6 ms·
Americans Overwhelmingly Support Science, but Some Think the U.S. Is Lagging
- jqpabc123 10mo agoThe US is lagging by every reasonable measure. What has changed is primarily 2 things: 1) People in positions of authority are now openly anti-progress in an effort to pacify entrenched interests. 2) These same people are also openly anti-immigrant. In the past, a lot of science in the USA has been imported from other countries by way of immigration. Less science equals less/inferior technology which equals smaller economy and weaker USA.
- yoyohello13 10mo agoThe US is destroying it's own advantage. For decades the US was pulling the best and brightest from all over the world into its Universities and companies. Why would anybody think stopping that would lead to a 'Golden Age'.
- jqpabc123 10mo agoIgnorance, incompetence, indifference --- it's how empires end.
- gadders 10mo agoUnfortunately it changed from "best and brightest" to "whoever could make it over the border" and "whoever would do the same job for less money".
- yoyohello13 10mo agoPretty sure "whoever could make it over the border" are not getting admitted to Harvard.
- cmtm4 10mo agoWhen was it ever substantially not "whoever could make it over the border"? That only stopped being (mostly—see the Chinese Exclusion Act) our actual policy in what, the 1950s? And after that, much to the relief of the agriculture industry that sharply opposed the change, we de facto barely enforced the new policy.
- gadders 10mo agoThank God big ag managed to keep the profits flowing
- programjames 10mo agoSeems like an arrogant American take. The United States primary and secondary schools are middling at best, and that has been showing through to its universities. Foreigners were already choosing Chinese universities. It's not like the recent administration could just "keep pulling", what do they have to appeal with? Obviously shutting off the flow of any and all talent is stupid, but it's a little arrogant to pretend it was not already diverting to better systems.
- munk-a 10mo agoMost schools are middling - but the US was willing to give generous scholarships and post-graduation grants to smart immigrants to build it here. There was a long entrenched culture that in the US you could turn your intelligence into positive change and get rich doing it. We've been slipping into rent seeking at least since the eighties though - so the share that actual researchers get has been shrinking while the culture has become much more hostile to immigration. It is a situation built on momentum though - so while the tools supporting it have been torn down we still do have a lot of people who moved here with the hope of leveraging it.
- programjames 10mo ago> There was a long entrenched culture that in the US you could turn your intelligence into positive change and get rich doing it. Yes, this is still true, and why immigration to America maintained its previous momentum. It was often easier to get a student visa than a different immigration visa, so for the past 30 years or so that has been the primary route, and in turn has raised the prestige of American universities. However, if you look at the American-born population, their students are not impressive. Quite the opposite, for how much funding their education gets. And—by federal interest—only ~10% of the undergraduate student body can be foreigners. Professors at American universities routinely complain about their students' low standards. Things are not the same as they were ten years ago, let alone thirty or fifty years ago. I think international sentiment has not shifted to the point that this is common knowledge—that if people want to go international, they better attend a school in China or Switzerland—but it would have happened in a few years with or without Trump, and the decline would be as apparent as the primary and secondary school decline has been.
- mmmBacon 10mo agoBy what metric is the US lagging? By any objective measure we can see the dominance of US technology. I think it’s most of the rest of the world that’s being left behind; Europe in particular. If what you’re saying is true the US economy would also be flagging but it’s not. If what you’re saying is true, you’d see the list of the world’s most valuable companies dominated by non-US firms. I think you are confusing the current climate of immigration enforcement and reform with being anti-immigration. The US will continue to draw top talent because the US is where the bulk of the opportunities are and will be for at least the next 5 years. It’s been widely discussed that the immigration system has been abused, especially by the tech industry. This reform started under Obama. The current outcry is a reaction to the most recent federal election. Reform does not mean the US is anti-immigrant. It may mean lower levels of immigration that’s more selective for talent.
- pdabbadabba 10mo agoHere’s one: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/harvard-global-ranking-chinese-universities-trump-cuts.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ElA.aFJj.U2w0llbEiL0T&smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/harvard-global-ranking...
- lotsofpulp 10mo ago> think you are confusing the current climate of immigration enforcement and reform with being anti-immigration. If this was true, Repubs would be handing out green cards at graduation ceremonies, at least for STEM fields. Instead, they are rolling out more pay to play schemes.
- orev 10mo agoScience creates the seeds, and what you’re citing are the fruits of seeds that were planted decades ago. Big tech only exists because of random science investments that were made long ago. The metric isn’t how much fruit you have now, but how well you’re preparing the soil and planting the seeds for the next generation.
- beej71 10mo ago> at least the next 5 years That's not much of a flex. The people who are worried about China taking the lead are looking at velocity and acceleration, not position.
- cogman10 10mo ago3) We've exported scientific talent. 4) We've destroyed the public scientific job sector. If your field of science isn't related to something the US military is interested in, you better have a degree in something directly related to pharmaceuticals. A lot of the US's leadership in science was based purely on the momentum it gained from the progressive era and the cheap education we used to have. Ever since roughly Reagan, it's been slowly eroded to today's sorry state. When I went to school, the promise was "get a degree in anything, it'll pay for itself". Now, gen z is actively choosing to avoid college because the ROI is horrendous.
- fxtentacle 10mo agoThe US has become a world leader in suing curious people into submission. As soon as you touch any commercially available tech and do anything that the manufacturer dislikes, you're at risk, thanks to § 1201: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." Extending your digital camera with new firmware? Illegal. Inventing a custom ink or add-on for your printer? Illegal. Repairing a tractor? or a ventilator? Illegal. How do you expect anyone to get world-leading science done in this environment?
- mc32 10mo agoIn fairness that sounds like extending capabilities of something that already exists. For personal use that should be okay. For commercial use, that would run afoul of IP -unless we’re talking about open source, though even then you might have obligations depending on the license. If you want to start from square 1, using your own IP, you should be able to. Now, sure it sucks that you can’t do those things you mention for ordinary use, which we should, but you are still able to come up with your own ground-up solution for commercial purposes.
- ronsor 10mo ago> If you want to start from square 1, using your own IP, you should be able to. Reinventing the universe every time you create something is expensive and impractical. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
- shimman 10mo agoIndeed, this is how companies like Facebook got a head start because they created scrappers for MySpace that made the transition easier. If you try to do the same today, they will likely throw you in federal prison for "tampering" or commit lawfare so heinous it'll feel like a war crime.
- exe34 10mo ago> If you want to start from square 1, using your own IP, you should be able to. That's not remotely how any progress has ever been made in the history of the human race. Newton himself said he stood on the shoulders of giants. Or as Sagan said, to bake an apple pie from scratch, you have to first invent the Universe. A clever patch to an existing thing is exactly how you get to the next big thing after enough patches.
- diego_moita 10mo agoEveryone in the world "supports" science, exactly the same way everyone "supports" healthy lifestyles, democracy and other "good things". The problem is that everyone has a different idea of what these good things are. For some, science is vaccines, understanding global warming and the theory of evolution. Others will say that real science is denying global warming, creationism, anti-vaxers or homeopathy.
- jameshart 10mo agoAre those two groups of people’s opinions on the subject equally valid?
- id34 10mo agoNo, of course, but the issue comes in the next step. How do they put their "support" of science into practice? For some, that means supporting increased budgets for grants, education, or basic research. For others, that means "restoring trust" by adding partisan steps. "Trusting the experts is not science", as RFK said. I find these types of survey questions almost useless - of course people will say they support science, or democracy, or freedom, or increasing support for families. The devil is always in the details.
- diego_moita 10mo agoNo. And that is exactly my point: we're considering to be pro-science the opinion of people that are actually against it.
- gadders 10mo ago[flagged]
- Congeec 10mo agoSome religious groups may not support science
- dsfdsfdsffdsfs 10mo agoTo be fair, one religious group invented science.
- ActorNightly 10mo ago>Americans Overwhelmingly Support Science Considering on the average 7/10 people either voted for Trump or didn't vote, (with Trump openly stating that he wants to neuter universities) Americans "think" they support science.
- cle 10mo agoAmericans think "supporting universities" is not necessarily the same as "supporting science."
- lotsofpulp 10mo agoI’d buy that if the winning party had presented a coherent plan fix the problems.
- dixie_land 10mo agoto be fair universities nowadays are more interested in supporting identity politics and liberal ideology than supporting science
- nyeah 10mo agoOk, there probably are folks who can't differentiate between the Physics department and the Sociology department. Or who can tell the difference but who attack both anyway. The problem for science is those folks. Right? The universities are actually teaching and advancing science. They're not the problem. The Pol Pot types are the problem. We know this very well from history.
- SoftTalker 10mo agoMany are doing a quick about-face on that stuff though. They just do whatever they are told so that the grant money keeps coming in.
- coeneedell 10mo agoI don’t see how you can make this claim when the budget balance at universities is extremely tilted towards stem. The budget for the kind of programs you seem to be complaining about come out to percents. Hard to say universities are “more interested” in very very small parts of their budget. What is happening now though is the federal government holds back billions of dollars in medical research grants, punishing, in some cases even killing patients, over “ideological” issues.
- vovavili 10mo agoU.S. literally invented the transformer just a couple years ago. I would argue that it is the rest of the world is lagging.
- danielscrubs 10mo agoSeven of the eight authors of the influential 2017 AI paper "Attention Is All You Need" are immigrants to the United States. The remaining author is the grandson of refugees. And the majority of them didn’t get their degrees from US universities. No doubt Google was the catalyst though.
- vovavili 10mo agoAnd how does this claim contradict my initial statement?
- checker659 10mo agoThey're (still) Americans.
- add-sub-mul-div 10mo agoYes but the point is that anti-immigrant demagoguery is about to slow immigration and weaken our future.
- vovavili 10mo agoThat seems like a wildly irrelevant claim in the context of this conversation.
- add-sub-mul-div 10mo agoIt's direct and blatantly relevant to the discussion that the transformer was invented in America and the cited role of immigrants in that invention, resultingly showing how ending immigration will impact future innovation.
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 10mo agothere's science as in "STEM" and there's science as in "trust the science". virtually everyone supports the former.
- lotsofpulp 10mo agoIn my experience, it’s the opposite. Virtually everyone supports using data to make decisions, unless the data could harm them or their tribe. For example, requiring elaborate experiments and trials to help develop medicine so you or a loved one bear cancer? Sure. But if you can make money hawking berries to cure cancer? No data needed. If casting doubt on vaccines without data helps you feel superior? No problem. If it can help you win elections and get into a position of power? Even better.
- programjames 10mo agoNot really, there's been a pretty effective culture war saying, "STEM degrees are actually useless, you need to know how to have a human connection." Only around 25% of Bachelor's and Master's degrees are in STEM fields, though it shoots up to 65% of PhDs. It seems to be pointing towards most people not supporting STEM, and advocating for students to not go into STEM, despite having some of the most lucrative (in expected value) majors.
- eudamoniac 10mo agoSTEM is harder. 25% of undergrads seems like a reasonable guess of who would be capable of attaining a STEM degree without lowering standards.
- thoiejrw23434 10mo agoThe US is falling prey to what has become obscenely common in democracies of late : the "plebs" going after the elites, for reasons valid or otherwise. This often means that they'll often go after academics and artists who stick out like a sour thumb, instead of financial/industrial/political elites who they more likely have a grouse with. This results in very bad negative effects in the long-term, which these actors themselves don't have much foresight for. Reminds me of Pol Pot killing off anyone who knew a foreign language, or Mao luring out Intellectual elites and them wiping them off in the cultural revolution or the destruction of India/Africa's British-era universities with toxic caste/race-politics (or US's toxic woke-politics, and now its continued destruction by its mirror-image in populist fascism). Really makes you question many of the tenets we take for granted in "democracies".
- Uhhrrr 10mo agoI don't think a survey of the general populace is going to give useful information about this.
- phs318u 10mo agoGiven the current US administration’s predilection against immigrants it wouldn’t surprise me if at some point the sycophancy becomes endemic in academia as well, resulting in a modern equivalent of “Deutsche Physik”. The trickle of academics seeking safe haven outside of the US will increase, an ironic reversal of half a century’s policy to attract the best and brightest (especially prominent before WWII when the US and UK were actively helping German scientists escape). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik