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WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

• amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
  A return of Lysenkoism. Nice!
  • fkdk 4mo ago
    Next up: Lawmakers put Indiana pi bill back on the table.
    • InsideOutSanta 4mo ago
      New study shows: earth has four corners.
      • fmobus 4mo ago
        4 Earth Quadrants simultaneously rotate inside 4 Time Cube Quarters to create 4 - 24 hour days within one Earth rotation.
  • RiverCrochet 4mo ago
    I'm betting in that particular time and place you couldn't privately conduct scientific research under Lysenkoism. It had to be approved by the government to exist at all. I'm no historical expert nor USSR expert though. If these rules go into effect, is it not true that individuals, state governments, and non-governmental organizations could still fund scientific research that the federal government won't fund? Of course there's still research that only the federal government could fund. A big example is e.g. DARPA and the Internet. Imagine if that was only funded and supported by a few states.
    • Starman_Jones 4mo ago
      > If these rules go into effect, is it not true that individuals, state governments, and non-governmental organizations could still fund scientific research that the federal government won't fund? This administration’s actions towards Harvard and other schools would suggest not. If a state or university is doing verboten research, the federal government can make them stop. Previously, that didn’t happen - it was unthinkable. Now, it’s forever on the table.
  • ndsipa_pomu 4mo ago
    Brawndo's got what plants crave!
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• pstuart 4mo ago
  I'm curious to see how this is defended by the party members here. Science should be guided by science, not ideology.
  • jordanpg 4mo ago
    Unfortunately, these are agency rules. Congress can intervene, but only with major legislative action, which is unlikely. There will be hearings and Senators will express great concern, but the Administration will probably be able to do whatever they want. If anything slows this down, it will be the courts.
    • pstuart 4mo ago
      The courts have truly been the last line of defense. Congress being neutered is not an accident, hopefully it will be less fucked if the power balance shifts. And as the OP is inherently political in what it's calling out, that is not the motivation -- it's the science. I get the fact that in the end, everything's political but partisanship itself is a cancer on the body politic. Just as we seem to be in late-stage capitalism, we are entering late-stage democracy. It pains me that we effectively arrive here by choice.
      • esseph 4mo ago
        > hopefully it will be less fucked if the power balance shifts. We are never going back to where we were. That is past us now. There is only forward.
        • pstuart 4mo ago
          We are very much in uncharted waters and the rules have been thrown out the window. At the risk of repeating myself, wherever we are it is effectively collectively by choice. It's all about hearts and minds, but really hearts. I've come to the horrific realization that hate and stupidity are easily weaponized (I'm a slow learner), but hopefully that can be outnumbered.
• ChrisArchitect 4mo ago
  Related: What's Happening to Science in America https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48313687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48313687
  • gjvc 4mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ChrisArchitect https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ChrisArchitect
• globalnode 4mo ago
  Its all the way down to the bottom now, enjoy.
• quantum_state 4mo ago
  It would spell the start of major corruption and the end of American sciences. God, please do something about it!
  • rayiner 4mo ago
    You don't need God's intervention. If you trust the scientific establishment to make decisions on how to allocate taxpayer dollars, then vote for an executive who promises to do that. Definitely don't vote for the guy who campaigned on taking discretion away from unelected bureaucrats.
    • unclebucknasty 4mo ago
      Many of us did vote for sane ideas, like allowing scientists to make decisions about science. For instance, we knew RFK Jr would be a disaster and here we are, dealing with a resurgence of preventable diseases. In fact, "unelected bureaucrats" have been the key to whatever degree of success this democracy has enjoyed. Politicizing everything replaces non-partisan expertise with political loyalty and favoritism. It's a direct path to the destruction of critical institutions, undermining the public trust, and authoritarianism.
      • decremental 4mo ago
        [dead]
      • rayiner 4mo ago
        [flagged]
        • InsideOutSanta 4mo ago
          You start your comment with "False", but then fail to provide any actual evidence for why it's false.
        • kelnos 4mo ago
          Perhaps if we'd had "unelected bureaucrats" in the 1800s, we would have done even better? Hard to say, really. We had all these "unelected bureaucrats" post-WWII, and we did quite well in the following decades. Scientists and academics fleeing the US is a new phenomenon, driven in no small part by these "unelected bureaucrats" being fired and replaced by political loyalists. While you're correct in saying that we had lots of success before the establishment of the administrative state, it doesn't then follow that we'd have more (or better) success by abolishing it now. It seems like the opposite is slowly becoming true.
• Georgelemental 4mo ago
  > “We warned of this exact form of government overreach in science a year ago,” says Colette Delawalla, founder of the science advocacy group Stand Up for Science. “It replaces expertise with political appointees, globally decouples the U.S. and completely guts our scientific ecosystem.” If you want to be independent of the government, don't take money from the government. If you are mad because you don't agree with how the government is making decisions, say so. But don't pretend it has anything to do with "government overreach"
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  • paulryanrogers 4mo ago
    Science has often been funded by private and state benefactors. Regardless of the source, it's most often successful when the funds have few or no strings attached. Perhaps more political oversight will make research more accountabile to the population at large. In this era I suspect it's far more likely to benefit the few, those born into power and fame who are consolidating their power. Scientists with resources and accountable only to other scientists are uniquely dangerous to those unwilling to give up their power.
  • kelnos 4mo ago
    Yeah, it's a little disingenuous to make an argument like that. This isn't overreach; it seems like it's completely allowed by the law written when Congress delegated spending decisions around these kinds of grants to the executive branch. We may not like it (I certainly don't), but this is one of the times when Trump seems to actually be acting within his authority, and not pushing at or past those limits.
• wrs 4mo ago
  And a generation of young scientists starts packing their bags...
  • glitchc 4mo ago
    To where?
    • thatcat 4mo ago
      A Thielian sea steading homeless encampment for intellectuals in international waters named Titanic II.
    • Taek 4mo ago
      To somewhere other than science
    • era-epoch 4mo ago
      personally know american scientists who are well into the process of relocating their work to institutions in canada or europe
      • bayarearefugee 4mo ago
        Similarly, I know several scientists who were born in Europe but were long-term residents of the US running university labs here who already moved back to Europe last year, when it became pretty obvious where this was all heading.
      • glitchc 4mo ago
        I think this works well if you're originally from Europe, but not otherwise.
    • darknavi 4mo ago
      Beyond the environment
      • genxy 4mo ago
• srean 4mo ago
  Wait, wasn't that post revolution USSR / Mao's China ? Or in their words, only correct science is "Marxist" science
  • SubiculumCode 4mo ago
    When Republicans start proposing Communist policies, they are MAGA, not Republicans.
    • fnordpiglet 4mo ago
      Neither cited countries are/were communist, they are authoritarian. That’s the political system of government, capitalism and communism is the economic system.
      • SubiculumCode 4mo ago
        Fine.
      • pdpi 4mo ago
        The two aren’t independent. Marx’s idea of communism required a “dictatorship of the proletariat” as an intermediate stage between capitalism and communism. Lenin took that notion and, under the pretence of needing absolute power to prevent a counter-revolution, turned it into the totalitarian regime of the USSR. Since then, communism and totalitarianism have gone hand in hand.
        • defrost 4mo ago
          With the aside that most of this bored me stupid 40 years past and still does today ... Marx's "dictatorship" as used by Marx back in the days of late nights in the British Libraries wasn't the authoritarian "dictatorship" we associate with the term today. In the 19th century, the term "dictatorship" did not yet have the modern connotation of an authoritarian, autocratic one-man rule. Its meaning was derived from the ancient Roman dictatura, a constitutionally sanctioned office for a magistrate granted extraordinary powers during an emergency. For Marx and Engels, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was not a specific form of government but a term for the class content of the state that would follow a proletarian revolution. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletaria... Sure, Lenin had a hard on for authoritarian behaviour and started the USSR trend of dangling a communist utopia as a reward for grinding through petty nitpicking committees and even more hard core authoritarians .. but that's more the bait and switch of human greed than any necessary coupling of communes and boot first hierarchies.
• michaelhoney 4mo ago
  and so continue the decline to a dumber, poorer, nastier nation
• spacedoutman 4mo ago
  Well, america had a good run i guess? Hope china can step up and fill the gap.
  • yahway 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    • deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
  • rayiner 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    • idiotsecant 4mo ago
      Wow, it's not often that you get to see someone unironically defend cronyism and nepotism as a goal to be reached rather than a cancer to be eradicated. I guess it really does take all strokes.
      • Jtsummers 4mo ago
        rayiner has previously written that he thinks all non-property owners in the US to be disenfranchised. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46885305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46885305 > Instead, the electorate should be narrowed to property owning people who have an IQ above 85 (within one SD of median) and two grandparents born in the U.S. (so culturally assimilated). Really, nothing he writes is surprising.
        • rayiner 4mo ago
          I believe in a country where the top 75% or so of people vote and that directly influences the administration of government. You want a country where 100% of people vote, but their vote is merely a suggestion to the credentialed professionals and lawyers that actually run the country. I am by far the more egalitarian one. Sure, if you think Americans are sheep to be herded—what Woodrow Wilson called the “unphilosophical bulk of humanity”—by credentialed experts who make the important decisions, you have no problem with the dumbest, least responsible people voting. Because in your model voting is just a signal of approval/disapproval, not genuine self governance. You can’t afford to do that if you think the effect of people’s votes should be direct and not filtered through an expert class that second guesses them.
• cookiengineer 4mo ago
  But it's got electrolytes! My question is now: Which company is gonna buy the IRS now?
  • jaggs 4mo ago
    My vote is on Brawndo.
  • overfeed 4mo ago
    "Intuit IRS" has a ring to it. In the same umbrella org as Turbo Tax, for the obvious revenue-growth synergy, and long-term strategic alignment that unlocks tax-payer value.
    • anticensor 4mo ago
      That sounds a lot like Kemal Unakıtan model, that purported to privatise the Administration of Privatisation.
• whatshisface 4mo ago
  This may seem extreme, but it must be considered in the full context of the package of policy proposals that would also eliminate the grants themselves. This balances out any concerns of bias. See you in 50 years when we read about the consequences (on European electronics.) :')
  • srean 4mo ago
    Europe needs to get it's shit together. It has very not been together.
    • nielsbot 4mo ago
      Nothing like the collapse of the global hegemon to spur you into action...
    • ZeroGravitas 4mo ago
      Though most of the people who say that kind of thing about Europe seem to have no problem with the people doing this kind of thing that is under discussion. So was it a clear eyed critique of government policy or was it just idiotic support of fascism? There's a dude in this thread openly supporting cronyism in government and there's been a general undercurrent of open contempt for democracy, so we can't really assume good faith and sanity from people.
      • throwawayqqq11 4mo ago
        It's a mix of bias, cluelessness and straight sociopathic malice that culminates into this insanity. We urgently need to establish a name and maybe even a pathological classification for it! People effected by this personality disorder should not be in any positions of power but eligible for professional help, therapy. If you disagree with this, then first seek a secondary professional medical oppinion from a Trump University Dr. med., before responding.
• idiotsecant 4mo ago
  The natural state of all human political systems is autocracy. It takes constant vigilance to keep the train on the tracks and avoid that low energy state. The problem is that we only really see the consequences of these kinds of immensely stupid policies once every few generations. Nobody alive was around the last time we had this argument, so we get to do it all over again.
• 0xbadcafebee 4mo ago
  > The OMB is headed by Russell Vought, lead architect of Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan for the Trump administration. This is far scarier than any single rule about research grants, and I'm not sure why nobody's talking about this. The OMB writes the budget to enact federal policy. And critically, no federal regulation can exist with the OMB approving it. By making this appointment explicitly political, they have carte blanche to completely rewrite all federal regulations to be exclusively conservative ones. This would have been crazy to attempt before, but with Trump 2.0, this is the new norm. One of the things they are doing right now (it's been approved and the rules are now active and legal, so it is now happening) is converting 50,000 civil servant jobs into political appointments. This means having a job in government no longer serves the whole nation, it's now an ideological function to serve a single political party. Literally weaponizes the federal government to punish opposing political views and enforce one view on everyone (there's no other point to political appointment). And if the party in charge ever changes, it now means everyone will be laid off and replaced. Every few years. So nothing will ever get done in government now, except for extreme short-term pushes for radical political agendas, because nobody will stay long enough to know how the government works to do anything else. Move fast and break things with the largest economy in the world, radical political agendas, and 380M people. The OMB also can review and block all proposed legislation going to Congress, vet all official congressional testimony, and block any agency from publicly disagreeing with the President. Military generals, health officials, science experts, ecologists, intelligence directors... they can block all of them from giving any testimony to Congress. That's an actual power the OMB has. They can also block money Congress has already allocated, meaning that your representatives in government are now completely useless, because whatever party is in the Executive can nerf anything your reps have passed. The Supreme Court could do something about it, but won't, because it's now a Conservative Supermajority. There is no reason for them to disagree because they already ideologically agree. Finally, the OMB can issue a rule that every agency that wasn't officially under the Executive before, has to submit all its rules for Executive approval. Meaning the Executive would control all government agencies. In any other context, in any other country, this would be called a single-party authoritarian coup. When they create rules that outlaw other political parties (that's what authoritarian governments do to retain single party control) - and assuming the democrats don't just give up - it will be the official start of civil war. Coming to you Fall 2028.
• insane_dreamer 4mo ago
  Another terrible blow to science. It's going to take decades to recover from this even after Trump and his corrupt cronies are gone.
• thisisit 4mo ago
  It seems seeding chaos is the only thing these guys know how to do. What happens (or happened) when the shoe is on the other foot and the other guy wants to push climate science and vaccines? Run to Texas courts to stop the federal government? Thereby wasting lot of time doing nothing. I can only say Bravo to Americans who think this constant fighting is somehow going to help the country.
  • stouset 4mo ago
    I think we all need to be honest with ourselves about the fact that they are very clearly not intending to ever allow the shoe to be on the other foot. The upcoming midterms are very plausibly the last free and fair elections we will ever have in this country. As deeply unpopular as this administration is right now, the Democrats will need an enormous amount of luck for the size of historic landslide it will require to take the house and senate, and even then they need to do so by enough that they can impeach and convict. That is just about the only plausible path towards preserving democracy at this point. And I’m not really holding out hope. I’d be happy to be told that I’m wrong. So please, tell me I’m wrong.
    • Alpha3031 4mo ago
      If a conviction really happens wouldn't the very fine people just invade the capitol again?
      • stouset 4mo ago
        Or Trump himself would simply refuse to step down, and have the might of the U.S. military brass behind him. If you can’t tell, I am not hopeful.
        • kelnos 4mo ago
          > and have the might of the U.S. military brass behind him Would he, though? I know the top US military brass have gone through some changes during this administration, but if the military sees a lawful impeachment and lawful conviction, I think enough would refuse (clearly illegal) orders to keep Trump in the White House. Honestly I'd be more worried about the loyalists at the top of the FBI, US Marshals, Secret Service, etc. Either way, it's incredibly improbable that Democrats will control a supermajority of the Senate next year (or, failing that, have enough Republican support to convict), so we probably won't have to find out what happens in this scenario.
• rullelito 4mo ago
  Americans and Republicans seem so fine with this. Amazing to see this happen live.
  • nielsbot 4mo ago
    Republicans in power and the capitalist political class, sure. But the average American on the street? They don't want this.
    • deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    • chneu 4mo ago
      But they're not willing to give up their 3rd Starbucks or the day or the door dash delivery or Amazon prime. They all too overworked. Only poors go to protests.
    • hdgvhicv 4mo ago
      They voted for this. In larger numbers than in 2020 and 2016.
      • pindab0ter 4mo ago
        What is this "this" you're referring to? Was this on the ballot? Did Trump announce that he would do this? It seems very easy to just blame this on the voter like this.
        • piva00 4mo ago
          This = this person is clearly morally corrupt, displaying a pattern of behaviour over decades of being untrustworthy, a liar, and taking advantage for personal gains. People decided to elect that person, it's part of the package.
        • footy 4mo ago
          I'm Canadian and I can tell you this was always part of Project 2025, which was extremely obviously the plan all along. So I don't know. Assuming the American voter can read and and access to the internet, it's kind of pathetic to imply they couldn't have known
• khriss 4mo ago
  'A republic, if you can keep it' Reply by Ben Franklin, when asked about what kind of govt the newly independent United States should have. The words seem particularly fitting in current times.
• digitaltrees 4mo ago
  After all the work to build a meritocracy and professional non political expert bureaucracy… in only a year they have reintroduced the spoils system. Politicians will now be given budgets to reward supporters with the financial spoils of their power. So gross
• nomilk 4mo ago
  This means research projects will be optimised for political boasting. Sounds terrible, but is it? It incentivises high-impact research (otherwise politicians can't boast about it), and less research into trivialities that common sense says aren't worth the public funding.
  • kelnos 4mo ago
    It means research projects will also be optimized for political ideology. That's not good.
  • insane_dreamer 4mo ago
    No, it incentivizes research that is aligned with the current administration's political ideologies. > common sense says aren't worth the public funding who is deciding what is "common sense"?
  • FriedFishes 4mo ago
    "less research intro trivialities that common sense says aren't worth the public funding" In your eyes, science and research is a linear process, governed by some "common sense", in which important and high impact discoveries are found as an immediate and direct consequences of the previous important and high impact discovery? I'm trying not to get angry at a stupid HN comment, but surely we can think through what we write sometimes.
  • tsimionescu 4mo ago
    Consider one basic question: how much high-impact research do you think this would incentivize into global warming? Or is the looming global ecological catastrophe not high-impact enough?
  • defrost 4mo ago
    A lot of political appointees struggled with Why should we pay for shrimp running on treadmills? (The case for curiosity-driven research) ~ https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/03/basic-science-curiosity-driven-research-gila-monster-glp1s-shrimp-treadmills/ https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/03/basic-science-curiosity-... Some just couldn't grasp the why, others understood perfectly well why their major donors wanted to squash studies on environmental stressors that might impact fisheries.
• stymaar 4mo ago
  Great idea, all the US needed was scientific political commissars…
• general1465 4mo ago
  Just add political commissars to army units (aka politruks) and horseshoe theory can be considered completely proven
• enoint 4mo ago
  https://archive.ph/kYkjS https://archive.ph/kYkjS
• wileydragonfly 4mo ago
  Remember when the director of NIH, an unlicensed MD, lied to congress two months ago and swore the award letters were coming? I do.
• jmclnx 4mo ago
  I am sure China is loving what the US/Trump is doing. Already China is about to take the lead in medical research and I think it is ahead in renewable energy. With this, I guess the US will end up as a third rate country much quicker.
  • Carioca 4mo ago
    A friend in a prestigious European university said that applications were up in basically all fields
    • NordStreamYacht 4mo ago
      Win win for Europe and the USA, both get what they want.
      • gwerbin 4mo ago
        I think most Americans, if polled, would prefer to be the global hub of scientific research, instead of an isolated silo of research that only follows a politically approved agenda.
        • footy 4mo ago
          They were polled, on election day. Most Americans want this, or didn't care enough to stop it. Potato, potahto.
          • amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
            I would guess that if you polled voters on election Day, and asked them why they voted for Trump, science funding wouldn't even come up as a topic. They would probably talk about high prices, or criminal aliens, or how they didn't like Harris.
            • krior 4mo ago
              Doesn't change the fact that the US voted for this.
• tempodox 4mo ago
  If you want to stay a scientist, you have to emigrate. The art of continually licking the right asses to keep funding going is not science.
  • jadar 4mo ago
    Hasn’t academia always been that way?
    • deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    • gcr 4mo ago
      Yes but in ways whose solutions admit some level of creativity or ingenuity
    • deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    • SamoyedFurFluff 4mo ago
      Generally, academia has always had a measure of bias to it. However the bias was never so blatant and never so against producing an environment where good research could feasibly be created. The vast majority of research is non political increments of existing non political increments where the main conflicts are personal beefs among flawed individual PIs and maybe being asked what fig leaf one offers to ensure that the funding doesn’t just go to a bunch of white wealthy straight men. Once you have funding you can be set for years to focus on your work, assuming you don’t do something dumb like make sexist or racist remarks, and even then your funding is generally secure you just might not get a new round 3 years later(probably will though because controversies die pretty fast). I know a lot of hay and media exists about how academia is yadda yadda biased and anti intellectual. But of course a lot of that is cherry picked examples of controversial figures or individual missteps among individual institutions. This is a bit like taking a classroom with one rowdy asshole and then declaring the whole school must use physical violence as discipline from now on.
      • 4mo ago
• gwerbin 4mo ago
  More of the same at this point. If you are politically connected, or stay in an narrow lane of approved work, you get your grant. But if you stray from the politically approved path, or appear disloyal to our First Citizen and the Party, then your grant will be canceled. The remaining supporters of the incumbent party like to claim that they aren't actually doing anything worse than in the past, and if anything they are just cracking down on things that they see as subjectively bad, so it's fine. And there's an element of truth in that: so much of American policy for a long time has been subject to agency interpretation and judicial review, and there was always room for political maneuvering and corruption in the system. Where the truth becomes a lie is the omission that this is the systematic ramping up from something that happens occasionally in a mostly-functioning system, to something that happens constantly and is systematically designed to facilitate corruption and politicization.
  • reactordev 4mo ago
    The Chairman will have the final say
    • GuestFAUniverse 4mo ago
      Do you mean zombie-homelander?
  • skywhopper 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    • coldtea 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      • mavelikara 4mo ago
        > A law which will be used from the opposite side just as well, as soon as the power switches hands again. This is the real test. If these changes are so bad, will someone campaign bare on overturning these? Will the “other side” change it? If they don’t, you know that they also agreed with it - this handwringing now is just for show.
• ck2 4mo ago
  if the Dems don't also take back the Senate, this country is done it will take longer than this decade, maybe even next, to restore the brain loss and faith in secure jobs for research basically this country will just become a highway of non-stop warehouses, alternating ICE prisons vs "AI" datacenters science, medicine, all research and development just gone to other countries
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  • SadErn 4mo ago
    [dead]
  • soraminazuki 4mo ago
    [dead]
  • platevoltage 4mo ago
    Ever notice how there really always just enough Democrats in the senate to tank a progressive bill? The Senate needs to go honestly.
    • culi 4mo ago
      When the constitution was first written up, senators were all appointed. People had to fight to amend the constitution to allow us to even vote for senators. And the presidency was definitely not meant to have as much impact as it does today. The whole thing seemed drawn up to give the "vibes" of a democracy while protecting elite interests. In fact James Madison basically explicitly admits this in Federalist No. 10. He supposed that true democracy would result in people voting to redistribute wealth and, the founding fathers all being bourgeois, that just wouldn't do.
• intended 4mo ago
  At a US conference last year, people thronged a session that talked about studying in Korea. This would be an empty room at, pretty much, any point in the past several decades. The amount of capability that America is burning is impressive. I suspect that people outside of academia are not as alarmed, since its not part of daily life. However it matters the same way that a drug discovery today is life saving 10 years down the line, after its gone through all the processes to go to market.
  • gmueckl 4mo ago
    The PHD level domai experts that will enter the labor market about ten years from now are the generation that enters college now. Some of the best teachers and advisors will no longer be at US institutuons by then. So this expert pool will shrink, setting back companies working on cutting edge stuff that drives economic growth. The full impact of the current science policy will take time to materialize, but it will have a big effect beyond academia.
• xtiansimon 4mo ago
  > “The document would also ban…block spending on things like publishing papers and attending conferences.” This is not just picking which ideas the government supports. This sounds like it’s taking all the “fun” out of having grant funding. Sure, that’s a flip remark, but doesn’t this have a similar sense of arguments against other government funded programs? ~SNAP food assistance is raising food prices~ [1] or ~SNAP food assistance is my tax dollars going towards anyone who says they’re hungry.~ [2] And don’t forget to mention the replication crisis. ~Public funded grants let scientists go to parties and publish junk science.~ The cynical would argue it’s proof the scientific community is filled with charlatans milking a system that can’t police itself. [1]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYNZT43R705/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYNZT43R705/ [2]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY2k2MNxf97/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY2k2MNxf97/
  • lmeyerov 4mo ago
    Useless russian-troll-style argument: - With no workers working, no worker fraud problem, sure. If you cut core scientific processes, politicize science, and destablize paycheck predictability enough to chase everyone good out of science, then yes any small amount of waste is also caught in the cuts. - This seems to increase what you call bad "fun": Increases abuse of tax funding being corruptly given to projects advocated by political appointees despite rejection by scientific peer review. Vicious feedback loop.
    • xtiansimon 4mo ago
      > "Useless russian-troll-style argument" Surprise! I'm just a middle-age American reading HN with his coffee trying to wrap my head around the topic. I don't think this remark helps anyone understand your argument. Doth protest too much. I'm wondering if you're focused on the "approved" science, and missing the idea this corruption is riding on the back of even a "small amount of waste", and an overall rejection of scientific activities in the face of the replication crisis. All part of the schism of your facts and our facts insanity.
      • lmeyerov 4mo ago
• ChrisLTD 4mo ago
  It’s sad to watch my country commit suicide. Not only will my compatriots be poorer for it, but the rest of the world will be too.
  • libertine 4mo ago
    Well it could be worse because in the end it's still a democracy, for how long that's yet to be seen. Look at Russia, they jumped off a cliff to protect a regime from democracy, and people are checked out - they take no accountability and still act confused of why Russia is being despised - all while accelerating economic and demographic decline with more than one million casualties in a special 3 day military operation. You can't make this up.
    • chadgpt3 4mo ago
      Russia is a de-jure democracy, just like the US. In fact I'm not sure what difference there is between them.
      • flohofwoe 4mo ago
        Captain Obvious here, but the number of defenestrations (or generally mysterious "suicides" of people not agreeing enough with the government) is much higher in Russia than in the US. In the US you might get your funds cancelled, in Russia you'll get your life cancelled instead - and not in the metaphorical sense. Also as incompetent as the current US government is, the incompetence of the Russian government is on a whole different level (the "3 days to Kyiv" are taking longer than the whole "Great Patriotic War"). > Russia is a de-jure democracy As is North Korea, it must be even more democratic than the rest of the world because it calls itself "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" ;)
        • bigfudge 4mo ago
          They have a head start on you, but you're catching up quickly! Worth remembering they have been shooting peaceful protestors recently in the US too. Trump and Hegseth are explicit in their admiration for Putin and Xi. So being technically right here is largely to miss the point. The trajectory the US is on is pretty clear.
• amazingamazing 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  • i80and 4mo ago
    > Also it really is sad to see “Hacker” News be “World News”. More Zig and less White House, please. I have been on this website for 17 years (ugh that's scary), and people have been posting variations of this remark the entire time. It's a tiresome sort of post the thousandth time. Politics have always been a consistent part of this website: it's a big part of the world that hackers live in, and barring rule enforcement to the contrary, hackers will always find politics interesting and want to talk about it. If you want a website with a more narrow focus, there's always lobste.rs.
    • amazingamazing 4mo ago
      I will take an invite
    • groundzeros2015 4mo ago
      Somewhat true. But as politics has accelerated to consume other interests, and HN has become disillusioned with startups it has gotten worse. It illustrates to me how quickly everyone gets wrapped up in the current thing. There is no principle about which content is allowed or not. Entire threads representing alternative views are removed. For example, In 2018 I remember you could not say a single thing critical of Elon or Tesla .
  • Chinjut 4mo ago
    Very sad to see Hacker News discussing science funding. This has nothing to do with the hacker ethos of maximizing corporate profit.
    • amazingamazing 4mo ago
      Yeah it is as if this website is by a VC.
• academia101 4mo ago
  [dead]
• appreciatorBus 4mo ago
  Could oversight like this lead to politics overriding science? Sure, of course. But to even ask the question presumes that politics isn’t already overriding science within the academy, just from a different direction.
  • diydsp 4mo ago
    The old way is a magnet pulling everything toward the industrial military consumer complex. This new direction turns the magnet around and pushes away everything else.
• softwaredoug 4mo ago
  The thing about this is it’s incredibly easy for a denied institution to claim legal standing to challenge the governments scientific funding decisions. The institutions that get funds (universities) are well resourced. Society in general seems gradually less tolerant of trying to appease Trump - so they will likely sue instead of appease. So they’ll be sued. The theories will be tested and we’ll see exactly where the line is (eventually). And probably somewhere uncomfortable, given SCOTUS. There are legitimate ways agency political appointees can set funding priorities. Like this year we’ll focus on Alzheimer’s. But of course, we should take the least charitable reading of this - that it’ll likely be used for shenanigans. Punish enemies. Award cronies. Go after junk science, etc.
  • mhalle 4mo ago
    As the article says, legal action up to this point has been based on the fact that the government created policies that didn't follow its own rules under, for example, the Administrative Procedures Act. So now the administration is attempting to follow those rules to create these new procedures, which they believe will then be lawful. If they are successful, challenges would have to be made judicially based on non-procedural grounds, or through Congress.
    • softwaredoug 4mo ago
      Yes, but even following APA, the order doesn't have the strength of statute. They can follow APA to come up with all kinds of illegal rules. And the actual rules are so broad they could be used from anything sane to something that might be just political revenge. The actual language: > “As part of the merit review process, Federal agencies must perform pre-issuance reviews to ensure that Federal award proposals selected for funding are consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest.”
• ninjagoo 4mo ago
  Maybe we need to strengthen civic/philanthropic infrastructure around Science and Technology to reduce reliance on government funding cycles. Science and Educational purposes are valid 501(c)(3) purposes. A donation to a 501(c)(3) that funds open-source scientific software, public STEM education, basic research, science grants, or public-interest tech research can be deductible. Up to 60% of Adjusted Gross Income can be tax-deductible as charitable contributions to a qualified 501(c)(3) with itemization, depending on the contribution type. This would create a non-partisan defined/dedicated non-profit funding layer with serious governance that will benefit all sides. Might be possible to go global. This would need serious structure: independent board, conflict-of-interest rules, grant review, public reporting, no private benefit, and probably fiscal sponsorship first. Maybe this deserves a separate Ask HN to avoid derailing this thread: would people here actually support or help design a 501(c)(3)-style vehicle for public-benefit science and technology funding?
  • 47282847 4mo ago
    > would people here actually support or help design a 501(c)(3)-style vehicle for public-benefit science and technology funding? Why a hypothetical? Plenty of options available to donate to or to contribute otherwise. Not help built it, help grow and maintain it.
    • ninjagoo 4mo ago
      [flagged]
  • btown 4mo ago
    Arguably, these vehicles do exist... in the form of 501(c)(3) university endowments. They endow professorships and graduate fellowships, pay for facility buildouts and infrastructure, and provide a strong pipeline of financial aid to allow talented undergraduates to pursue research rather than needing to repay debt immediately after graduation. And unused funds are invested in public and private markets, ensuring minimal waste and sustainable capital growth. And non-profit universities have strong and time-tested governance rules on many if not all of the dimensions specified. But these very endowments have been special cased as additionally taxable, despite that status, under the 2025 OBBBA, resulting in research budget cuts [0]. Would independent endowments as you describe them be more immune? [0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/college-endowment-tax-is-leading-to-hiring-freezes-and-could-mean-cuts-in-financial-aid https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/college-endowment-tax...
• abjectai_42 4mo ago
  How is this different than adding DEI requirements, the inability to study schedule 1 drugs, or the restrictions placed under the Dickey-Wicker amendment? Federal grants have always been subject to politics.
  • SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
    It's different because it explicitly prohibits deferring to peer reviewers and explicitly requires that grants must "advance the President's policy priorities". Previous restrictions were guiderails for or additional screens on top of the underlying merit-based review; now the merit-based review is secondary and the primary criterion is whether the President's minions like the proposal.
    • JCTheDenthog 4mo ago
      How did the merit-based review regularly let things like these through? (Picked by scrolling at random through a list of cancelled grants): $2.4 million for "Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) Girls in a Robotics Leadership Project" $1.2 million for "FW-HTF-R: Collaborative Research: Virtual Meeting Support for Enhanced Well-Being and Equity for Game Developers" $700k for "CAREER: Advancing Equity in Middle School Mathematics by Engaging Students and Families of Color in Participatory Design Research" Etc., etc., etc.
      • SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
        NSF awards in general are public information, so you can look up any award you'd like to see how and why they were approved. The first (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2116118 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2116118) and third (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2144506 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2144506) were approved as part of the NSF's Directorate of STEM Education, a still-ongoing initiative to ensure the US has a strong talent pipeline of upcoming scientists. It was and remains common for them to toss money at people with kids who otherwise might not be educated well in science; recent Trump-era grants include "Social Mobility through ARkansas Tech program" (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2527972 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2527972) and "STEM Journeys - From College to Career" (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2527683 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2527683). (I suspect we'll agree that the original examples are framed with strange racial overtones, which you could imagine legitimate political guardrails against even if the peer reviewers don't mind.) The second (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2128991 https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2128991) is core social science research. Virtual meetings had recently become an extremely common phenomenon, and the investigators claim this led them to discovering (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cyber.2021.0112 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cyber.2021.011...) the mechanism behind the then-novel phenomenon of Zoom fatigue.
• cineticdaffodil 4mo ago
  I still think we should allow for grant hunting. If you can disprove a paper, you get the grant money attached to it. Make it a economic worthy endavour to destroy bad science.
  • MagicMoonlight 4mo ago
    Then you would just fake your results in order to steal someone's grant
    • cineticdaffodil 4mo ago
      Pssht - Let them fight..
  • mold_aid 4mo ago
    How would you handle non-competitive grants
    • cineticdaffodil 4mo ago
      Safety deposists or insurrance by labs/universities- if your work is later refuted- your employer has to pay for that bad investment..
• jleyank 4mo ago
  If you don't have stable-duration grants, if you can't publish, if you can't present there's no reason for PhD's, p-docs or junior faculty to become involved. Going to do wonders for extra-US facilities and groups.
• swordlucky666 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• shevy-java 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• insane_dreamer 4mo ago
  I'm very involved in obtaining and performing on gov grants, and I can say pretty categorically the US is going from the best place to do science, to possibly the worst (in developed democratic countries). And we're only 1.5 years into this shit show. (Unless you're doing science for military development. Then the funding spigot is open.) And to those who say "oh, it's the same as it was before, just different ideologies" -- no, it is not at all the same. Not even comparable.
• tarkin2 4mo ago
  So the US won the cold war and eventually decided to emulate their defeated opponent. It's quite a character arch.
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  • ScoobleDoodle 4mo ago
    It looks like at the moment Russia is winning in the end: Links between Trump associates and Russian officials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates_and_Russian_officials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates... How the Russian interests have taken over significantly invalidates the purpose and existence of the FBI, CIA, and NSA. But then again, President Biden's administration had multiple grounds to prosecute Trump for crimes committed, whether the attempted coup or espionage with top secret documents or Epstein, and they just did not make it happen in a way that had any effect.
  • ragazzina 4mo ago
    You know propaganda has worked flawlessly when you see the US doing US things and the comments are “just like Russia / North Korea / China!”
    • derelicta 4mo ago
      "What are we? A bunch of ASIANS??"
• jaybrendansmith 4mo ago
  Don't worry, everybody. This will take some time to have an effect. In the meantime, the people who actually make this country great will consign these criminals to the dustbin of history. It happened in 1890, you will see it happen soon, and I am there for it. I just hope it happens faster this time. I don't have 40 years to wait.
• SubiculumCode 4mo ago
  So...as a scientist, I can lose my funding if I exercise my free speech and publicly disagree with Trump? What is this, North Korea?
  • tootie 4mo ago
    No it's worse than that. Your grant application must be actively aligned with their political agenda. If you are polite, deferential and apolitical but you want to study climate change you will be rejected.
    • SubiculumCode 4mo ago
      Ahh, so I should study vaccines and autism and tylenol
      • eclipticplane 4mo ago
        And gas stoves, why wind turbines are bad for golf courses, the effects of nuclear weapons on hurricanes, the favorability decline of Robert E Lee, invisibility for stealth fighters, the rapid death of the US farmer due to solar panels, and the impact of tariffs on consumer prices... Wait, maybe not that last one.
  • GolfPopper 4mo ago
    >What is this, North Korea? Given how mind-numbingly servile the ruling party is to their autocrat, it sure looks like North Korea sometimes.
• warumdarum 4mo ago
  The relation between world changing science and investment seems to be brutally of, so any change to whatever we have is good change. Scieence needs to be deideologized and if that cant happen, at least there needs to a politically diverse ecosystem where the results (with predictionpower and duscoveries not cultural dominance) speak for themselves.
  • DangitBobby 4mo ago
    > so any change to whatever we have is good change Things can definitely get worse.
• gammarator 4mo ago
  Here's a more concise summary of the proposed changes: https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-change... I don't think any practicing scientist of any political persuasion will think these are good for science. Science progresses by sharing knowledge openly and publicly, so others can evaluate it, criticize it, and build on it. These severe restrictions on collaboration, publication, and public communication will damage science's naturally open, merit-based culture. We will all suffer due to lost discoveries--maybe not today, but over years and decades.
  • wisemanwillhear 4mo ago
    Why does science need to be through the government? Irrespective of the proposal, science research is just as open after this change as before so long as it's funded by private citizens who can control the channels through which they donate to this work. On the other hand, if we can't get private citizens to donate to science research, then they are not likely to vote for it either--polls don't register much of a concern from the average citizen*. I don't think most of us want to be under a dictator or go back to having a king. That means the only practical option is to act of our own volition and support science through vocal advocacy and private money. In this way, we can each donate to the research we care about the most with maximum academic freedom. * https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.asp...
    • frigidwalnut 4mo ago
      Private citizens fund scientific research through their taxes. This has been the most practical way to fund science for decades.
      • JCTheDenthog 4mo ago
        >Private citizen fund scientific research [under threat of prison or deadly force.] I mean I'm not inherently opposed to laws or government, but I think a lot of people need to be more measured and considerate of what they are using tax money for when it is being taken from their fellow citizens at gunpoint.
• luckydata 4mo ago
  I'm so tired of this guy
• Cpoll 4mo ago
  > any grant program would need to be “aligned with administration policies and priorities.” From a naive perspective, this sounds a lot like the breeding ground for Lysenkoism (Stalin-approved). In that example, aligning science to the party line led to a couple of famines. I say naive because there were other factors at play (e.g. it was forbidden to criticize Lysenko's theories).
• expedition32 4mo ago
  Imagine being in the eye of the hurricane. Every day your country is slipping into a fucking shit show but you have to delude yourself that everything will be fine because the alternative is becoming "tank man". It is all fascinating to me.
  • culi 4mo ago
    In the full video, tank man proceeded to climb onto the tank and have a conversation with the operator of the tank. I highly doubt you could do that in the US without being shot.
• ourmandave 4mo ago
  Translation: The administration needs the power to pivot based on whatever narrative we're pushing at the moment. Example: "They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats." Cancel Haitian grants. And also round them up in deportation holding facilities.
• convolvatron 4mo ago
  how this this reconcile with the general conservative glee over the defeat of the Chevron defence? wasn't the rationale there that bureaucrats shouldn't be deciding on policy without consulting congress? Roberts even made a little speech about how whipsawing policy back and forth every 4 years wasn't helping anyone.
  • DangitBobby 4mo ago
    I've never known Republicans to be much concerned with the appearance of Hypocrisy.
• whatthesmack 4mo ago
  It's refreshing to see there actually be positive movement on accountability from the bureaucracy of the US federal government. I work very hard for almost four months every year to earn the money to pay taxes (whether I want to do that or not) that seem to disappear into the ether. I'd love to have some visibility into what is working, not working, and what is being redirected to some arbitrary bureaucrat's particular intrigues. Having incentive to produce useful outcomes seems like it would be something folks would be in support of, but it appears many here think this is the end of the world just because it's Trump doing it. At least there's consistency in that regard. Le sigh.
  • dalyons 4mo ago
    What about this administration so far makes you think they are remotely interested in actual accountability?
• softwaredoug 4mo ago
  To steel man this move You could argue peer review has become a mechanism to encourage incrementalism. That it doesn’t reward big leaps. And the public isn’t getting ROI on science funding compared to 50 years ago. Peer review is a closed system of expertise that doesn’t let you challenge the core tenants - some might say theology - of the field. It’s basically a cartel for keeping a field of study alive, regardless of its value. True innovation happens when people collaborate outside their fields. Steelman aside, there probably are better ways to solve this problem systematically than just let a politically appointee have final say. If we were serious about this problem, smart people thinking about scientific policy probably have some great ideas that are not being listened to.
  • guax 4mo ago
    > Peer review is a closed system of expertise that doesn’t let you challenge the core tenants Strong claims require strong evidence. The tenants some people want to challenge are climate change, gender identity, renewable energy, vaccinations, etc. So its a hard bargain, I believe science benefits from being a bit stubborn.
    • Auracle 4mo ago
      Alzheimer’s research would probably be the easiest one to point to. And I’d argue all fields could use more dissenting opinions and new options. I don’t know if this would be the path to that but keep in mind there have been many things historically where someone needed to take a leap of faith to go against the current dogma.
      • guax 4mo ago
        Academia is full of dissenting opinions, it is the wet dream of any tenured professor to break tradition and create a new field or area of research and become the lead in it. Consensus is a thing, but science is not one institution, is a bunch of different warring factions of people trying to get published and cited and funding.
      • SubiculumCode 4mo ago
• gigatexal 4mo ago
  IF YOU ARE A SMART PERSON LOOKING TO DO SCIENCE AND OR RESEARCH: DO NOT COME TO THE USA. They want to turn this place into a the real life version of idiocracy? So be it. The lay voter needs to see what voting badly does. They need to see consequences. The cure for cancer could be there in this research. WHO knows what could become of real mRNA research. But no. We just want to believe the world is 6k years old and some donor is gonna tell some begging scientists they get their funding or not.
• ascotan 4mo ago
  this proposal is an extension of the WH crackdown on what it sees as misuse of USG funds for things that are deemed not in the best interests of the USG. Among other things this proposal attempts to prevent: 1. prevention of DEI related grants 2. prevention of grants promoting anti-american ideologies 3. prevention of gain-of-function research (think covid-19) 4. prevention of ai-powered social media censorship research 5. prevention of FEMA dollars going to help undocumented immigrants 6. prevention of foreign aid dollars being spent in africa on gender ideology It would but restrictions directly into the grant awards give strong tools to the USG to suspend the grant and prevent the money being dispersed via a subrecipient.
  • Auracle 4mo ago
    Am I wrong for thinking “good” for a lot of those points? Many are either harmful (I still haven’t heard what we actually expect to gain from gain-of-function research that makes up for the potential cost) to absolute wastes of taxpayer dollars.
    • DangitBobby 4mo ago
      You can agree with the stated goals and still disagree with the policy mechanism to achieve them. Indeed, much of the current administration's strategy appears to be to sane-wash the destruction of our scientific institutions while trotting out it's "goals" to non-critical observers. Of course, the true goals are what the policy actually accomplishes, which is to hollow out the capacity for competent dissent.
• shdh 4mo ago
  Are your stem cells pre August 9, 2001?
• derelicta 4mo ago
  I, for one, rejoice at the upcoming American century of humiliation.
• emsign 4mo ago
  90 years ago we Germans called it Gleichschaltung.
• marsven_422 4mo ago
  [dead]
• fuckinpuppers 4mo ago
  Cancelling a grant at any time goes against the point. How can anyone realistically plan resources, staff, whatever, if they have no idea it’ll be funded for a month or 20 years? They really want to destroy American ingenuity, science, all of it. Just a bunch of white nationalist drones existing to keep the engine going is what they want.
• freddealmeida 4mo ago
  Governemnt money should be approved by elected politicians or the President's electives. Until now the approach has led to abuse in many ways. Especially gatekeeping by professors on new ideas. Cold fusion comes to mind. Probably put behind by 40 years. I do not mind this new strategy by the President at all.