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Top researchers leave USA for the Netherlands (in Dutch)
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- goldenarm 3mo agoThe US is accidentally conducting Operation Paperclip but in reverse. Who will benefit the most from it, China or Europe ?
- amarant 3mo agoProbably Europe. Seems more attractive for researchers. China is probably too different to be attractive for most Americans.
- namenotrequired 3mo agoEven if not a single researcher goes from the US to China, it may still benefit them
- em500 3mo agoIt's not too different for ethnic Chinese researchers, of which there are a lot in American STEM departments.
- skeledrew 3mo agoChinese are far more open to working in foreign environments/contexts that Americans are, IMO. Just look at the foreign language learning statistics: most Americans tend to only know English, unless their family was fairly recently from a non-English speaking country. Meanwhile the Chinese landing in the US tend to already have decent English education, and dive right into doing what they're there to do.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo agoGiven that English is a global lingua franca this hardly seems like a useful comparison.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo agoFor a lot of people it's easier to learn English than Chinese - you wouldn't get far if you don't speak the language in China. English gets you very far in Europe though, most research institutions, universities, high end professions, etc already have English as the going language because of the international character of these places.
- em500 3mo agoI think you're missing my point. China does not need to or aim to attract any researcher from anywhere. Just attracting top tier ethnic Chinese researchers and technical talent from the US is already a big unequivocal win for them. That talent pool is big: any US Math/Physics Olympiad team of the past 10-20 years is >2/3rds ethnically Chinese. And for them, Europe is not necessarily a more attractive destination than China.
- est31 3mo agoChina is not very immigration friendly to non-han folks, but I guess chinese researchers won't make it to the US and this already will have a great effect on the chinese economy. Europe is in its own set of problems and it is not in the same situation that US used to be after WW2 (only major economy not affected by bombing). Europe's problems: * active major war in Ukraine (lasting longer than Axis/Soviet war in WW2) * energy supply issues (unlike US it's not energy sufficient and the places that supply it with energy are involved with wars) * a wall of people aging away from employment and into doctor's and hospital waiting rooms (forcing less investment into research and roads/bridges/railway, more towards stabilizing pensions, healthcare) * major pieces of the european export economy are being replaced by China (eg chinese car brands eating the lunch of european car brands).
- tasuki 3mo ago> China is not very immigration friendly to non-han folks What do you mean? I've never been to China, but know quite a few non-han white Europeans who lived there for both shorter and longer periods of time. Some studied, others worked there.
- John23832 3mo agoIn total, China has roughly the same amount of immigrants as Ireland. China is also objectively becoming more closed, not more open.
- coldtea 3mo agoThe amount of skilled immigrants, researchers and engineers, matters for this comparison. Not just the total amount including random people arriving at the coast.
- John23832 3mo agoNo, total immigration matters. Human progress is always subject to the law large numbers. Skilled polish engineers don't want to be the only polish person in the entire country. They want food, culture, community that reminds them of home. Even as they assimilate. That's why the American melting pot works well. It encourages enclaves that touch one another. China is the opposite of that. You are hard hammered into the Han-ness, immediately. The language, the writing (which is a HUGE hurdle), the food, the way of life.
- bergen 3mo agoIs it an accident though? This seems very deliberate
- goldenarm 3mo agoMaybe the current administration underestimates the impact of public research, and thinks Silicon Valley appeared out of nowhere.
- Dumblydorr 3mo agoEither they underestimate, which is ignorance, or they estimate properly and are anti-truth. What use do propagandists and fascists have for research? It only stands to continually disprove their lies. They obviously hate science and truth and want it gone, to be replaced with cult of personality and Christian nationalism.
- usrusr 3mo agoNot sure if accidentally is the correct term, given the anti-intellectual platform
- fhe 3mo agoThere are any number of smaller region/states that are already benefiting. Singapore comes to mind. Leading labs are all setting up in Singapore and both 1) internally-transferring their previously US-based talents on work visa to Singapore, and 2) using Singapore as a base for Asia hires, mostly notably from China.
- adam_beck 3mo agoTop researchers in what?
- moffkalast 3mo agoTop. Men.
- 28304283409234 3mo agoAnd top women: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/07/07/opeens-mochten-we-woorden-die-te-maken-hebben-met-gender-niet-meer-gebruiken-dat-raakte-me-zeer-a4931934 https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/07/07/opeens-mochten-we-woord... Cancer researchers, climatechange, food production, astrophysics, democracy, mental health, Alzheimers, ... Basically all over the board. But don't worry - you folks still have a president that understands sports really..... REALLY well. /s
- karmakurtisaani 3mo agoWho?
- pastor_williams 3mo agoFrom what I can tell AI, quantum, vaccines, cancer, Alzheimer's, mental health, nuclear energy, climate, food security, astrophysics, democratic resilience There isn't a full list of fields or researchers because of privacy or not all researchers have told their current institutions about the change.
- mono442 3mo agoIsn't much of the science work just taking money for doing basically nothing? I don't think that is a loss for the us.
- victorbjorklund 3mo agoYea, exactly. You should send all your top scientists to Europe. Great idea to get rid of them. Totally just dragging down your country. Send them to Europe.
- zipy124 3mo agoNo. It is for research that wouldn't be funded by companies, since it is either too risky or has too long of a time-horizon. If all academic research was removed from the world you would notice a vast stagnation in technological progress. This can be confirmed by looking at what technologies have come from this process, and what private research built upon public research.
- pjc50 3mo agoHacker News really isn't what it used to be, huh.
- karmakurtisaani 3mo agoAnti-science crowd found their way here as well.
- throwawaypath 3mo ago>Anti-science crowd "Pregnant men..."
- mrguyorama 3mo agoThese people have always been here. They were the ones complaining that we were "brainwashed" when we decried Trump in 2016. They were the ones complaining we were overreacting to him being elected again. They were the ones cheering for DOGE while we pointed out how obviously stupid it was. Now they feel safe to be loud and proud of their ignorance.
- cdash 3mo agoThis title is such clickbait. All the article talks about is a Dutch fund created to recruit scientists and they have successfully recruited them. At 1 million euros per head.
- Forgeties79 3mo agoSeems accurate enough to me. That’s not a ton of money to uproot your life over tbh. Shows there’s willingness to leave with a little bit of incentive.
- DrSiemer 3mo agoThat money is for the research, not salary
- Forgeties79 3mo agoYup I wasn’t confused about that.
- flexagoon 3mo agoDutch researcher salaries are also pretty high (compared both to median Dutch salaries and academic salaries around the world), so it's still not like you're leaving USA to live in poverty
- JSR_FDED 3mo agoThey have the first 34 researchers, all from top universities and institutes. That’s a major achievement, because as the article says, every researcher brings new knowledge as well as a whole international network with them.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo agoExactly; the biggest company in the Netherlands and its products (ASML and high end lithography machines), is built on top of the works of only a handful of researchers. The US nuclear weapons and space programs were similarly built on top of researchers they got from Europe. This is very much NOT a numbers game, and I want to believe top researchers rate their work and the benefit of humanity higher than a country, especially if that country is backsliding.
- cactusplant7374 3mo agoHopefully it isn't lithography researchers.
- JSR_FDED 3mo agoWhy hopefully?
- cactusplant7374 3mo agoBecause we need them to compete with ASML.
- luma 3mo agoThis reads more like The Netherlands hopes to bribe US researchers into moving to the Netherlands.
- vincnetas 3mo agowhy do you call paying someone legally a "bribe" ?
- ericmay 3mo agoIn the US we sometimes use the term “bribe” in morally neutral or even positive situations. It just means giving someone money or a different incentive to convince them to do something they weren’t going to do or were undecided but considering doing and the extra incentive is the catalyst for making the decision. We also have the legal concept of a bribe but the OP probably wasn’t using it in the legal sense - I.e. accusing the Netherlands of doing something illegal.
- Lutger 3mo agoThe money isn't really for the researchers personally, but for doing the research. They are merely offered a job at a time where their jobs are on the line in the USA. And not even that, they still have to apply and compete with top researchers from other parts of the world. Really hard to call that a bribe, even in a morally neutral way. At most you could say the Netherlands - and other European countries - are taking advantages of the situation where the USA is abandoning their top researchers. But for years it has been the other way around. Top talent from the Netherlands has been moving to the US in order to get funding (and a bigger salary).
- ericmay 3mo agoThe OP is using the terms incentive and bribe interchangeably. People do that in the US all the time. I don't think anyone really thinks it is wrong or morally disagreeable what the Netherlands is doing nor are they using the term in the legal sense. I was just explaining why someone might have used that term, obviously the OP probably should speak for themselves though in case they did mean it in the legal sense or something.
- blueaquilae 3mo agoExperts in flies reproduction leave fro Netherlands.
- bergen 3mo agoThe US once was proud of its scientific achievements, now parts of it replaced that with being very proud of their ignorance
- drstewart 3mo agoI thought Europe was proud and independent and completely decoupled from the US, why do you need US scientists suddenly? Hmm...
- vrganj 3mo agoThat's part of the decoupling. Onshoring as much knowledge as possible.
- drstewart 3mo agoEurope needs Americans to decouple from America. Got it.
- vrganj 3mo agoEverybody is welcome to contribute to the free world, be they American or not.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo agoInterestingly some Europeans also feel that Europe is becoming less free and are fleeing to the US: https://www.foxnews.com/world/anti-greta-activist-flees-europe-antifa-death-threats-elon-musk-backs-asylum-claim https://www.foxnews.com/world/anti-greta-activist-flees-euro...
- jesdo 3mo agoGreat initiative, and good to see that it has an effect. I'm a bit sceptical about the available funds. 1 million over 5 years is a nice starting package (4+ PhD students), but the availability of overall research grant money in the Netherlands has been under pressure for years and is difficult to acquire. Researchers moving here may find it difficult to acquire further grant money compared to US, at least in CS.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo agoIt'll be on top of any other grants and funding available for research though.
- doctorwho42 3mo agoAny how much available funding is there in the EU? One of the reasons that so many researchers come to the US, even with our decline in research funding over the last 30 years, is because the US makes available so much God damn funding in comparison to any western world. The reason China is starting to outstrip the US? Because they are starting to surpass the US in funding. The only downside I have heard from Chinese scientists is that you tend to get pigeon holed for the rest of your career into things the state wants/needs
- jltsiren 3mo agoBecause there is less competition for jobs and grants. Europe spends more on academic research (as a fraction of GDP) than the US, but there are more people competing for the funding.
- doctorwho42 3mo agoAre you sure about that? Most people miss the fact that a sizeable % of our military budget is slated for research grants/funding. I'm a physicist in academia, and the amount of money we have gotten from DoD branches for things that have no immediate military applications is like 40-60% of our budget YoY. Like for straight fundamental physics research. Most scientists I know who have gone to Europe have had to go into the private sector. And the famous ones I work with have gotten like blank check $10M offers from max planck and directorships with guaranteed $1m/yr funding, and still turned them down.
- Herring 3mo agoAmerica is like a trust fund baby given all the advantages and then the baby goes "fuck it, life is too hard, I am just going to do coke and die early”.
- greenavocado 3mo agoI think you meant to write "boomers." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1trcILsBHkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1trcILsBHkE
- greenavocado 3mo agoThe article has failed to prove that anybody has taken the bait and left. > For the researcher, the qualities must, from an international perspective, far exceed what is customary within the international peer group. The institution receives a maximum of €1 million per researcher for the next five years. Let's be generous and assume you are one of the chosen ones. Your institution will take 20% off the top leaving with you 1million×.80/5 or 160k EUR per year. After income taxes, your take home pay is €90,868.00 or $103k USD. Not bad for the average man, but not good for a top researcher like they want. EUR 160k works out to about $182,640. For that level of income in a top tier institution in a state with an income tax like Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD you would take home $121,565, or 15% more. https://thetax.nl/?income=160000&startFrom=Year&selectedYear=2026&older=false&allowance=false&socialSecurity=true&hoursAmount=40&ruling=false&holidayPayoutMay=false https://thetax.nl/?income=160000&startFrom=Year&selectedYear...
- 28304283409234 3mo agoAssume you are correct, and the Dutch offer a terrible proposition. Yet still they come.
- zipy124 3mo agoAcademic pay is standardised in many EU countries. For example in the UK you can look up union rates of pay. At UCL (I'm still currently affiliated as I finish my PhD) the pay for a professor starts at £82,157 and goes up to a minimum of £139,882 for the top band. There is an additional £4,678 on top as a London allowance. This roughly lines up with your figure per year, so seems reasonable as an allocation of cost. Also there are usually very very generous pension schemes here, so total pay is actually quite a lot higher than stated. In addition there is very generous holiday allowance, 41 days at UCL for instance, since you get extra holidays when the university is closed over certain holiday days.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo agoThis assumes the 1 million is all they get or can use to pay them with. The 1 million is a subsidy, not their salary. Besides, 90K after taxes is upper middle class. 160K / year is 13K / month which is nearly twice the average income of the richest country in Europe (Switzerland) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...), or top 0.1% according to https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i. And that's just salary based on that number, it doesn't include other income sources.
- HelloUsername 3mo agoAnother news article in English: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/07/top-us-scientists-come-to-nl-amid-threats-to-academic-freedom/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/07/top-us-scientists-come-to-n...
- derbOac 3mo agoThe last paragraph has some important context: "De Jonge Akademie, an association of young scientists, warned last year that the fund could end up recruiting academic stars who are not under threat, at a time when Dutch universities were cutting jobs because of government cutbacks. The new cabinet reversed those cuts last month, pledging up to €428 million a year extra for research."
- gtsnexp 3mo ago[flagged]
- drstewart 3mo agoWill they be exempt from providing ID to post on the internet or nah?
- michalpleban 3mo agoI can post on the Internet whatever I want without providing any ID whatsover.
- drstewart 3mo ago*For now
- lifestyleguru 3mo agoThey are going to live in Netherlands where? In what housing? Maybe Europe will engage the top American intellectual power into ejecting the real estate prices into orbit.
- blastonico 3mo agoWho are those "top" researchers? and how many?
- dwa3592 3mo agoActually there are many such headlines, just replace the Netherlands with [China, Singapore, Australia, India].
- andsoitis 3mo agoThat's not a truthful translation of the article's headline, BTW. More correct would be "First international scientists to the Netherlands via the Tulip Fund", which is a far cry from the title as submitted.
- eth0up 3mo ago[flagged]
- eth0up 3mo agoBecause I was flagged, with no reason or excuse, to those who actually manually viewed the now invisible comment and wonder the reference, please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania Considering the grim reality of our fiscal derangement, and the context, I think the reaction here was a bit obtuse. Or maybe I'm beleaguered by Taylor Swift fans.... and economists, which I think have very similar discretion
- neuronexmachina 3mo agoOfficial page for the Tulip Fund: https://www.nwo.nl/en/calls/tulip-fund https://www.nwo.nl/en/calls/tulip-fund
- Z4cki 3mo agoHow did you find this out? Not sure if its true!
- mnky9800n 3mo agoI apologise if this is overly negative. It is based on my experience working as a soft money researcher (my own grants) at a Dutch university. My opinions may not be shared. In my experience The Netherlands is a rather unsupportive place to do research. There is essentially no money from the government that will pay salaries in full, especially early career salaries (vini, vidi, vici). I have had friends win ERC grants (millions in euros) that were fired as a result because there was not a space in the department to hire them full time (Dutch work law requires contracts to become permanent after a certain number of years of working). Departments also seem to have glass ceilings for non Dutch. Researchers are often given large teaching commitments that cannot be bought out with grants. University incubators seem to be better suited to let professors pretend to be start up founders then actual innovation centers. I have tried on multiple occasions to engage the local incubator and have always been run around. Yet local Dutch have no issues. The rules seem to be different for Dutch than for foreigners. A foreign colleague was offered a lucrative consulting contract (a normal thing for successful professors at other universities). The Dutch university he was at refused to let him take it except under the understanding the money would be entirely consumed by the university and he would receive no compensation for bringing in private money even though he would be doing all of the work. Meanwhile the Dutch colleague in the next office was allowed to start a private consulting agency through the local incubator and spend as much time as he wanted working in the start up. The universities publish reports how progressive they are by evaluating professors on teaching and outreach meanwhile having internal department expectations of PhD students to publish at least four first author papers or are not allowed to graduate (on four year contracts with one year full time teaching commitment). In my experience it is rare that PhD students finish on time. As one adminstrator told me, “university promoters are more interested in promoting their careers then their PhD students” (promoter is the word used for the adviser). The universities also disallow working outside of typical hours and there is no ability to work in your own office on the weekends. Also, recently they defended against this, but it will come up again, the government has discussed changing the tax law such that startup shares will have real world value so new valuations become taxable events. This all is not atypical to universities world wide. But in the Netherlands I have not found a place that made me feel like I could work to the best of my ability and at the cutting edge. This is unfortunate. It’s nice to live here but I’m leaving to go to greener pastures.
- amoshebb 3mo agoI could only find 4 names: 1 full prof at Vanderbilt with a real research program who has been listed as PI on a bunch of grants. "Top researcher" may be generous, but based on nothing I'd say reasonable description. The other 3: 1 is a VU Amsterdam PhD who was on a Netherlands Government funded 24-month postdoc in Harvard who's been at VU Amsterdam since 2017. 1 is an adjunct (on leave) prof from Israel who has worked at a few german universities, most recently an Munster (doesn't qualify for the 30% rule). The last resigned over a year ago and has been contracting at a couple UK universities. This seems less like "Top researchers leave USA" and more like "Typical Academic Bag Chasing"
- budsniffer952 3mo ago[flagged]
- LastTrain 3mo agoIt’s weird what you find gross, budsniffer. I find sending the military to police US citizens gross. I find killing peaceful protesters gross no matter who does it. I find the president issuing memecoins on the eve of his inauguration gross. I don’t root for Iran, but that doesn’t mean I support what we are doing to them either.
- searine 3mo agoIts not just what makes the news. There is a cooling effect happening in recruiting international talent. Science is heavily international, and if people feel like they won't get funding/wont be safe here, they won't come.
- Shocka1 3mo agoI know this is anecdotal, but my engineering graduate program at a well known private university in the NE had roughly 300 graduates, more than half of them on student visas. I feel it's more popular than ever to act as though one has ideals, but there is an endless supply of talent waiting for a spot at these prestigious American universities.
- larodi 3mo agoAnd then Dutch-Americans leave for Bulgaria and Romania .) occasionally Croatia
- mbmbn 3mo agoThis title is very misrepresentative of the actual article. This is an article about initiatives to attract scientists to the Netherlands, not about some supposed ongoing brain drain.
- duxup 3mo agoIs there money available to absorb more than a handful of these types of people and their research and related costs?
- loorke 3mo agoWishful thinking