5 ms·
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.
by 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 agoHasn’t academia always been that way?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- gcr 4mo agoYes but in ways whose solutions admit some level of creativity or ingenuity
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- SamoyedFurFluff 4mo agoGenerally, 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.
- jadar 4mo agoMy point wasn’t bias but butt kissing. There is always butt kissing, and academia has some of the worst petty politics.
- shiandow 4mo agoIt was better not perfect but there is value even just in keeping up the pretense
- SubiculumCode 4mo agoNo.
- Jerry2 4mo agoEmigrate where? And why do you assume that the country you're gonna emigrate to will have the funds necessay to fund the research? US grants are the biggest and most generous in the world. I think the USG spends over $900 Billion every year. Europe spends about 1/10th of that. Other option is China but as a foreigner, you will never get a grant there unless you work for someone else.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 4mo agoI think his main point was that the art of continually licking the right asses to keep funding going is not science.
- philwelch 4mo agoLicking asses to get grants has been the full time job of tenured faculty for decades. Peer review just means they lick each other’s asses.
- throw0101c 4mo ago> Emigrate where? And why do you assume that the country you're gonna emigrate to will have the funds necessay to fund the research? If the choice is between $0 in the US and >$0 someplace else, you emigrate to >$0 if you want to continue your research.
- Joker_vD 4mo agoWell, for most "someplace else", the choice is =$0 too.
- tvink 4mo agoYou don't think the rest of the world is doing funded research?
- arjie 4mo agoInterestingly, if the US stopped spending you’d need the top 17 remaining countries to double their spending to absorb the American science industry. Doubling is a tall order and seventeen is a large number. Most likely fewer scientists will find employment in government funded academia if this came to be.
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 4mo agoI don't think China needs the kind of scientists disproportionately affected by the bad orange man's vendetta.
- Macha 4mo agoWell if they want to stop all improvements to their electric car industry that is letting them out compete European, Japanese and US manufacturers, solar panels have clearly not been important to them, and their rocket programs don’t need anyone working on transfer orbits and god forbid anyone describes the materials they test as “diverse”…
- sseagull 4mo agoThe chaos is affecting pretty much all areas of science, not just the controversial ones. I work in non-controversial, pretty run-of-the-mill chemistry research and the attacks on the NSF have certainly impacted our funding situation. Very long delays in proposal review, complete pivoting to AI, etc. I have co-workers panicking over the green card changes. And the overall morale is pretty grim everywhere. Edit: don’t forget how he’s forcing NSF headquarters to move. All the NSF, not just the “bad” research. Almost everyone has entertained the idea of leaving the US for more stability, which is required for research.
- yareally 4mo agoI work for an org that makes research software for chemistry and other branches of science and it's definitely hit us in sales. No one wants to spend money if they don't know if they're going to get or keep the grants they petitioned for.
- sseagull 4mo agoOh I’m sure we could commiserate about that. I think we work in vaguely the same area. Unfortunately, getting money from industry isn’t much easier in my opinion. We have some software projects we want to spin out into a small business or non-profit (because federal funding…), but industry is absolutely cold right now. Had a few very promising partners lined up, but it all evaporated last spring. Between tariffs, AI spending, and now oil, everyone is reluctant to spend.
- Rekindle8090 4mo ago[dead]
- m0llusk 4mo agoThere is a lot of private funding available with a broad range of targets and boundaries.
- platevoltage 4mo agoIf we aren't funding progress with our tax dollars then what are we even doing?
- m0llusk 4mo agoGetting the government together is absolutely something we should do. If you are serious about science and technology then there are funds available and moving to Europe is not necessarily the only strategy. Do you really think that scientists who move to Europe to practice will be the people who turn America back around?
- platevoltage 4mo agoI mean, ideally we would stop it with this self imposed brain drain happening in the USA.
- dnnddidiej 4mo agoBoots. Licking boots.
- GuestFAUniverse 4mo agoThese boots are made for walking!
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]