AI" skeptic not so long ago: https://xcancel.com/DavidSacks/status/2003141873049952684#m https://xcancel.com/DavidSacks/status/2003141873049952684#m Getting favors for billionaires is all that these people are concerned about.

smileson2 10mo ago
It's like three body problem but fintech chuds are the sophons
- indubioprorubik 10mo ago
  Well, the purpose of the whole thing is to harden humanity against downfalls, distribute it all away from the people (who might become religous fanatics and analphabets) and away from the governments these people produce (insane clerics and tyrannical military dictators). The idea is to get infrastructure and software that can keep humanity going regardless. If you get research done beneath a bhurka under the taliban after a regional nuclear exchange then we reached the mile-stone of "civilizational" root hardening this whole affair aims towards.
  - selimthegrim 10mo ago
    Hey al-Biruni and Ulugh Beg did it, why not?
bgwalter 10mo ago
If you need links for the "substance" part. Investments of Sacks: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/cannabis-logistics-startup-wayv-launches-dynamic-distribution-platform/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/19/cannabis-logistics-startup... https://sfstandard.com/2024/06/13/telemedicine-adderall-vyvanse-ritalin-done-global-brody-he/ https://sfstandard.com/2024/06/13/telemedicine-adderall-vyva... Trump relaxes cannabis classification: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/18/trump-cannabis-executive-order https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/18/trump-cannab...

oulipo2 10mo ago

We WARMLY welcome all researchers here in Europe! Please come, we love science (and arts) and want to build an inclusive, open-minded society together!

stemlord 10mo ago
Trust me, every scientist in America has been clawing for every eurpoean research grant opportunity there is. Competition is stiff
parineum 10mo ago
> and want to build an inclusive, open-minded society together! Which will be guaranteed by strict monitoring of your private chats!
- oulipo2 10mo ago
  Well, we're still fighting against this. Still better than the US situation though
BJones12 10mo ago
You might welcome them all, but you don't have jobs for most of them.
- oulipo2 10mo ago
  Still better than the US where they have no jobs AND they are persecuted...

wek 10mo ago

Funding for basic science and medicen should be a bi-partisan winning issue. It is good for America. It is good for the world. It helps eventually lift the poor. It helps business. Its something the government can and should do that is hard for private business to do. It helps human knowledge. I'm motivated to reverse this trend.

dragonwriter 10mo ago
> Funding for basic science and medicen should be a bi-partisan winning issue. It is good for America. “Good” is never an objective question, its always one dependent on values, and values are often not bipartisan. Everyone believes everyone should share their values, but if they did, there wouldn't be different ideological factions in the first place.
- dmix 10mo ago
  I don't even think this one is a bipartisan issue. This just seems to just be coming from the White House. The article said > The Senate and House rejected the White House’s proposed budget cuts Since WH can't control the budget they are changing how it's doled out by giving larger payments to a smaller group.
- spott 10mo ago
  > there wouldn’t be different ideological factions in the first place. Maybe I’m just very jaded, but I don’t think this is true. Our values are significantly more aligned than we generally believe, however as long as there is power to be gained by creating the illusion of a difference of values, there will be factions dedicated to ensuring that illusion is maintained.
tomp 10mo ago
[flagged]
- spwa4 10mo ago
  I find it extremely hard to believe that basic medicine and searching for cures or relieving aging is either leftist or rightist.

maerF0x0 10mo ago

As a taxpayer I'm tired of funding everyone's project. Especially in private institutions which have billions under management and are ran like hedge funds, and not increasing their intake. Time to fix the deficit and kill off our debt. If the rebuttal is "yeah but advancements improve the economy" -- The private sector can fund projects which are opportunities with an economic basis, they can take the risk and they can see if it is profitable in the market (ie beneficial) If the rebuttal is "How will America stay competitive?" We cant seem to keep trade secrets anyways. [1] [1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64206950 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64206950 Edit: Also the 4 years at a time thing is probably a better choice too, because it makes them less twitchy politically. You get your 4 years, regardless of who's team is in office. This should be a win regardless of your affiliation.

hyperadvanced 10mo ago
The response (usually) is “OK but whatabout the $X billion we spent on the military?” Which isn’t wrong necessarily, but it doesn’t answer why or whether we should be spending so much money on everything else
- maerF0x0 10mo ago
  I actually agree here too. America (and Americans) spend waaaay too much, and especially on niche things that profit very specific subgroups. We need to get back to the basics. Johnny can't read[1], or do math. That should be funded long before we worry about today's PhDs, those kids are the pipeline of future PhDs. /r [1]-https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancraig/2024/11/15/kids-cant-read-books/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancraig/2024/11/15/kids-cant-...
  - dmix 10mo ago
    The state/local gov tend to be responsible for public education funding. in the US federal gov only does <10% of the funding. US public education spending is also top 5 in the world so I don't think a lack of money is why "Johnny can't read or do math", something else is going on

sebow 10mo ago

Please convince me how gov. funding is better than the private sector. Before people jump to the "late capitalism and everything will be profit-incentivized" bandwagon, I fail to see how things like finding a new good medicine/the next propulsion system/new most efficient energy solution/etc. cannot be linked into the more theoretical fields, which I'm assuming are some of, if not most of the positions/areas of science affected by this. Everything can be "sold", especially in today's age with the new methods of discoverability. But I would argue scientists don't need to "sell" something in the capitalist sense. They need to link the hope of a new discovery to inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs. Sure, some things might "fail" to continue by failing to adjust to the markets, or some scientific discoveries might be used for bad things (ethically), but this is (1) both inevitable and (2) the responsibility of the scientists & the people buying the end product/service. If I'm not mistaken, most bad/evil/etc. discoveries were made by scientists working FOR the government/king/etc. throughout history. If anything, democratizing science through the capitalist markets seems like a more beneficial way to develop self-sustaining science. The key thing is transparency, which can be less present in the private sector, especially when corruption is involved(assuming transparency is demanded by the gov.).

watwut 10mo ago
Cause goverments funds basic research and private sector does not. Also, results of private sector research are secret, patented and generally dont create competitive markets.
- jandrewrogers 10mo ago
  The amount of basic research funded by the private sector has been growing for decades. It is now a large percentage of the total in the US. Government investment didn’t decline, private investment massively grew. Same thing happened in applied research decades earlier.
Calavar 10mo ago
Let me counter with this: Can you point out one country in the post world war era that had minimal government investment in science but had very productive scientific output? Or can you point out one country where scientific productivity increased after public sector investment in science was slashed?

jacobgorm 10mo ago

Not if you’re a vaccine skeptic and personal friends with the CDC director https://www.statnews.com/2025/12/18/cdc-grant-controversial-researchers-ties-to-tracy-beth-hoeg/ https://www.statnews.com/2025/12/18/cdc-grant-controversial-...

blindriver 10mo ago

More wood behind less arrows. This is good. Most research is universal basic income for PhDs with no really benefit. Even worse, most research can’t be reproduced anymore. We need to identify the highest quality research projects and fund those. After being associated with academia and research, the whining and crying of random PhDs are all in their own self interest but not in OUR collective self interest. Most research doesn’t deserve funding.

great_tankard 10mo ago
>We need to identify the highest quality research projects and fund those. Congratulations, you have described the system that's been in place for decades.

softwaredoug 10mo ago

What’s sad is how tiny an investment this is relative to their parts of the Federal budget. It will have almost no impact on the Federal deficit (which will be higher than ever this year) It’s entirely performative

guywithahat 10mo ago

A critical analysis of this article is that they got a staffing cut, and since they were afraid they wouldn't spend their yearly budget in time the Office of the director simply paid themselves 138% of their prior budget despite having fewer employees to avoid losing the money. One also wonders if the reduced funding correlates with more politically focused labs. Certainly the goal of the administration was to avoid giving money to DEI/politically adjacent research, and while I've definitely seen professors take computer science money and throw it towards social science research, I'm not sure what amount of the 8% decrease in funding that might be. One positive note is universities have been known to abuse students (particularly international/visa students) by making them work in the lab for 5, 6, or 7 years. By restructuring grants to be 4-5 years, and giving the four years of funding up front, professors will be more incentivized to get students out in four years so they can enter industry.

jp57 10mo ago

...and just like that, the reproducibility crisis is forgotten. Seriously, it's amazing how fast we can go from "man, scientific research sure is a mess, wtf are all these people doing anyway?" to "How dare you mess with the status quo?!" It's worth remembering that American academic science has for years been training far more grad students than they could ever hope to eventually give tenure to, or even place in tenure track jobs (only to be denied at the last step). Instead, PhD graduates spend years working in the precariat of "soft-funding". The result is a desperate publish-or-perish culture that leads to all the ills we see so often on the HN front page: unreproducible results, p-hacking, etc. This entire toxic environment is created and sustained by universities that demand that their faculty have independently funded research programs, that put a third or more of their grant funds into the university general fund via indirect fees. This is the status quo that is being disrupted. It is pretty reasonable to assume that the majority of young researchers whose careers are getting derailed were not going to make tenure or publish anything anyway, and they have in fact been done a favor. The counterargument to this is that we should deliberately fund many researchers who we know will never actually produce anything useful because that's how we find the few actual geniuses who will produce useful things. There is something to this argument, but we should be clear up front to the students about their true prospects.

exceptione 10mo ago
Academia is tough, and things are bad enough to complain about it. However, you have (understandably) fallen in a trap of rationalization. This is not an earnest effort to improve. As it stands now, the damage of the conservative rage is measured in decades needed for repair. As in: the intended effect. I have linked it a few times, but I am happy to do it once more, because I can surely understand the genuine confusion people have about these things: https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/103517-001-A/capitalism-in-america-the-cult-of-wealth-1-3/ https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/103517-001-A/capitalism-in-ame...
- jp57 10mo ago
  "This programme is not available in your country." (i.e. USA) Oh the irony. You'll have to make the argument yourself, I guess.