6 ms·

I'm curious to see how this is defended by the party members here. Science should be guided by science, not ideology.

by pstuart 5mo ago

jordanpg 5mo 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 5mo 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 5mo 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 5mo 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.
      - rayiner 5mo ago
        > I've come to the horrific realization that hate and stupidity are easily weaponized The FDR coalition was literally southern segregationists, immigrants, and black people, all in the same party. If "hate and stupidity" wasn't a barrier to people voting together in their material self-interest in 1936, it sure as hell isn't a barrier in 2026.
        pstuart 5mo ago
        Wow man, FDR twice in a week and both cases awkwardly used. But yes, he wielded populism masterfully. As you made a point about southern segregationists it should be noted that it was general economic populism without emphasis on race. When Johnson championed the Civil Rights act it set the stage for the Southern Strategy where once race was a top tier issue that hate and stupidity was weaponized to move all of those segregationists to the Republican Party. Rayiner, once again your point does not land because it is not cogent. Not only that, you missed the whole point of "hate and stupidity" as literally a unifying force as a tribal fury that is directed towards "others". In a contemporary case, it is against "liberals". I can only assume that you might have personal insight into this.
        rayiner 5mo ago
        Your counterargument rests on the premise that nobody thought to weaponize "hate and stupidity" until the 1970s. That's not cogent. > When Johnson championed the Civil Rights act it set the stage for the Southern Strategy The concept of the “southern strategy” is not cogent. The backlash against the 1964 civil rights act happened in the 1968 election, when Wallace won 13% of the vote and 5 states. But all the Wallace states voted for Carter in 1976, along with all the other southern states besides Virginia. The south was Carter’s base—he only won the election by 2 points and lost New England, the midwest, and the west coast. Then three of the Wallace states voted for Clinton in 1992, plus several other southern states. Clinton also wouldn’t have won without the south. Your theory is that the reliable republican lean of the south states in the 1990s due to events that happened decades earlier. That’s a stupid idea. The realignment instead lines up with the transition of southern economies from agricultural to industrial/services economies, i.e., the transition from “the south” to “the sunbelt.” That economic strategy is based on siphoning jobs from the northeast and midwest through low taxes and deregulation. That’s why Carter still won all the “solid south” (except Virginia) in 1976, and Clinton still won three of the five Wallace states in 1992. Virginia was the first southern state to transition to a sunbelt economy, followed by the piedmont south, with the deep south states like Louisiana and Kentucky trailing behind.
  - dc396 5mo ago
    Congress neutered itself, largely because it has been politically less risky to let the Executive branch do whatever they want, then either cheer it on or rage against it depending on party and what drives donations so congress members can get reelected. The system is fundamentally broken.
    - pstuart 5mo ago
      I agree that it's fundamentally broken but I've been around to see it work and watch it fail. The executive branch obviously is going to wield as much power as it can, but only one party is actually advocating for the executive as king. So yes, both parties are the same when it comes to the corruption of the party leadership, but there are distinctly different platforms and ideals espoused -- and that difference matters.
- rayiner 5mo ago
  If Congress wants to earmark that money for a particular purpose it can enact that into legislation. If it wants to empower the executive to make the decision, they can do that too. Those are the only people who get to decide. Congress can’t turn over the expenditure of taxpayer funds to people who aren’t politically accountable.
  - paulryanrogers 5mo ago
    > Congress can’t turn over the expenditure of taxpayer funds to people who aren’t politically accountable. If Congress doesn't stop the executive and the Supreme Court overrules any legal blockades then ... I guess they can and are doing so RN.
    - rayiner 5mo ago
      > Congress doesn't stop the executive Congress won't stop the executive because the party that won the executive also won Congress by almost 4 million votes. That's not a sign of the system not working, it's a sign of the system working as intended.
      - SpicyLemonZest 5mo ago
        No, that's not accurate. Trump has subverted Congressional leadership to his dictatorship, and they routinely abuse their power to stop Congress from voting on things Trump finds politically inconvenient. The House is in recess right now to dodge a vote on the Iran War that Trump would be sure to lose.
      - BrenBarn 5mo ago
        No, it's a sign of the system working so horrifically badly that people have entirely lost sight of how it might actually be able to work.
      - pstuart 5mo ago
        > Congress won't stop the executive because the party that won the executive also won Congress by almost 4 million votes I remember when Nixon stepped down because his own party could not support his transgressions. The Republican party did this. That is a sign of the system working as intended. You claim to be radicalized by a pair of lawsuits against Trump, like out of every legal issue he was entangled with it was those two that convinced you that the Democrats were evil? Guess what? The Democrats suck and their party leadership is just as complicit in the protection of the oligarchy as the GOP's. But what happened with those Trump lawsuits wasn't a weaponization, it was blowback on a man who has been sued over 4000 times and has been shown to embrace criminal behavior when it suited him. Same thing with his two impeachments. What I believe really radicalized you is the Federalist Society. And just in my other comment about how kids want to belong, so do adults (it's a human thing). And your desire to belong and be part of the elite power base you have put your lot in with the Monarchists. Bear in mind that the founding-era practice originalism anchors to was voting rights for white male property owners. It took three constitutional amendments to override that. The Federalist Society's originalist framework treats those amendments as the ceiling — not a foundation for further expansion of rights. That's a methodology with predictable winners and losers, and I'd note you're unlikely to be among the winners. This is one of many reasons why originalism is a weaponized mechanism rather than some noble hewing to principles. The Constitution is what makes this country great -- being a nation of laws of mankind vs living under the whims of a monarchy of a god-gifted king.
andai 5mo ago
Indeed. Science has always been purely neutral and free any kind of social, cultural, institutional or economic pressures. That's the whole point!
- dc396 5mo ago
  Science? Maybe in an ideal world. However, how science actually gets done has always been at the mercy of social, cultural, institutional, and/or economic pressures.
  - paulryanrogers 5mo ago
    Weren't they exaggerating to communicate sarcasm?
rayiner 5mo ago
The country runs on the principles of the constitution, not the institutional principles of science. Control over spending of taxpayer funds always must remain within the political system. Voters can always choose to turn over those decisions to scientists they trust. For much of the 20th century, that’s what voters did. But if they don’t trust the priorities of the current scientific establishment, they can also choose to put that control back in the hands of political appointees. The institutional principles of science cannot override the prerogative of voters to decide how their money is spent.
- jordanpg 5mo ago
  That's a lovely thought but it assumes, as with so many other things about our republican form of government, that the political appointees are good faith actors, at least with respect to funding of science. There are many reasons to suspect that the goal here is not just control of funding, but the defenestration of science more broadly because scientific findings tend to conflict with assertions politicians would like to make. I would submit that people flying on planes, using cell phones and computers, and going to the doctor don't want that, even if they think they do.
  - rayiner 5mo ago
    > That's a lovely thought but it assumes, as with so many other things about our republican form of government, that the political appointees are good faith actors, at least with respect to funding of science. It doesn't assume that. It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution. And the institutional principles of particular fields are subordinate to the constitutional structure. What you're overlooking is that everything is just people. Political appointees are people. But "institutions" are also people. "Science" is just people. And the important question is: who are the people who have the power to decide how taxpayer money is spent? The only possible answer in a republic is that people accountable to the political system are allocated that power. People in the scientific establishment--people with degrees from universities and credentials from professional organizations--cannot be granted power to spend taxpayer money independent of the political system. They only have power over those decisions to the extent the political system chooses to confer that power.
delichon 5mo ago
The people who have the power of the purse should be accountable to the voters.
- ncallaway 5mo ago
  That’s Congress and they are. The executive branch does not hold the power of the purse, and the fact that you can casually use that phrase in reference to the executive branch shows how far we’ve fallen as a country in a decade. A very sad state of affairs.
  - paulryanrogers 5mo ago
    This Congress has deferred to the president so hard, it's difficult to see where one ends and the other begins. Based on recent primaries the R party is only becoming more sycophantic. At times they don't even cotify their subservience through the usual measures like legislation and committees, except where needed to slap down any roadblocks to the unitary executive.
    - bayarearefugee 5mo ago
      They (Republicans in Congress) are all terrified of Trump, with some good reason (not that this excuses their dereliction of duty in any way). It doesn't matter how aligned you are with his worldview, how much you vote alongside his wishes, if you aren't 100% loyal to him personally at all times you're politically dead in the Republican party in much of the US. While Trump's ability to sway normal elections is next to non-existent anymore (see: the vast majority of special elections held since his inauguration where Republicans are getting roflstomped by Democrats), his endorsement still decides Republican primaries because there's still a lot of brainwashed Republican cultists on the Trump train.
      - pstuart 5mo ago
        The only hope for this country is the incompetence of the administration and the poor health of Dear Leader. My hope is tempered, to say the least.
Georgelemental 5mo ago
Science is a tool. It does not "guide", no more than a hammer guides.
- smohare 5mo ago
  [dead]
- stirfish 5mo ago
  The form of a tool guides its use. You can tell what a hammer is for just by picking one up.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Georgelemental 5mo ago
    You can probably tell it's for hitting things. But not what things
- SubiculumCode 5mo ago
  I get a research grant after peer review. The grant funds my salary and propels my career. I criticize Trump publicly about his graft. Trump tells them to pull my grant. My career takes a hit, and I lose my house. Or I can be a chickenshit, and praise Trump and have a career, however pathetic. I routinely ask them to approve my results before publishing, just in case. I apply for grants looking at vaccines and autism. Every Friday, I spend an hour talking about how Trump is America's chosen one.
- jszymborski 5mo ago
  Guides as an astrolab or compass might
- Capricorn2481 5mo ago
  Do you have anything substantive to say beyond meaningless aphorisms?
noobermin 5mo ago
American moderates are amazing. "Let's see how suburban republicans feel about this that Trump has done! He's really spoiled his chances next election!" You guys have been waiting for the non-fascist republican voter for more than a decade at this point.
soerxpso 5mo ago
"Science" can do as much science as it wants on its own dime then. Public funding should be guided by public oversight, not career bureaucrats.
- khriss 5mo ago
  > Public funding should be guided by public oversight, not career bureaucrats. Isn't congress the elected, public oversight body? Or are you proposing that each and every employee of the federal govt be elected to prevent the horror of the 'career bureaucrat'?
- KingMob 5mo ago
  Unless you're advocating for mass direct democracy, with public votes on everything under the sun, a certain level of delegation is inescapable at scale. You say "career bureaucrats" as if they can't be fired or controlled, but that's obviously wrong (since they're being fired and/or controlled right now). QED, they ARE still under public oversight. (1) Voters vote for (2) elected officials who oversee (3) agency bureaucrats.
  - soerxpso 4mo ago
    I don't see what the core complaint is then. The guy the public voted for can refuse to spend public funding on a particular grant. There's no reason that it's somehow more pure to have the public vote for someone who appoints someone who appoints someone.

I'm curious to see how this is defended by the party members here. Science should be guided by science, not ideology.

by pstuart 5mo ago

I'm curious to see how this is defended by the party members here. Science should be guided by science, not ideology.

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 5mo 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 5mo 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 5mo 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.
    - rayiner 5mo ago
      > I've come to the horrific realization that hate and stupidity are easily weaponized The FDR coalition was literally southern segregationists, immigrants, and black people, all in the same party. If "hate and stupidity" wasn't a barrier to people voting together in their material self-interest in 1936, it sure as hell isn't a barrier in 2026.
      - pstuart 5mo ago
        Wow man, FDR twice in a week and both cases awkwardly used. But yes, he wielded populism masterfully. As you made a point about southern segregationists it should be noted that it was general economic populism without emphasis on race. When Johnson championed the Civil Rights act it set the stage for the Southern Strategy where once race was a top tier issue that hate and stupidity was weaponized to move all of those segregationists to the Republican Party. Rayiner, once again your point does not land because it is not cogent. Not only that, you missed the whole point of "hate and stupidity" as literally a unifying force as a tribal fury that is directed towards "others". In a contemporary case, it is against "liberals". I can only assume that you might have personal insight into this.
        rayiner 5mo ago
        Your counterargument rests on the premise that nobody thought to weaponize "hate and stupidity" until the 1970s. That's not cogent. > When Johnson championed the Civil Rights act it set the stage for the Southern Strategy The concept of the “southern strategy” is not cogent. The backlash against the 1964 civil rights act happened in the 1968 election, when Wallace won 13% of the vote and 5 states. But all the Wallace states voted for Carter in 1976, along with all the other southern states besides Virginia. The south was Carter’s base—he only won the election by 2 points and lost New England, the midwest, and the west coast. Then three of the Wallace states voted for Clinton in 1992, plus several other southern states. Clinton also wouldn’t have won without the south. Your theory is that the reliable republican lean of the south states in the 1990s due to events that happened decades earlier. That’s a stupid idea. The realignment instead lines up with the transition of southern economies from agricultural to industrial/services economies, i.e., the transition from “the south” to “the sunbelt.” That economic strategy is based on siphoning jobs from the northeast and midwest through low taxes and deregulation. That’s why Carter still won all the “solid south” (except Virginia) in 1976, and Clinton still won three of the five Wallace states in 1992. Virginia was the first southern state to transition to a sunbelt economy, followed by the piedmont south, with the deep south states like Louisiana and Kentucky trailing behind.
- dc396 5mo ago
  Congress neutered itself, largely because it has been politically less risky to let the Executive branch do whatever they want, then either cheer it on or rage against it depending on party and what drives donations so congress members can get reelected. The system is fundamentally broken.
  - pstuart 5mo ago
    I agree that it's fundamentally broken but I've been around to see it work and watch it fail. The executive branch obviously is going to wield as much power as it can, but only one party is actually advocating for the executive as king. So yes, both parties are the same when it comes to the corruption of the party leadership, but there are distinctly different platforms and ideals espoused -- and that difference matters.
rayiner 5mo ago
If Congress wants to earmark that money for a particular purpose it can enact that into legislation. If it wants to empower the executive to make the decision, they can do that too. Those are the only people who get to decide. Congress can’t turn over the expenditure of taxpayer funds to people who aren’t politically accountable.
- paulryanrogers 5mo ago
  > Congress can’t turn over the expenditure of taxpayer funds to people who aren’t politically accountable. If Congress doesn't stop the executive and the Supreme Court overrules any legal blockades then ... I guess they can and are doing so RN.
  - rayiner 5mo ago
    > Congress doesn't stop the executive Congress won't stop the executive because the party that won the executive also won Congress by almost 4 million votes. That's not a sign of the system not working, it's a sign of the system working as intended.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5mo ago
      No, that's not accurate. Trump has subverted Congressional leadership to his dictatorship, and they routinely abuse their power to stop Congress from voting on things Trump finds politically inconvenient. The House is in recess right now to dodge a vote on the Iran War that Trump would be sure to lose.
    - BrenBarn 5mo ago
      No, it's a sign of the system working so horrifically badly that people have entirely lost sight of how it might actually be able to work.
    - pstuart 5mo ago
      > Congress won't stop the executive because the party that won the executive also won Congress by almost 4 million votes I remember when Nixon stepped down because his own party could not support his transgressions. The Republican party did this. That is a sign of the system working as intended. You claim to be radicalized by a pair of lawsuits against Trump, like out of every legal issue he was entangled with it was those two that convinced you that the Democrats were evil? Guess what? The Democrats suck and their party leadership is just as complicit in the protection of the oligarchy as the GOP's. But what happened with those Trump lawsuits wasn't a weaponization, it was blowback on a man who has been sued over 4000 times and has been shown to embrace criminal behavior when it suited him. Same thing with his two impeachments. What I believe really radicalized you is the Federalist Society. And just in my other comment about how kids want to belong, so do adults (it's a human thing). And your desire to belong and be part of the elite power base you have put your lot in with the Monarchists. Bear in mind that the founding-era practice originalism anchors to was voting rights for white male property owners. It took three constitutional amendments to override that. The Federalist Society's originalist framework treats those amendments as the ceiling — not a foundation for further expansion of rights. That's a methodology with predictable winners and losers, and I'd note you're unlikely to be among the winners. This is one of many reasons why originalism is a weaponized mechanism rather than some noble hewing to principles. The Constitution is what makes this country great -- being a nation of laws of mankind vs living under the whims of a monarchy of a god-gifted king.

andai 5mo ago

Indeed. Science has always been purely neutral and free any kind of social, cultural, institutional or economic pressures. That's the whole point!

dc396 5mo ago
Science? Maybe in an ideal world. However, how science actually gets done has always been at the mercy of social, cultural, institutional, and/or economic pressures.
- paulryanrogers 5mo ago
  Weren't they exaggerating to communicate sarcasm?

rayiner 5mo ago

The country runs on the principles of the constitution, not the institutional principles of science. Control over spending of taxpayer funds always must remain within the political system. Voters can always choose to turn over those decisions to scientists they trust. For much of the 20th century, that’s what voters did. But if they don’t trust the priorities of the current scientific establishment, they can also choose to put that control back in the hands of political appointees. The institutional principles of science cannot override the prerogative of voters to decide how their money is spent.

jordanpg 5mo ago
That's a lovely thought but it assumes, as with so many other things about our republican form of government, that the political appointees are good faith actors, at least with respect to funding of science. There are many reasons to suspect that the goal here is not just control of funding, but the defenestration of science more broadly because scientific findings tend to conflict with assertions politicians would like to make. I would submit that people flying on planes, using cell phones and computers, and going to the doctor don't want that, even if they think they do.
- rayiner 5mo ago
  > That's a lovely thought but it assumes, as with so many other things about our republican form of government, that the political appointees are good faith actors, at least with respect to funding of science. It doesn't assume that. It's simply a factual matter that the rules that govern the country are those of the constitution. And the institutional principles of particular fields are subordinate to the constitutional structure. What you're overlooking is that everything is just people. Political appointees are people. But "institutions" are also people. "Science" is just people. And the important question is: who are the people who have the power to decide how taxpayer money is spent? The only possible answer in a republic is that people accountable to the political system are allocated that power. People in the scientific establishment--people with degrees from universities and credentials from professional organizations--cannot be granted power to spend taxpayer money independent of the political system. They only have power over those decisions to the extent the political system chooses to confer that power.

delichon 5mo ago

The people who have the power of the purse should be accountable to the voters.

ncallaway 5mo ago
That’s Congress and they are. The executive branch does not hold the power of the purse, and the fact that you can casually use that phrase in reference to the executive branch shows how far we’ve fallen as a country in a decade. A very sad state of affairs.
- paulryanrogers 5mo ago
  This Congress has deferred to the president so hard, it's difficult to see where one ends and the other begins. Based on recent primaries the R party is only becoming more sycophantic. At times they don't even cotify their subservience through the usual measures like legislation and committees, except where needed to slap down any roadblocks to the unitary executive.
  - bayarearefugee 5mo ago
    They (Republicans in Congress) are all terrified of Trump, with some good reason (not that this excuses their dereliction of duty in any way). It doesn't matter how aligned you are with his worldview, how much you vote alongside his wishes, if you aren't 100% loyal to him personally at all times you're politically dead in the Republican party in much of the US. While Trump's ability to sway normal elections is next to non-existent anymore (see: the vast majority of special elections held since his inauguration where Republicans are getting roflstomped by Democrats), his endorsement still decides Republican primaries because there's still a lot of brainwashed Republican cultists on the Trump train.
    - pstuart 5mo ago
      The only hope for this country is the incompetence of the administration and the poor health of Dear Leader. My hope is tempered, to say the least.

Georgelemental 5mo ago

Science is a tool. It does not "guide", no more than a hammer guides.

smohare 5mo ago
[dead]
stirfish 5mo ago
The form of a tool guides its use. You can tell what a hammer is for just by picking one up.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- Georgelemental 5mo ago
  You can probably tell it's for hitting things. But not what things
SubiculumCode 5mo ago
I get a research grant after peer review. The grant funds my salary and propels my career. I criticize Trump publicly about his graft. Trump tells them to pull my grant. My career takes a hit, and I lose my house. Or I can be a chickenshit, and praise Trump and have a career, however pathetic. I routinely ask them to approve my results before publishing, just in case. I apply for grants looking at vaccines and autism. Every Friday, I spend an hour talking about how Trump is America's chosen one.
jszymborski 5mo ago
Guides as an astrolab or compass might
Capricorn2481 5mo ago
Do you have anything substantive to say beyond meaningless aphorisms?

noobermin 5mo ago

American moderates are amazing. "Let's see how suburban republicans feel about this that Trump has done! He's really spoiled his chances next election!" You guys have been waiting for the non-fascist republican voter for more than a decade at this point.

soerxpso 5mo ago

"Science" can do as much science as it wants on its own dime then. Public funding should be guided by public oversight, not career bureaucrats.

khriss 5mo ago
> Public funding should be guided by public oversight, not career bureaucrats. Isn't congress the elected, public oversight body? Or are you proposing that each and every employee of the federal govt be elected to prevent the horror of the 'career bureaucrat'?
KingMob 5mo ago
Unless you're advocating for mass direct democracy, with public votes on everything under the sun, a certain level of delegation is inescapable at scale. You say "career bureaucrats" as if they can't be fired or controlled, but that's obviously wrong (since they're being fired and/or controlled right now). QED, they ARE still under public oversight. (1) Voters vote for (2) elected officials who oversee (3) agency bureaucrats.
- soerxpso 4mo ago
  I don't see what the core complaint is then. The guy the public voted for can refuse to spend public funding on a particular grant. There's no reason that it's somehow more pure to have the public vote for someone who appoints someone who appoints someone.