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U.S. science is in chaos
- N_Lens 4mo agoNo wonder Trump is referred to as “nation builder” in China since he’s building them up by tearing down America.
- plutomeetsyou 4mo agotbf I don't think Chinese citizens are faring any better than the West reporting on the ground, it's also possible there are numerous problems coalescing at the same time for humanity on a global scale.
- N_Lens 4mo agoFair call, we are in an era of converging crises.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- spwa4 4mo ago[flagged]
- emsign 4mo agoGood. Very good.
- TavsiE9s 4mo agoCould you please explain? I fail to understand your comment.
- jr_isidore 4mo agoHe means GGP saved GP the chore of reading by pegging the article as a typical Elon hit piece. You know how HN articles can be so longwinded.
- TavsiE9s 4mo agoThank you.
- cyanydeez 4mo agoyou might be an american, and know this, but when you say "complaining" it's a negative tone. If you support US Science, you need to say "more rightly pointing out that..."
- embedding-shape 4mo ago> When the shutdown ended in mid-November, Reynolds’s team had just two weeks to get on budget. It failed. The plan the group submitted would cost too much and take too long. “Our last hope was that NASA headquarters would understand what had gone on and give us some leeway,” Reynolds says. NASA did not. After nearly 10 years of work, AXIS was dead. If the scientists haven't left science behind after an experience like this, probably nothing will. What an absolute kick in the nuts to have a decade of your life erased because someone did a keyword search for science projects to stop, in the name of saving money, while at the same time wasting even more money on other things. I think I should feel angry, but I just feel sad for all the humans involved here, I hope they manage to come out with a more positive perspective than I'm able to here.
- gignico 4mo agoWe all should feel sad and angry. That said, this was never about saving money. This is about keeping scientists under tight control by the government, in order to suppress research on climate change and other controversial topics. If the government can cut your grant at any time without notice or appeal you will think twice before publishing results that go against their ideology, or even before publishing a criticism on Twitter. This is true especially if you are not tenured, which accounts for the majority of the academic world.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- IsTom 4mo agoI just want to vent: climate change is not a controversial topic, it's an inconvenient topic for people making a lot of money.
- scrollop 4mo agoAnd these same people likely fund "reports" and "news" with misinformation to make it confusing for the average person.
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- Havoc 4mo agoAdministration remains undefeated - in its ability to score own goals
- simonh 4mo agoThey're not own goals, they're achieving what they set out to do.
- __patchbit__ 4mo ago[flagged]
- K0nserv 4mo agoUnironically parroting uniparty lines is moronic. Sure there are problems with the Democrats, but both-sideism is at this point being wilfully blind. As an external observer to US politics it would be great for the country to move past the two-party system, but to say they are the same is ridiculous.
- neogodless 4mo agoYou have to remember that many of us are worried about the effects on everyone but the people pulling the levers are only worried about effects on themselves, and (at least in the short term) they are absolutely benefiting (e.g. enriching) themselves, regardless of how much damage it does to everyone else.
- api 4mo agoAfter the election my very first thought was that this is the start of the Chinese century, since America has voted to step down. Seems to be playing out.
- collinmcnulty 4mo agoUnfortunately there is another possibility: a return to great power competition.
- bsenftner 4mo agoNah, that fantasy is over, with the new Era of Moron Power. The future of humanity of absolutely Asian. Western culture is Rome on Fire.
- api 4mo agoThe irony is that the people who screamed the most that Rome was on fire aggressively pushed for what you brilliantly call Moron Power. They thought we were crashing, rushed the cockpit, and pushed forward as hard as they could on the stick. Forward is up, right?
- franktankbank 4mo agoI'm sorry but Rome certainly didn't have airplanes.
- api 4mo agoI'm referring to this, which has aged quite poorly: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/ https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-ele...
- marcyb5st 4mo agoI don't see that happening. The US debt will hinder any big expense that could keep it in any game long term. Take AI for instance. The US grid is struggling to keep up with demand, while Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually, this could be solved by an increase in spending lasting a few years which would make the debt tick up, but that would've been an absolutely fine use of debt since it buys some shiny new infra that will pay dividends for the next 20ish years. Now? Not possible. The US is already drowning in debt and the usual buyers are not showing up to buy it because of the Iran fiasco. With oil so expensive everyone was using their USD reserves to buy oil, not debt. Which mades interest rates go up considerably, and for a country with already ~130% of debt/gdp ratio these are terrible news. So, I don't think there will be a great power race. Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of innovation. Russia is struggling already to finance a war of conquest they started. China is the only one that can run if it comes down to it (unless of course the numbers coming out of China are mega bogus, but for that I don't know enough to have an opinion). [1] https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/ https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-in...
- croes 4mo ago> The hardest part, though, is how it happened. DOGE’s cuts sliced through American research grants like a thresher, “but this was much murkier,” Reynolds says. “We were never canceled. We were just starved to death.” Maybe time to sue the richest man alive for helping destroy American science. More efficient than any foreign actor
- tokai 4mo agoBut that man is a foreign actor.
- vrganj 4mo agoWhatever happened to stripping criminal immigrants of their US citizenship and putting them in a torture cell in El Salvador? Not a policy I'd usually support, but I think a certain South African has really done enough damage to justify it.
- athrowaway3z 4mo agoThere used to be a time when you came across accounts from 100 years ago - and you'd just be flabbergasted by the whimsical stupidity when laid out so plainly. Now we lament that in 70 years somebody is going to chuckle when they read such non-sequiturs as: The great Texas protein crisis of the late '20s was made several orders of magnitude worse - if not right out caused - by the first trillionaire's purge of the government. At the time justified as a cost saving measure while the president would spend >35% more than its income while saying things were going great and had never been so great at anytime in history.
- changoplatanero 4mo agoI would have supported reforming the way science is funded in the US, but the way republicans did it is far worse than if they had done nothing at all.
- analog31 4mo agoWhat's a better way, that's not the Chinese way? What I mean is more centralized oversight over research priorities, metric-driven rewards, and preference for political favorites?
- nine_k 4mo agoWhat made places like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, IBM Research, etc thrive? What happened to that mechanism, and can we have it back?
- breakyerself 4mo agoThose were all ultimately for profit companies. You can only get so far with basic science if some bean counter is looking for a return on investment in the near future. What those companies did is notable, but I think you are overselling their contributions to science. We've gotten way more scientific advancement from publicly funded science. There are private companies allowed to do R&D all over the world. Publicly funded independed science research is what has set the US apart.
- turtletontine 4mo agoI’ve seen it claimed that higher taxes on corporate profits incentivized that lab model. Better to invest in risky research than have that money taxed away. When the regulatory environment changed, shareholders insisted they should get that money through dividends and stock buybacks, and goodbye Bell Labs. I don’t know how accurate that argument is, but it certainly sounds plausible.
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- fabian2k 4mo agoThis administration is both fundamentally anti-science and wants to enforce political control over all government institutions. Science was never a particularly stable work environment, but the sheer insanity you have now makes it a deeply unattractive place. You have no idea if your grant might be denied, or even canceled at any point later by some political commissar that doesn't understand science. And it's not just particular topics they hate, they hate the entire system and institutions. And they try to either break them and force them to adopt their political views, or they attack their funding or use any other powers to dismantle them.
- alberto467 4mo agoScience, or more specific to what we're talking about, public research which happens mostly in universities, has turned political long before this administration. That's the simple reality. Administrations impose their politics, but also universities do the same, and they're not any more noble for doing so. Research groups need to have more independence and that can only happens through a very meritocratic funding process, and also, at the risk of sounding like a STEM lord, by being very cynical and realizing that not all fields of research merit the same amount of funding. Countries like China have already realiezed this.
- fabian2k 4mo agoWhat happens right now is vastly different than before. Of course there are different priorities in funding for each administration, but those are usually more gradual shifts and especially don't cancel running grants arbitrarily. And if you think this administration is prioritizing science with actual applications, I have a bridge to sell to you. The cuts they made are not sensible policy, they are inherently destructive and wasteful. They aborted studies that were still running, so a lot of money was spent and we'll never get any results from that because they were not finished.
- thrance 4mo agoJust lies upon lies. Always the same weak rhetoric of "it's both sides!". The truth is that science didn't get more political, the right is just going in a direction orthogonal to material reality. Science will appear political to you if you claim that climate change isn't real, that vaccines and Tylenol give autism, that oil prices will soon go down when the wells are destroyed, that the economy is hotter than ever when everything's going to shit, that the weather channel is just anti-American and woke when they predict rain for the UFC Freedom 250 held for the emperor's birthday...
- Rebuff5007 4mo ago> whether there are black holes at a redshift of 10 or not is not a partisan issue. Anything that depends on a basic understanding of the scientific process, and resulting scientific facts is absolutely a partisan issue right now.
- nikanj 4mo agoAnd the real partisan question is ”should the US fund studying the black holes”, not the actual science question
- helterskelter 4mo agoAt this point I wouldn't be surprised if they thought it was a DEI thing.
- iAMkenough 4mo agoIf the 20-something’s at DOGE proved anything last year, the keyword “black” associated with grant funding probably put the research on a list of DEI cuts.
- apical_dendrite 4mo agoThis is getting downvoted, but it's actually true. DOGE repeatedly used naive keyword searches to kill funding for projects that often had nothing to do with DEI. > Among them was a $349,000 grant to replace an aging HVAC system at the High Point Museum in North Carolina. “Improving HVAC systems enhances preservation conditions for collections, aligning with the goal of providing greater access to diverse audiences,” the ChatGPT DEI rationale stated. > Another federal employee, whose primary job function is managing relations with private equity-held businesses, was placed on administrative leave "pursuant to the President's executive order on DEIA," per a dismissal memo reviewed by BI. https://www.businessinsider.com/doge-wrongly-flagged-jobs-programs-dei-equity-2025-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/doge-wrongly-flagged-jobs-pr...
- ryandrake 4mo ago
- jdw64 4mo ago[flagged]
- alberto467 4mo agoI'm sorry to tell you this, but he hasn't been part of this administration for a while. And also i'm not quite sure you have his views on NASA funding (one of his main customers) right, you're just making them up. He is a genius though, great results on the market.
- wredcoll 4mo agoBut not as smart as bernie madoff, who had much better results, right?
- raincole 4mo agoFirst of all, NASA is the main client of SpaceX. They pay SpaceX money. Sabotaging NASA is sabotaging SpaceX. If NASA can (or want to) compete against SpaceX directly it probably wouldn't have fund half the R&D cost of Falcon 9. The rest of your comment is just nice fiction.
- jdw64 4mo agoWhat DOGE has actually struck is not the procurement budget for launch vehicles, but the destruction of the internal engineering capability to design them. The benefit of destroying that capability, in turn, greatly favors SpaceX. SpaceX doesn't want NASA to be a smart partner that builds its own rockets; it wants NASA to be nothing more than a giant wallet that just pays money. This is a classic monopoly strategy that cloud companies used to employ all the time: destroying the customer's internal capabilities[1] [1]https://www.medianama.com/2024/09/223-google-files-antitrust-complaint-against-microsoft-cloud-services/#content https://www.medianama.com/2024/09/223-google-files-antitrust...
- jdw64 4mo agoTo be clear, DOGE's strategy is not actually for America. The bigger issue is that NIH, NSF, NASA, and public health agencies are no longer perceived by the US right as neutral expert institutions. They see these institutions as strongholds of left wing elites. So this is less about fiscal policy and more about cultural policy retribution. That's why from the perspective of an outsider like me, it looks like 'they are killing their own country's science,' while someone like you might see it as 'smashing the power institutions of the opposing camp.' I think this is simply a difference between an external and internal perspective. Honestly, just looking at the ban on international cooperation mentioned in the article, it comes across as nothing more than a desire for control.
- nkrisc 4mo ago[flagged]
- cubefox 4mo ago[flagged]
- IsTom 4mo agoI don't think I've ever met a leftist denying evolution.
- ffsm8 4mo agoMe neither. Lots of them deny that certain differences between humanity exist however, and that's just biology. Eg. Fe-/male and racial differences. They exist, yet they cannot be admitted to and any reference to them will have the political left call you a nazi, racist, sexist and pedo to boot, because the other terms are already less impactful from overuse
- IsTom 4mo ago> any reference to them will have the political left call you a nazi, racist, sexist and pedo to boot I think this boils down to the fact it's typically just a thin veil for motivated reasoning.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- foxglacier 4mo agoWhat's the veiled motivation of a white person who says that Asians are intellectually superior to whites? Leftists see racism and sexism everywhere - their ideology focusses on that and they pick up on any excuse they can to label people as that. It's actually a horrible way to treat their fellow humans.
- Schlagbohrer 4mo agoMy friends from grad school who went on to become professors tell me that not only did their grant funding dry up, but they were unable to follow through on hiring many of the grad students they had planned to hire, since the students came from foreign countries and faced new visa restrictions. So the money for science is gone, the people to do to the science are gone, and the institutions continue to not support their researchers, workers, and communities. It's the death of research in the usa.
- stainablesteel 4mo ago[flagged]
- chneu 4mo agoNot really true but white Americans love to say that. Americans are the biggest bullies and and victims.
- _DeadFred_ 4mo agoI know a ton of people who would love to get their Phd. When they can't make it work but see graduate programs heavily populated by foreign students (who may or may not stay) funded by (what they see as) their tax dollars, some become resentful. That's a pretty normal human reaction, not a uniquely white or American one. Understanding human realities and optics might have helped here. But instead you chose 'white people evil, Americans suck'. Not productive and in part how we got here with those positions now unfunded, and just as small minded as the attitudes you're condemning.
- handle584 4mo agoWell why Americans are not willing to take those PhD offers that pay barely above poverty line for 5 years or so? The answer is obvious, they would rather take a job in industry that pays miles better. There is really no reason to be resentful because it is a voluntary choice, and foreign students are worse off in every aspect to start with. Leaving friends & family behind, travel often involves long-haul flights, different culture to blend in, not eligible for NSF grants and national lab jobs, etc. Situation is really similar to H1B workers discussed here a while ago. The options for Americans are plenty while for foreigners very scarce, and with the recent change it is getting even more so without giving Americans a bigger incentive, so it is really a lose-lose outcome.
- nickpeterson 4mo agoYou probably don’t need the word science in the headline.
- newsclues 4mo agoCurrently there are lots of systems that are in chaos. Rather than demand reversion back to mean, we should be asking, "Before we reset this system back to the way it was, was it working and are there improvements to be made?" Because the current chaos can be viewed as an opportunity to improve, and we should take it because may of the systems in chaos today, were dysfunctional or in need of modernization yesterday.
- crises-luff-6b 4mo ago[dead]
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- Weallneedclima 4mo agoI looked at the greenland ice sheet website regularly and its defunded since last year: https://nsidc.org/ice-sheets-today https://nsidc.org/ice-sheets-today There is no reason at all that the biggest military power, richest from GDP and the biggest co2 producer country invests anything in climate research /s I hope the USA goes down, fast... Shout out to Elon Musk, the richest asshole on our planet who wants to leave earth to go to a planet which is not inhabitable and a planet which can't keep humans alive without our blue marble... But hey when we all have starlink in every remote corner of our planet, who cares if our atmosphere is getting poisned by all these rocket starts. Btw. Starlink has 10 Million customers and putting only a single 'small' datacenter into space needs over 350 starship starts. go figure
- hammock 4mo ago> I hope the USA goes down, fast... Realest comment in this entire post
- ur-whale 4mo agohttps://archive.ph/zn6FI https://archive.ph/zn6FI
- panny 4mo ago[flagged]
- Windchaser 4mo agoNo, this isn't correct. The Scopes Monkey Trial would like a word. I grew up conservative and evangelical, and there was always an opposition to "liberal science" simply on the basis of what the science presented. It didn't have anything to do with scientists being mean or "biting the hand that feeds" - the opposition was because scientists claimed that man was descended from other apes, that the Earth was billions of years old, that climate change is real and manmade and going to be damaging. If scientists present information that's uncomfortable for industry or contradicts conservative religious beliefs, conservatives are going to push back against science. That's where the culture war comes from, and there's no way for scientists to avoid it except by abandoning their commitment to evidence and science.
- smarf 4mo ago'just let the bully beat on you, otherwise they will be justified in escalating'
- wredcoll 4mo agoI mean, what's more important to you, discovering truths via scientific research and reports, or conforming to your political ideology? (or getting revenge for perceived attacks, I guess)
- testhest 4mo agoNearly 40 trillion rollers in debt.
- Herring 4mo agoReminder that the most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance. Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts-are-fuelling-far-right-rise-warns-un-expert https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...
- levocardia 4mo ago...which is why there are no emerging far-right-populist political movements in welfare-heavy societies like the UK, France, and Germany, right?
- Herring 4mo agoYou didn't read the article, did you? People there are getting radicalized because of cuts to social spending.
- KolibriFly 4mo agoA research system can adapt to lower funding if the rules are stable. What it can't adapt to is grants being frozen, staff disappearing mid-project, forbidden vocabulary changing
- kittikitti 4mo agoThis article informs a good understanding and confirms the issues I've witnessed in academia. However, I found that it didn't cover the censorship of any criticism of Israel in science and academics. This was explicitly codified into law with respect to government funding and is a major topic of scientific funding in colleges and universities. Scientific grants and researchers often require a Zionist bias to get funding, something that is unacceptable.
- mbmbn 4mo ago[flagged]
- mothballed 4mo agoI don't think you're going to win much sympathy when you've demonstrated you can't distinguish between generically "jews" and "Israel." You can hate the genocidal Israelis and how far the AIPAC/Israel lobby has crawled up the ass of nearly the entire US political apparatus without being a neo-nazi that wants to stomp out the Jewish faith.
- platevoltage 4mo agoYou know what is detached from reality? Reading a comment criticizing Zionists, and somehow interpreting it as some long running stereotype about Jewish people, which the comment never mentioned. It's hard to believe that people are still doing this pearl clutching in 2026. Most Zionists are Christians, and a large portion of them, including the US Ambassador to Israel, believe in the Rapture. Connect those dots.
- roysting 4mo agoThe fact that people think the current state of chaos is a consequence of recent developments clearly tells us more about why it is in chaos than those types of people have the capacity to hear or understand. It also tells us that it’s very unlikely going to be resolved on this side of some catalytic event. If reason prevailed, we would not be in this state of chaos. People who think this is a consequence of merely the last 10 or 40 years, clearly have no understand of cause and lagging effects.
- Windchaser 4mo agoYeah, while it's particularly bad lately, I'm remembering Richard Hofstadter's book, "Anti-intellectualism in American Life", which one the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction for tracing the religious, cultural, and economic roots of american anti-intellectualism. These problems are not new.
- saintvlad 4mo ago[flagged]
- alecco 4mo ago"The Cost of Excess" The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) (2021) https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Cost-of-Excess-FINAL-Full-Report.pdf https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Cost-o... "How Much Is Too Much? Controlling Administrative Costs through Effective Oversight" (2017) https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/ee/download/controlling-administrative-costs.pdf https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/ee/download/contro... For the past 20 years the budgets ballooned out of control (alongside the student debt). Yes, this WH admin is anti-science but US academia is due some introspection. Disclaimer: I'm not from US
- Balgair 4mo agoAcademic Science in the U.S. was pretty ill and needed a lot of reforms. We can all admit that. But this solution is absolutely not the way to go about doing that. From my psuedo-outsider [0] perspective, the capable and good people are fleeing or being forced out, but the jerks and asshats that were ruining it all are staying. If you thought in the late 2010s that we were boiling low tide in the ivory tower, then today we're just concentrating raw sewage. The abuse cases are exploding among grad students, anecdotally. [0] I have a lot of friends and family in academia
- randusername 4mo agoI think all the following can be true simultaneously: The whiplash cuts are stupid, short-sighted and causing major damage The bullying tactics around protests and immigration are villainous and are eroding one of our greatest institutions Science and higher education have fallen short of their ideals and need reform
- okeuro49 4mo ago> But arbitrary cancellations and delayed disbursements are unprecedented. And justifying them on the basis of politics—prohibiting, for instance, grants that include language referencing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)—was unheard of until now. It is odd how removal of DEI is framed as being political, when it is the other way round. DEI schemes were deeply political, and depended on who can claim to be the biggest victim.
- 0xbadcafebee 4mo agoIt's not odd. If the institution of it is political, the removal of it is therefore also political. It is not, however, based on who can claim to be the biggest victim. It is based on a simple statistical analysis of demographics.
- noosphr 4mo agoIn a previous project I ended up talking with a scientist who couldn't shut up about how she was 1/4th Indigenous and how many grants that could open for our collaboration. If I wanted racial purity in my collaborators it get a time machine to 1930s Germany. That someone was doing this in 2022 was extremely off-putting. That they were getting government support because of it makes the me not care much about the fact the system is being burned down today.
- customguy 4mo ago> If I wanted racial purity in my collaborators it get a time machine to 1930s Germany. If you knew more about it than some memes about racism, you'd know that the nihilism, this thin-skinned "at least we'll take them with us" sentiment you just expressed, was at the heart of it. But they had a lost war and the 1920s to be bitter about, the treaty of Versailles, not someone who "couldn't shut up" about something. The mind boggles.
- noosphr 4mo ago[flagged]
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- dwa3592 4mo agoMy wife operates an optical trap (a sophisticated microscope, she uses it for studying gene/dna physical properties) and she's pretty good at working with that instrument. The number of people good at working that microscope are in the ballpark of 2000 (+- 1000) in the world! She has cried a lot in the last one year for the mess science research has become. We are moving out of the country at the end of August.
- lmf4lol 4mo agowhere to?
- ArmadilloGang 4mo agoMy family is looking at Missouri to Spain. Why Spain: Expat communities, cost of living, friendly visa options, beautiful climate. Why leave: Sick of U.S. politics and the way it directly and indirectly affects us and how difficult it is to escape from it - it’s a major point of conversations with family and friends, it’s on the local radio, local subreddit, local social media pages, etc. Also, I have over $7k in personal medical costs annually (out of pocket). That’s just me, not my family cumulatively. For Ostomy supplies, iron infusions, and more.
- bcgnbcennxfb 4mo ago[dead]
- simojo 4mo agoFrom what I understand, Spain has their own set of politics worth losing sleep over; perhaps as an expat you won't be as attached though.
- WarmWash 4mo agoApart from being the nexus of the current hot button issue - immigrants and housing costs.
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- phtrivier 4mo agoMany people became millionaires last week during SpaceX IPO. Surely they will "give back" to the giants whose shoulders they were standing on, and start creating foundations to hire back those researchers, grant them enough money to continue their deep work, file plenty of patents, and let the society keep reaping benefits from its greatest minds. I mean, what else would they do, invest in cryptos and trophy partners and sport teams and ad-based time waster and surveillance ? Naaaaah
- molybd3num 4mo agodon't call me shirley
- NoImmatureAdHom 4mo agoAm scientist. We needed change. This seems like a stupid way to get change, but it's better than nothing. Academia was not doing well pre-Trump. The DEI infection ran deep - and it still does. Complete nonsense was getting funded in the social sciences and cognitive science / psychology. It was really tragic. And now all these institutions are saddled with personnel debt. The morons they hired during the DEI moral panic - some of them are even tenured by now. People who overtly aren't even doing science - they are performing their politics with science. Overtly. This is a blunt instrument, yes. But things were going very poorly overall, and we needed a shake-up. Given the choice between: Biden (or later Harris) is elected and things keep going the way they were going, or the current timeline, I choose the current timeline. (P.S.: Scientific American is trash now, you shouldn't read it. https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202 )
- jimbob45 4mo ago[flagged]
- counters 4mo ago> This is a blunt instrument, yes. But things were going very poorly overall, and we needed a shake-up. You do understand that what's happening isn't merely a "shake up", right? It's the coordinated dismantling of structural components of America's innovation economy in ways that will take decades to recover from, if it all (can't do much if emigrants take their talents to China instead of the USA). Strong "cut off your nose to spite your face" vibes. Hope that works out for you. It's not working out for many of my colleagues, especially early-career scientists at federal labs who are hemorrhaging from the system, often moving completely out of science altogether. Great return on investment we're getting for all those GRFPs!
- qsera 4mo ago> It's the coordinated dismantling of structural components of America's innovation economy in ways that will take decades to recover from, No, that is just your opinion.
- ck2 4mo agoand it's 100% Russell Vought most people know who Stephen Miller is but the real monster is Russell Vought Heritage Foundation's #1 enforcer, the destruction of science and academia is their top 10 If Vance somehow gets the reigns and/or 2028 it will be even worse because Vought will get even more power/control * https://www.propublica.org/article/russ-vought-trump-shadow-president-omb https://www.propublica.org/article/russ-vought-trump-shadow-... * https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-v...
- tinyplanets 4mo agoVought has openly declared himself as a Christian Nationalist. Christian Nationalism as a whole is dead set against scientific research.
- mike_bob 4mo agoIt's 100% christian evangelicals (bible fundamentalists) that inserted themselves into the republican party after the counter-culture movement of the 60s. They hate freedom and liberty, full stop.
- towledev 4mo agoAt Heritage, in the break room over the microwave, there's a sign: "science delende est."
- whatshisface 4mo agoSurely, you mean over the coals. :-)
- andrewla 4mo ago> But arbitrary cancellations and delayed disbursements are unprecedented Is it though? I would like to see more evidence. The scale of the cuts is clearly larger than what we have experienced in recent history, but this has always been a struggle. Researchers have spent an inordinate amount of time shopping projects around and writing grant proposals for a long time now. > And justifying them on the basis of politics—prohibiting, for instance, grants that include language referencing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)—was unheard of until now. This is disingenuous. While this new policy is clearly an overcorrection, previous policies which mandated that language clearly existed -- the political overlap is not unheard of. --- It is hard to follow the point of the article. It appears to mostly be opposed to funding cuts. Obviously the current administration is cutting the grant budgets of these organizations. But that article seems to be making the claim that the method of selecting what to cut is being done in a particular "anti-science" manner. Given that there are cuts, are they doing a particularly bad job of choosing which projects to cut? I don't see an answer to that question in any rigorous way, just insinuations.
- stanford_labrat 4mo agothe recent drama about science funding to me highlights one of the main problems with our grant-based distribution system: which is that it is unsurprisingly very frail to fast-moving changes in government and society at large. science as an apparatus often works on timescales that are decades, not 4 year political cycles. so rapid pendulum swings are particularly dangerous to the pursuit of science as a whole. you could just as easily describe a scenario where the pendulum has swung left instead of right and a bunch of right-leaning research gets cut and people lose their jobs, we lose progress etc. these days i'm pretty in favor of a system where funding is guaranteed and investigators are allowed absolute academic freedom. think something along the lines of each principle investigator gets $Xmillion to study their research topic in perpetuity without fear of reprisals or sudden funding cuts. i naively think this would solve a LOT of the issues in academia currently, which already in the absence of the recent Trump shake-ups has devolved into a metric chasing, paper-mill, grant funding behemoth whose sole purpose is to churn out papers of dubious quality, game metrics, and bring in research funding to the university. the modern professor's job is not to advance our understanding of the natural world, but to generate positive KPIs and bring in as much revenue as possible to the university in the form of overhead costs (66% of all the federal funding we bring in at my institution goes directly to the school). it's a business, and that's not what basic science research is supposed to be in my opinion.
- calvinmorrison 4mo ago> a system where funding is guaranteed and investigators are allowed absolute academic freedom. think something along the lines of each principle investigator gets $Xmillion to study their research topic in perpetuity without fear of reprisals or sudden funding cuts. you can do this, you just need to find a chump who is willing to spend the money.
- andbberger 4mo agothis exists and the chump is howard hughes
- epolanski 4mo agoYou either get a slow moving multi party democracy or you get winner-takes-all presidential mechanics that can reshape the country every four years. You can't have both.
- iluvcommunism 4mo agohttp://archive.today/zn6FI http://archive.today/zn6FI
- Covzire 4mo agoThe article buried the lede. DEI was the bridge too far that lit a massive tinderbox among the electorate who wanted the vast majority of what happened with DOGE, to happen. DEI was the appetizer, and once the teeth starting biting it found a lot more than anticipated (USAID). The lesson is that real scientists should have stood up en masse to the political commandeering of their institutions by fringe activists peddling pseudoscience and this would have been avoided.
- wredcoll 4mo ago> The lesson is that real scientists should have stood up en masse to the political commandeering of their institutions by fringe activists peddling pseudoscience and this would have been avoided. Yeah, if only they had tried to appease the fascists harder and earlier. Thanks Nigel.
- priyankarr 4mo ago[flagged]
- AndrewKemendo 4mo agoScience has always been in Chaos. I know of zero laboratories doing “science” that isn’t biased or otherwise tainted with politics or money The US public never cared about science anyway. Go read Carl Sagan’s 1996 demon haunted world and it’s only gotten worse from there You could do a search for this headline and get a result for every year since Francis Bacon started publishing
- setgree 4mo agoI work at a research lab that was previously supported by an R01 grant that did not get renewed last year. It’s been tough and the staff (including me) have been moved to part-time employment. However, it also made us put ourselves out there and fundraise, which led to new connections and new opportunities. So yes, it’s been chaotic, but like Petyr Baelish says, chaos is a ladder.
- lovich 4mo agoPetyr Baelish got stabbed to death while on his ladder, I don’t think that’s a good analogy
- cheschire 4mo agoIt’s a fine analogy and you’re just showing off your game of thrones knowledge.
- setgree 4mo agoYep, Sansa climbed the ladder better than he did. As she says to him at the end, "Thank you for all your many lessons, Lord Baelish. I will never forget them."
- gcanyon 4mo ago"I'm a slow learner, it's true, but... I learn."
- Kapura 4mo agoyeah, if you're morally willing to shove children out of towers a lot of things can become possibilities.
- dbvn 4mo agoThere's an emergency!!! To find out what it is, pay me!!!
- pvaldes 4mo agoor do your own research
- jimt1234 4mo agoThe Dow is at 50,000! Why can't we all just be happy about that?! /s
- Blackstrat 4mo agoThe government can't fund everything. Too much of the budget is tied up in transfer and interest payments squeezing out other more viable research. The federal government doesn't have unlimited funds. Something has to give.
- Blackstrat 4mo agoDown voted, imagine that. Predictable as sunrise. So what should be cut?
- wredcoll 4mo agoTrump's ballroom. Trump's "irs lawsuit settlement fund" The salaries of all the lawyers being paid to justify illegal and discriminatory executive orders. ICE's budget. TSA's budget. "Border Wall" construction costs. Should I go on?
- stackskipton 4mo agoI agree with all of that but you don't put a dent in spending outside of tackling ICE budget. TSA is more neutral since a lot of funding from that comes from airline ticket fees. There is only 5 items that matter: Interest on Debt. Social Security Medicare. Medicaid. Defense.
- wredcoll 4mo agoI'm not trying to balance the budget here, just find a few billion for research.
- tick_tock_tick 4mo agoMost of those things a tiny rounding error. Interest and social services are the only thing the government actually spends money on.
- platevoltage 4mo ago
- Tummler68 4mo agoYes, the current pushback is crude. Yes, real science is being damaged. Yes, the people doing it are often stupid or vindictive. Also yes, the academy helped create the conditions for this. Also yes, almost nobody inside the system had the courage to object when the incentives favored them.
- hgoel 4mo agoLast year, the mood in my field, that has been relatively isolated from many of these impacts, was still very "these are uncomfortable times, but it's still possible to pull through". Recently, you can cut the tension in a room with a knife whenever matters relating to government decision making come up. Some coworkers are leaving science, promising phds and postdocs leaving to other countries, many of the more established scientists are maintaining backup options. I too have re-evaluated my feelings and decided that while I am not yet at the point of actively looking to leave the US, besides the hassle of moving itself, I would be fine with having to do so.
- _the_inflator 4mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- tequila_shot 4mo agoI do not agree. What do you mean by EU focuses on gender studies? Also, any country should be focused on research irrespective of AI, I do not see how AI is “coming” or how it’s related to this thread.
- throwawayqqq11 4mo agoSimpletons need their labels to handle complexity. Claiming gender stuff is a no-go, when picking a place and field of research is obviously moronic.
- hgoel 4mo agoPutting aside all the other things I could point out, my field is one where all the major players are roughly on par. Also, this isn't about making yet another DB SaaS, it's research. AI can only help make it possible to do more than what a lone person could do before. The problems are not the kind where AI can threaten jobs, and even for junior positions, it's well understood that sometimes things need to be done less efficiently, to allow new people to learn. It's kind of the point of a PhD.
- newaccount670 4mo agoUS Science needed this. Racism, sexism, plagiarism, and fraud were rampant in the academic community. It's going to take a long time to fully fix the problem, but we are on the right path currently.
- epistasis 4mo agoNo it did not, and even if there was a correction needed, this most certainly is not that correction.
- kalstone 4mo agoYou are willfully blind if you do not think those have been major and prevailing issues in our insitutions. To kill a virus, it can take drastic measures, like a fever. But after it's over, the host recovers and is once again healthy
- johnsmith1840 4mo agoPresident of stanford was fired over fraudulent research if that's not rampant then what is?
- epistasis 4mo agoWhat do you want more than the firing? If a CEO commits a crime does that mean the entire industry must ne shut down? What sort of reasoning is this?
- johnsmith1840 4mo agoBroken window theory to the extreme. If the leader of one of the countries most famous research groups commited research fraud with a slap on the wrist it's not hard to realize how broken it is. I have personally worked with famous researchers and seen a few fudge their work. Acting ignorant of the major flaws implies you haven't been involved, or inside a bubble of research nirvana.
- EcommerceFlow 4mo agoPrivate enterprise is vastly more competitive than public institutions in every single facet of society. Defund all public science funding so we can have another 50 SpaceXs.
- throwawaypath 4mo agoFascist are defunding critical studies that would rocket the US ahead in science. Studies such as: Culture Change for Inclusion of Indigenous Voices in Biology Strengthening Inclusion by Change in Building Equity, Diversity and Understanding (SICBEDU) in Integrative Biology An Equitable, Justice-Focused Ecosystem for Pacific Northwest Secondary CS [Computer Science] Teaching https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/NSF-Terminated-Awards.csv https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/NSF-Terminated-Award... China won't stand a chance against us with studies like these!
- andyjohnson0 4mo agohttps://archive.ph/zn6FI https://archive.ph/zn6FI
- Invictus0 4mo ago> Political operatives at the NIH passed around lists of words that grants weren’t allowed to use—in either applications or existing, funded projects. Well well well. If it isn't the pot meeting the kettle
- msie 4mo agoMAGA idiots think about nothing but owning the libs. The barbarians have taken over the country.
- tines 4mo agoWhere do you go if you’re looking to leave the US with family and you only speak English?
- cheschire 4mo agoTo the beach. To relax. Don’t become a burden on other countries. Learn the language first if you really must move. Edit: Interesting how controversial my take seems to be. I’ve seen votes on this post go up and down multiple times. Why only vote? Reply!
- physhster 4mo agoComplicated question... Do you have marketable skills that could land you a job in demand with a visa? Or sufficient savings to "buy" residency somewhere?
- ricksunny 4mo agoCommenters are taking seriously an article that quotes the guy who was literally the lead author of Proximal Origins about the state of science. No matter what good points the article brings up elsewhere, this one act alone places its entirety in the trash for me. While the also-quoted Gonsalves was a lackey for the zoonotic side of the covid origins debate, he's allowed his opinion as an otherwise non-protagonist in the single most consequential event in history to put the scientific enterprise as it had been practiced to date on trial.
- bufordtwain 4mo agoMore scientists need to get into politics?
- neverrroot 4mo ago> How did we get here? Careful what you wish for, that’s how. Just a simple example: when you play with firm biological facts, you might just open it all up to being bent. But then, wasn’t that maybe the goal all along?
- russdill 4mo agoI'm confused, is this some comment on the krebs cycle or something?
- neverrroot 4mo agoNaval had a great tweet recently: “Science is not a process, a credential, or an institution. It is the unflinching pursuit of truth, carried out by the few, co-opted by the many.” When did we start institutionalizing it? How about letting the truth be bent? What about the focus on consensus? That’s also what lead to the current situation.
- dmfdmf 4mo ago>Now, to be sure, the end product of science is supposed to be science, not grants or tenure. "To be sure" and "supposed to be" are doing some heavy lifting here. I am not so sure about that so I suppose that for many "scientists" the end product is not science at all. I'm not impugning the whole field as there are many good and honest scientists but the SYSTEM is corrupt. I think a significant portion are gaming the system for status or money or sinecures. P-hacking, fake data scandals, the replication crisis and various fake articles getting published in top journals are omens that something isn't quite right in the science world. My own view is that it is all due to govt funding of science and especially the NSF which should be closed ASAP. Ayn Rand discusses the problem in her article "The Establishing of an Establishment" in her anthology "Philosophy:Who Needs It". Handing out govt grant money invariably locks in the status quo, i.e. an establishment. She also points out that under such terms it is impossible even for an honest man to make good choices which is why such rackets attract scammers and con artists, even fully credentialed PhD's. Here is an excerpt from her article; https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government_grants_and_scholarships.html#order_2 https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government_grants_and_sch... Or buy and read the whole article and the anthology.
- gcanyon 4mo agoOf course it is, that's this administration's goal.
- johnsmith1840 4mo agoHonestly its been a long time coming. Acting as if academia and ivy leauge level research isn't incredibly sick is dishonest. The PRESIDENT of stanford was fired over forged research. I have personally worked very closely with 2 incredibly credentialed researcher leaders who were very very smart fudge their work. The incentive structure for researchers is completely warped. The honest ones are there but from my experience this is all because the options a fresh PHD faces are. 1. Be a rockstar and make a breakthrough -> sucess 2. Be an honest nobody and don't get funding 3. Fudge your work -> become stanford president and make millions Those who get caught get a slap on the wrist for reasons I hypothesize are because so many around them are the same. The mechanism is not unique any SWE will personally know how easy it is to lie about their progress or work. Top researchers have the same effect but it's easily 10x easier for them. Which is also why I admire the good ones even more.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- ikrenji 4mo agoburning it all down is not the way to go though
- johnsmith1840 4mo agoDefine "burn it all down" because it deff isn't
- ikrenji 4mo agowhatever the current admin is doing classifies as burning it. if not all the way down, then halfway down
- johnsmith1840 4mo agoIf the deffinition to you is anything the admin does then that's hard to argue.
- slowpacket 4mo agoSo maga actually means make china great again.
- epsteingpt 4mo agoThis will get downvoted to oblivion, but it's not obvious to me this shakeup is a bad thing. Some thoughts: 1. US Spending on R&D has gone up from $50B -> $1T annually, and from $3B -> $115B on purchasing power terms 2. The labs rely on government grants, which are hard to get and typically awarded 'equally' or 'by gatekeepers' 3. There is and have been massive scandals that question academic integrity - reproducibility, fake data. The scientific community has done almost nothing to change its mechanisms. 4. It's not clear to me what we've 'got' societally from these studies as a whole 5. The administrative burden to even do science has gotten too far out of hand 6. You can't 'fire' researchers Research and science is a fundamentally 'good' thing; we should encourage it. We may need to shake up the way that it's done. Yes science + R&D is long term focused, but it doesn't mean it can't be reformed. That the article centers on hand-wringing over 'my government grant is gone!' instead of 'you're cutting this critical research that will save lives' without any discussion of 'science' needing to reform unfortunately highlights the core of the problem.
- epsteingpt 4mo agoTo clarify - CORPORATE R&D is up to $1T, while academic R&D is $115B
- jeremyjh 4mo agoI think the core of the problem is a profound disrespect for the rule of law and competent leadership in this administration. This is an administration that does not believe in competence because it has never experienced it. It doesn't believe in laws because it thinks everyone is as corrupt and wicked as they are themselves. It doesn't believe in science because science doesn't produce evidence for the facts they've chosen to believe in.
- BobbyTables2 4mo agoThat is certainly a massive increase in spending... Seems a bit hard to believe. Is it actually separate from the AI related mania? I feel like even the COVID related R&D surge couldn’t have been anywhere close. (Perhaps technically unfair, but I don’t view AI related stuff as traditional R&D given the irrational forces driving it. Seems closer to the Dutch Tulip Mania episode).
- dzonga 4mo agoenvy is very destructive feeling. the vc & tech bros while rich, felt envious of the power & respect the academics had. they backed the anti-science candidate, then got involved in useless schemes such as 'government efficiency' which didn't result in any efficiency. so blaming this on the current admin, isn't enough. some of the people to blame live in SF
- squibonpig 4mo agoWait a second you're kind of right. That's why they always want to pretend they "could've done physics"
- ETH_start 4mo agoScientific American is not the organization to be providing commentary on this as it is in the center of the maelstrom and often cited as an example of the cultural shift that preceded the backlash.
- auggierose 4mo agoLet's not pretend like research funding was money well spent before Trump. It wasn't. If tax payers actually knew how research funding works in practice, they wouldn't want any of their tax dollars to be spent on it. If $50 billion are spent on research, maybe $1 billion of the spending is actually worthwhile (totally made that number up), and that is better than $0 spent on research from a certain point of view. Wouldn't be my point of view though if I had to pay for it.
- softwaredoug 4mo agoThe real issue here is impoundments. Russel Vought thinks the President has the power to not spend funds allocated by Congress. They literally are acting as if the presidents budget request for NASA was approved, when Congress actually allocated NASA at the same level as prior years. Science is particularly vulnerable. They can just not award the grants they’re supposed to.
- jimbokun 4mo agoMost people are still not aware of the extent to which the US government has been overthrown. Powers granted exclusively to Congress have been usurped by the Executive, with no pushback from Congress. The courts have done better. But they can only do so much at the unrelenting stream of violations coming from this administration.
- lenerdenator 4mo ago> How did we get here? Because certain people don't like one or both of these two things: 1) Having to pay tax 2) Having to be accountable to someone, whether they be a government or anyone else With this in mind, they illegally gutted a bunch of jobs. They do this for the same reason a dog licks his balls: because he can and no one will stop him.
- deadbabe 4mo agoI think there will come a day, shortly after the arrival of “AGI”, that people will declare all the useful science humanity could possibly do has already been done, and there is no need for scientific research anymore. We solved everything that could be solved. Science will become purely for recreational purposes, maybe funded by millionaires, billionaires or even trillionaires looking for a specific set of outcomes.
- jschveibinz 4mo agoThis will not be a popular comment, and I love science and scientists. I have spent my career working with scientists and investing in science. But the research community as a whole has a credibility problem. Does this problem merit financial cutbacks? I can't say, but it sure makes the rhetoric and justifications easier for those doing the cutting. These stats have been reported by various legitimate media sources--and you can verify these for yourself on the web: - Outright fraud: about 2% of scientists admit fabrication or falsification, while about 14% report knowledge of similar misconduct by colleagues. - Image manipulation: roughly 4% of biomedical papers contain problematic image duplications, with some cases suggestive of deliberate manipulation. - Questionable research practices: up to 33.7% of researchers admit at least one such practice, while up to 72% report seeing them among colleagues. - Replication failure is serious: results can't be duplicated in more than 50% of major psychology and biomedical research projects. - p-hacking: researchers can unintentionally or deliberately search across data until a result becomes statistically significant, increasing false-positive risk without necessarily committing outright fraud. - Biomedical research waste: one landmark estimate argues that up to 85% of biomedical research investment may be avoidably wasted through poor design, non-publication, and incomplete reporting. - Unpublished research: science is science, but many null or disappointing studies remain unpublished, distorting the visible literature and causing other labs to repeat failed work. - ...And finally: a minority of funded research (much less than 50%) is reliable, novel, usable, and clearly reported scientific journals.
- squibonpig 4mo agoI don't think any of this gets better by cutting funding.
- WalterBright 4mo agoI've often idly thought that if I had a billion dollars in play money, I'd set up a copy of Bell Labs.
- zombot 4mo agoChaos is putting it mildly. It's on the verge of non-existence. Can't have infrastructure nor propensities for investigating truths when the administration's most vital interest is the ability to tell lies about anything and everything.
- marsven_422 4mo ago[dead]
- khriss 4mo agoIf there is a better way to hand the future to China on a platter, I honestly haven't seen it yet. All of the other despicable stuff by this administration is easily reversible since nothing except tax cuts for billionaires (aka big beautiful bill) was passed by Congress. But this wanton destruction of the US scientific capability for at least a generation is next to impossible to overcome. As they say, trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback.
- JSR_FDED 4mo agoI agree. Unfortunately there’s a well-established pattern of the new administration not rolling back most of the nonsense put in place by the previous administration. For example once you get addicted to the tariff revenues there’s not much will to roll them back.
- schnitzelstoat 4mo agoIt's crazy the science funding was cut so much, but I wonder if even after the cuts it might still be better than what we have here in Europe. There's been a Europe -> USA brain drain for decades due to the better funding, salaries etc. they can get there.
- greggoB 4mo agoThere was a lot of talk last year about Europe creating funds to attract US researchers burned by these cuts - I haven't heard much about that recently, but if it worked it could potentially have created/started a reverse brain-drain.
- cucumber3732842 4mo agoA sociologist or historian who's funding has been cut all the same reads these comments, takes a drag of his cigarette and thinks to himself this all could have been avoided if they'd have paid attention to his field over the decades but deep down he knows that it was impossible all along.
- 1970-01-01 4mo ago(Biased) opinion is completely ignoring the crux of the issue! Cuts stemmed from the reproduction crisis, which is decades in the making. Politicians steering the field is a direct symptom from massive moral failures within. The bad apples have finally spoiled the entire harvest. Add-in the current administration's stupidity, with it's joy of heavy cuts everywhere, and the field becomes indefensible in the overall federal scope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
- Varelion 4mo agoMy wife has a Masters in Biotech and has presented in national conferences. Anyone has a good lead on where the next science hub would be? She is amazing at what she does, but the current status has her studying SWE so she can land a job, and that really kills me on the inside.
- themuskgpt2025 4mo ago[dead]