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Trump fires NSF's oversight board
- throwaway457854 6mo ago[flagged]
- jazzyjackson 6mo agohighly reddited comment. it is possible for outrage to be organic.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- bigyabai 6mo ago> a very superficial article It's from science.org - how could it be less superficial, in your opinion as a reader?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- miniponk 6mo ago[flagged]
- skullone 6mo ago[flagged]
- antinomicus 6mo agoWhat a nasty, small minded, ignorant comment to make.
- deadlinermusic 6mo ago[dead]
- JumpCrisscross 6mo agoWhat are the equivalent institutions in China? Do they do open houses?
- joe_mamba 6mo agoWhy do you ask? Do you assume those fired NSF workers want to go work in China now? Or that China manages its domestic variant of the NSF better and accepts people critical of the CCP ideology?
- throwaway27448 6mo agoMost people in china are not members of the CPC. And yes, they clearly are more competent.
- superkuh 6mo agoSince science.org has made all their content inaccessible behind cloudflare here is a mirror of the article text, http://pastie.org/p/3coKAFruPfdJjw5s2H9tbX/raw http://pastie.org/p/3coKAFruPfdJjw5s2H9tbX/raw
- matt3210 6mo agoThere’s only one reason to get rid of all the smart people, shenanigans are afoot.
- dnnddidiej 6mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 6mo agoDr. Jessica Knurick has done a great job IMO breaking down how authoritarian governments co-opt science to their own ends and end up destroying it in the process. Here is one such article, https://open.substack.com/pub/drjessicaknurick/p/the-authoritarian-war-on-science https://open.substack.com/pub/drjessicaknurick/p/the-authori..., but she has lots of posts and short form videos explaining the topic.
- datsci_est_2015 6mo agoAnother example, aside from Lysenko, is Elena Ceausescu. Basically used her position of power as wife of the authoritarian figurehead to enforce her own version of scientific reality.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- throwaway48965 6mo ago[flagged]
- throwaway27448 6mo agoI've entirely lost track what people are complaining about wrt DEI; why not just say what you mean?
- Forbo 6mo ago[flagged]
- _blk 6mo ago[flagged]
- DennisP 6mo agoThose protestors are out there because they love America. They love it enough to try to make it better.
- p-e-w 6mo agoSerious question: What exactly do they love America for? I just don’t get it. Seems like in every way that matters to the common people, the US is at best mediocre. Could it be that they secretly subscribe to a different version of the same mythical exceptionalism as the president they despise?
- DennisP 6mo agoPeople love their home sports teams, even when they're losing. They love their kids, even when they're getting mediocre grades in school. It's like that. You're thinking of nationalism, which is when people think their country is the best one. Real patriotism is loving your country just because it's yours.
- behole 6mo ago[flagged]
- dnautics 6mo ago[flagged]
- kybernetikos 6mo agoAll systems have problems. What's your evidence that the system in the US is overall net negative? Pretty much the entire rest of the world would have loved to have a scentific system as good as that in the USA. The research output from both government and business was much more extensive and productive of value than the equivalent systems in europe for example.
- yalogin 6mo agoMeanwhile all the ceos of Apple, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, nvidia and palantir went to kiss his feet one more time. That obviously did not happen now but you would have believed it.
- jmyeet 6mo agoIt's just own-goal after owl-goal with this administration. Federal research funding (NIH, NSF, etc) becomes economic power. I personally think the government should get a return on their research dollars but basically federally funded research has been given away to private companies since 1980 [1]. Interestingly, the Bayh-Dole Act was signed by president Jimmy Carter in a lame duck Congress after Ronald Reagan's election victory. Federal research (via DARPA) is what gave the US so much control over the Internet. NIH funding into drugs gives US pharma companies a lot of power. mRNA technology was the product of decades of government-funded research. The US can (and does) wield that power to extract concessions from other countries. In a little over a year American power on the world stage has been eroded, even destroyed, to a scale that I never would've predicted or thought could happen so quickly. This is what I find so crazy: these moves are beyond performative politics. It's actually destructive to American power and corporate profits. Culture wars are meant to distract people while the government transfers money from government coffers to the wealthy. Culture wars aren't meant to be the goal. We're in a new era here. And of course it's going to be China who fills the research void. Well done, everybody, the system works. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act
- dnnddidiej 6mo ago[flagged]
- ycui1986 6mo ago[flagged]
- antibull 6mo ago[dead]
- jhack 6mo ago[flagged]
- mmmm2 6mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- stackghost 6mo agoThey're first at lots of things! Largest incarcerated population, highest infant mortality rate in the developed world, highest military spending, highest obesity rate in the developed world, highest rate of school shootings by a huge margin, and the highest gun ownership rate by a long shot (edit: pun not intended)! USA! USA! USA!
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- nlavezzo 6mo agoAll true. But also GDP, science and innovation, and charitable giving - both overall and per capita.
- stackghost 6mo ago>GDP Without question, but despite leading on GDP the USA lags behind in so many other key areas. It's astounding to those of us non-Americans that you can spend 30 Billion on the Iran war but you have elementary school children who are accruing "lunch debt" because they can't afford to pay for meals at school. Life in America seems so needlessly cruel. >science and innovation Not for long. The damage is already done, and America will cease to lead in this area in my lifetime, likely to never recover.
- imoverclocked 6mo ago… or at least the half that consider a felonious conman to be “one of them.”
- metalman 6mo ago[flagged]
- kenjackson 6mo agoSo is this a 2400% reduction in the number of NSF board members?
- tempestn 6mo agoThis is a reference to RJK Jr's pronouncement that Trump has a "different way of calculating percentages". Seems apt to me in this context.
- Terr_ 6mo agoVery much another "Emperor's New Clothes" situation. If the pathology was entirely within his own privately-owned company that'd be one thing, but Americans are going to continue to get hurt because of it.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- kelipso 6mo agoThat would leave one remaining member lol. I guess it would be infinity percentage reduction according to his math.
- napierzaza 6mo ago[dead]
- 0xbadcafebee 6mo agoAn expected part of Project 2025[1]. The end goal is to install Trump allies as heads of every agency that matters to their agenda, and to shut down all agencies that don't. This way by end of 2028 there is nobody left in government who can speak out against what they're going to do next. If you have not read Project 2025 in a while, I encourage you to revisit it[2]. In summary it's a point-by-point plan to take over the entire federal government in order to enforce a single political ideology and suppress dissent. You can track[3] it as it gets implemented. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 [2] https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade... [3] https://www.project2025.observer/en https://www.project2025.observer/en
- 0xy 6mo ago[flagged]
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoIn your mind all of this is perfectly normal? I just have to know
- 0xy 6mo ago[flagged]
- fzeroracer 6mo agoNo, no it is not.
- 0xy 6mo ago??? https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/08/biden-trump-military-advisory-boards-510526 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/08/biden-trump-militar...
- solid_fuel 6mo ago
- k310 6mo agoPutin is happy with his investment. Xi, we shall see.
- youre-wrong3 6mo agoJoke isn’t funny anymore
- JKCalhoun 6mo agoNo, and it's just not a joke anymore.
- k310 6mo agoSorry to agree. This decapitation of education, military, cyber-defense, public news, the arts, disaster preparedness, climate science ... the list goes on ... is so systematic that it can only be described as a fifth column effort to destroy the U.S. from inside, which Putin can't do from outside.
- SomaticPirate 6mo agoEvery American here has allowed the quickest decline of a superpower in history. The damage to our country is irreparable and going to result in a worse life for generations to come
- chiefalchemist 6mo agoBest I could tell, we were already there. DJT is simply a symptom. He’s what results after too many years of misrepresentation. He gets blamed for being the cause because those who actually led us into the decline don’t want to own their role in the mess. The fact that he got reelected is proof the status quo had lost the plot. Sure, he’s a scoundrel, but ultimately he’s a scapegoat.
- whatisthiseven 6mo agoOdd, why can't Trump be both cause and symptom? Surely, he has made things uniquely worse, and in ways that would not have happened without him.
- chiefalchemist 6mo agoDo what you gotta do to feel good. But giving a free pass to all the other contributors - the ones loudest about who is to blame - is foolish, at best. To each their own. Put another way, in terms of the political status quo, what changed between his two term? Hint: not a damn thing. That ain’t his fault. Your bias has blinded you
- BLKNSLVR 6mo agoYes, Trump is a figurehead for 'everything wing with the US' but he's become that figurehead by being incredibly and publicly active in the promotion of 'everything wrong with the US'. He deserves blame well above those who voted for him.
- XorNot 6mo agoThe American voter openly and obviously said "wow. Despite the numerous management failures, more of that please?" People didn't vote for change, they voted for the same thing they had 4 years ago that changed absolutely nothing. To quote Vaas from Far Cry 3: Do you know what the definition of insanity is?
- rectang 6mo agoTrying to find a silver lining and think positively... Will a future administration have an opportunity to build something new and better from scratch which would not have been possible due to institutional resistance before it was all burnt down?
- simonw 6mo agoIf we're really, really lucky. Destroying institutions is one heck of a lot easier than building new ones.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Tanoc 6mo agoIt's not even about rebuilding. Some things when destroyed can never be recreated, like trust, oceanliners, or the practice of Dísting. The initial event of destruction creates an expectation that it will happen again. Once it does happen the process accelerates itself until the full expectation is that whatever thing, concept, or practice can never exist again as anything more than a fleeting revival.
- selectodude 6mo agoThat’s the best case scenario - requires a lot of people currently involved in this to be jailed or executed before we can even begin to move on though. I’m not super optimistic.
- sega_sai 6mo agoPresumably next he will nominate Kushner, Dr. Oz and a few donors... What a shame for a country.
- jmspring 6mo ago[flagged]
- farfatched 6mo agoIs this something Putin specifically wanted, or just a general "Putin wants a weaker USA, and this action results in a weaker USA"?
- nothinkjustai 6mo ago> Putin and the like By this you just mean your political enemies?
- gnabgib 6mo agoYou said it yourself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47869742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47869742
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- RickJWagner 6mo ago[dead]
- fionic 6mo agoThere’s a lot of political commentary in these threads about how dumb the admin is this and that, sarcasm, etc. but is anyone able to share why this is such a truly beneficial org to our country? I’m just out of the loop on this and I’m genuinely asking, I have never really heard of them. But by the reactions in the comments they’re like the most blessed org of our country and accelerate innovation and advancement of the USA. It’s just a foundation? Please just let me know, I’m not trying to be weird and I’d appreciate being civil about it.
- eat_veggies 6mo agoFrom the Wikipedia article about the NSF: > With an annual budget of about $9.9 billion (fiscal year 2023), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing [...] Since the technology boom of the 1980s, the U.S. Congress has generally embraced the premise that government-funded basic research is essential for the nation's economic health and global competitiveness, and for national defense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation
- simonw 6mo agoThis is the kind of scientific research which companies don't generally pay for because it doesn't have direct commercial application, but that companies and the economy benefit from enormously because you can use the results of that science to build a great deal of useful commercial things.
- magicalhippo 6mo ago> This is the kind of scientific research which companies don't generally pay for because it doesn't have direct commercial application Tom over at the Explosions&Fire channel (and Extractions&Ire channel) just published a video[1] about his academic career. In it he noted that in Australia where he's located, the defense companies were an exception to that general rule, and did indeed sponsor a fair bit of basic research, including his PhD. I assume in areas they figured had potential, but still. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CbdVkcr-Nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CbdVkcr-Nw
- dublinstats 6mo agoNational Science Board. Not the entire NSF.
- dang 6mo agoGood catch. I've replaced the title above with the article's HTML doc title. (Submitted title was "Trump fires all 24 members of the U.S. National Science Foundation", which was probably just an attempt to fit HN's 80 char limit that had collateral damage)
- Ms-J 6mo agoHi dang, I sent you an email about all my comments showing up as dead and another problem, could you take a look when you get a chance? Thanks.
- dang 6mo agoI didn't see your email for some reason, but we banned your account around the time that you posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725717, which is obviously not ok to post to HN, regardless of who you're talking about.
- elijahwright 6mo agoAnd so Vannevar Bush’s legacy slips away from us all…
- big_toast 6mo agoInteresting history. From the wiki: "A Senate bill was introduced in February 1947 to create the National Science Foundation (NSF) to replace the OSRD. This bill favored most of the features advocated by Bush, including the controversial administration by an autonomous scientific board. The bill passed the Senate and the House, but was pocket vetoed by Truman on August 6, on the grounds that the administrative officers were not properly responsible to either the president or Congress." Also mentions the preceding organization OSRD (Office of Scientific Research & Development) and that they had tried to exempt it from conflict of interest regulations.
- pixelpoet 6mo agoI suppose that's a very effective way to stem the tide of pesky educated libruls. Not so smart now, are you? Just another day of America getting exactly what they twice voted for.
- CoastalCoder 6mo ago[flagged]
- pixelpoet 6mo agoIt's a term much like freedumb, mocking their celebration of ignorance, not their accent.
- SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago[flagged]
- pixelpoet 6mo agoIn my opinion the people who are deliberately destroying science and education should be prosecuted for literal textbook treason, not merely mocked. These are the "fuck your feelings" people whose feelings you're worrying about.
- SpicyLemonZest 6mo agoIt's the feelings of uninformed people who don't yet know what's going on that I'm worrying about. Saying things like "libruls" and "freedumb" makes it harder to build the coalition which we'll need to prosecute the perpetrators.
- donkey_brains 6mo agoEh, they’re probably too busy molesting their younger siblings to take notice or offense.
- andsoitis 6mo ago> U.S. President Donald Trump yesterday fired all 24 members of the National Science Board (NSB), the body that oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF). Many science advocates see it as the latest step by his administration to erode—some would say destroy—the independence of the 76-year-old research agency. If the US president has always been able to fire them, then they were never truly independent.
- mullingitover 6mo agoTBD, the defining trait of this administration is illegal acts that get overturned later. The point of this isn’t to be right, it’s “you might beat the rap, but you won’t beat the ride” abuse of process.
- andsoitis 6mo agoAre you claiming the US president does not have the right to fire them?
- SpicyLemonZest 6mo agoI reject the premise. The President is not a king, he isn't presumptively allowed to fire anyone he'd like. The statute establishing the National Science Board (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1863 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1863) does not give him any such power, so he doesn't have it.
- andsoitis 6mo agoNSB members are executive officers, the statute is silent on removal, and Article II makes presidential removal power the default. Silence means he can fire them.
- SpicyLemonZest 6mo agoArticle II says no such thing. Humphrey's Executor established a useful compromise between "the Constitution is silent on removal" and "come on, is it really impossible to fire a postmaster?", but Trump has chosen to defect from that compromise so I no longer feel bound to accept it. Until he reinstates all independent agency heads he's purported to fire, I don't accept any removals he performs without explicit authority as legitimate.
- jkestner 6mo agoThis should feel personal to a lot of us. I have hopes of applying to the Small Business Innovation Research fund (https://seedfund.nsf.gov https://seedfund.nsf.gov), a program that gives small companies a good chunk of money without taking equity, in order to encourage development of technologies deemed of national importance. I’d be curious if anyone here has tried applying in the last 18 months.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- epistasis 6mo agoI was helping some people working on their phase I SBIR throughout the first year of Trump, and they often didn't know who to report to, as the firings were so relentless and pointless and completely disorganized. They got the highest possible rating upon completion, but have not been able to apply for Phase 2, so the project is effectively dead as they pursued other opportunities. It's hard to imaging a more wasteful and destructive set of actions over the past year, except just shutting it all down. Money was still spent, less than usual, but in a way that ensured it was squandered, and that seeds that were planted could not grow. However, it was apparently reauthorized on April 14, as my NIH newsletter this week linked to this April 21 announcement that SBIRs and STTRs are back! https://grants.nih.gov/news-events/nih-extramural-nexus-news/2026/04/its-official-nihs-small-business-program-is-back https://grants.nih.gov/news-events/nih-extramural-nexus-news...
- BidenSniffer 6mo ago[flagged]
- tomlockwood 6mo agoThe communist small business funding scheme.... Interesting.
- nneonneo 6mo ago
- readitalready 6mo agoI'm OK with it. You're supposed to destroy countries that are committing genocide. And Trump is doing that for us without us even firing a shot. And I really do believe Trump wants to destroy the US, as his base are not aligned with the liberal democratic values that are led by racist genocidal maniacs anyways. There really is no moral defense of the US at this point, given the last few years of the genocide it is actively committing under both parties. Looking forward to whoever replaces the US as the leaders of the free world. Iran? Cuba? China? Greenland?
- BLKNSLVR 6mo agoWhat I find amusing is how cheaply Trump is profiting. He and his family will have made a handful of billions of dollars, whilst costing the US an incalculable number of trillions over the next few decades. Trump will have been an incredibly cheap victory for whichever new superpowers emerge. I half expect the entire Trump family to move to Dubai in 2029.
- solid_fuel 6mo ago> I half expect the entire Trump family to move to Dubai in 2029. Russia, maybe Israel. Not Dubai. Dubai will remain too closely tied to the next administration in the US without a major change in our energy supply. But yes I think it is highly likely that many of the criminals in this administration and the trump family will flee the country and take their pilfered millions with them once they are out of power.
- bdangubic 6mo agoThey are not moving anywhere. Baron will be President one day, this is about as certainty as that Sun will rise tomorrow morning. As much as people may like or not the Trump family is now part (big part) of the fabric of the United States and he will be remember (for better or worse) as one of the most influential Presidents ever. The fact that he should be in rotting in prison (probably should have spent most of his adult life there for crimes he committed before he ever got into politics) is a moot now. He will live in NYC and Mar-a-Largo, his family is not going anywhere and will be in the White House again in 8 to 12 years.
- runnr_az 6mo agoDon't worry - I'm sure the people he hires will be super super competent, like the rest of the folks he's hired to run departments and whatnot
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- hakrgrl 6mo agoTrump is a disruptor. I am interested to see how this plays out and whether he replaces anyone. One thing I've learned since COVID is, unfortunately, to be more skeptical of medical authorities. We were lied to in so many ways and all the while forced to "trust the science" and so called experts. But they were caught either wrong or lying way too many times. So I am not going to assume outright all the people he fired are perfectly honest or unbiased scientists, and I hope Trump has a plan going forward. TDS is a thing, and anything he does is met with resistance. He could cure cancer and people would still be mad at him somehow.
- voganmother42 6mo agoall he builds are monuments to himself. The line about cancer gets trotted out often, is he doing anything to cure cancer? All I see is corruption, but sure must be the detractors who are deranged - that is why you can point to all the good he has done right? I mean I bet his plan is similar to his healthcare plan, or his plans for trade, or his plans for peace.
- datsci_est_2015 6mo agoFunny that you mention TDS, as it sounds like you might have Covid Derangement Syndrome. I.e. an unhealthy obsession and preoccupation with Covid, leading it to warp your view of the world in sharply irrational ways.
- jesseendahl 6mo agoThere are so many bots/trolls on HN now, it's crazy.
- arealaccount 6mo ago[flagged]
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoI tried codex but found out it's not about how the model is but it's really about how Claude is better.
- Freedom2 6mo agoAre they initiating or continuing curious discussion? If so, then by all means they are following the most important HN guidelines so nothing can really be done.
- fc417fc802 6mo agoUnfortunately there's a large grey zone (IMO) between what the rules forbid and curious discussion that's productive. Those that seek to game the system don't generally stand out as bad actors since that would hinder their goals.
- tomhow 6mo agoBot/AI generated comments are specifically against the guidelines (and also implicitly, given the fact that bots aren't curious).
- wallst07 6mo agoHow do you 100% determine a comment is form a bot/troll?
- IAmGraydon 6mo agoSimple. He just finds a comment he doesn’t like and attributes it to a bot because surely all real people agree with him and his infallible sense of things.
- hakrgrl 6mo ago[flagged]
- selectodude 6mo ago[flagged]
- dang 6mo agoIf you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47906165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47906165, it was downvoted 15 seconds after you posted it, and flagged 26 seconds after you posted it. In both cases, this looks like users using the site normally.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- gverrilla 6mo agoMAGA are hurting the USA a thousand times more than "terrorists" ever did. Next to Trump, Bin Laden is like a schoolboy.
- mindslight 6mo ago[flagged]
- jwpapi 6mo agoI’m trying to understand what rationale could be behind this decision. America has grandly benefitted hugely from their scientific community. All the hyperscaler could build up because the engineers felt good in America. This might not kill it, but it risks it. What could be the reason he’s doing it, how does he benefit from it, or thinks he benefits from it?
- chronofar 6mo agoPerhaps you answered your own question. I think our confusion sometimes stems from assuming those in charge must want to benefit that which they are charged with stewarding.
- MaxfordAndSons 6mo agoSeems pretty clear to me. It A) gives business funding that would otherwise have to give up equity to VCS or sell to PE or whatever other forms of private, for-profit funding. And B) takes away money that could go to the military or ICE or other programs that could be used to concentrate Trumps power or aggrandizement. > America has grandly benefitted hugely from their scientific community. Has Trump and his friend benefited from this program? No? Then this doesn't matter.
- jwpapi 6mo agoThanks
- bhadass 6mo agothe honest answer is it's not really about science at all; its about removing independent oversight. the "benefit" from his perspective is the same playbook trump admin has been running across every federal agency, he wants to replace independent experts with loyalists, remove checks on executive power, and redirect spending toward admin priorities. the board members served six year terms specifically to insulate science funding from political cycles. that's a feature to everyone else and a bug to this administration.
- 6mo ago
- qsera 6mo ago[flagged]
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoTroll post.
- qsera 6mo agoLook, I choose to be honest and see the response I am getting. Being called a troll. Is it really surprising that I can relate?
- bigyabai 6mo agoNo, not surprising. But some of your statements are hard to square with the current circumstances, so help us understand where you're coming from: > When he says "I will end the war in three days", I think he genuinely believes it. So I think he is genuine. This is what Putin said about his "Special military operation" that has stretched on for 4 years now. Hostomel turned into an irreversible, taxing conflict on the Russian people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport If the United States' hubris costs it half as much as Russia's did, we'll never be respected on the global stage again. The best option was to honor and enforce Iran's JCPOA agreement with the IAEA, but that's not possible now that America and Israel climbed the escalation ladder. Any deal we strike under duress will be worse and cost taxpayers more than peacetime diplomacy. I think we can see eye-to-eye with each other, but I'd have to hear how you think this type of strategy benefits America. From the macro-scale, this does nothing to bolster a conflict over the First island chain and weakens America's strategic credibility abroad. Iran and Israel are a sideshow compared to the eventual conflict with China, and the results we've seen from the Persian Gulf do not bode well for America's power projection.
- fc417fc802 6mo agoLargely agreed but if one expects any sort of escalation with China that actually makes this (and Ukraine) quite useful by providing real world data about the recent technological changes to war as well as serving as a minor stress test for the military's organizational structures. To be clear I don't mean to imply that as being even remotely reasonable as justification.
- ernesto905 6mo agoFrom the administration's perspective, why was this a good idea? I'm scouring the web but I'm struggling to find a steel-man. My best guess is that this is to control where the research dollars go which I'll summarize below, but wondering if anyone has better ideas. From what I've read it seems the administration is very anti-social sciences, and very pro nuclear, AI, quantum. Thought from what I can tell most of the funding already goes to the hard sciences [1]. There were cuts proposed over the last few months but they were shut down by congress [2]. I suppose by cutting off the head of the org it's an easier fight to cut funding FY2027? [1]: https://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/all https://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/all [2]: https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2026/04/nsf-lags-trump-proposes-cuts https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2026/04/nsf-lags-trump-proposes-...
- rambojohnson 6mo agoevery headline coming out of america is so god damn nauseating. empire on rapid collapse.
- rssoconnor 6mo agoTime for scientists to return to the Invisible College: a guild of science that keeps their research to themselves for the benefit of their own membership.
- tacocataco 6mo agoSounds like a industry wide union.
- fmajid 6mo agoSo is he going to replacer them with antivaxxers, flat earthers or lyssenkists?
- IAmGraydon 6mo agoI wasn't aware of Lysenkoism, so thanks for mentioning it. Fascinating and eerily similar to current events.
- fmajid 6mo agoEven more amazing is the history of Nikolai Vavilov, the geneticist persecuted by Lysenko, who founded seed banks, and the incredibly brave and dedicated staff of the Leningrad seed bank who died in excruciating pain from starvation rather than eat the seeds during the Nazi siege of Leningrad.
- fleroviumna 6mo ago[dead]
- cindyllm 6mo ago[dead]
- Henchman21 6mo agoLots of comments here where people simply refuse to understand the mission: Trump's goal is to destroy the United States of America at the behest of his foreign handlers. You can deny it all you want, but it is the only thing that matches up with all his actions.