5 ms·
It's hard to overstate how chaotic and mismanaged NIH has been in the past two years. Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice, so it
by epistasis 2mo ago
It's hard to overstate how chaotic and mismanaged NIH has been in the past two years. Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice, so it's hard to impute motives here.
A lot of labs are being defunded for no good reason, losing researchers, losing the thread, and putting entire directions of useful research on ice, likely forever.
There are some clear indications of where it is pure malice and not mere incompetence though. Sean Eddy is a foundational figure in my field of research, like a Hubble:
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/21/nx-s1-5828768/science-funding-cuts-nih-trump-administration https://www.npr.org/2026/05/21/nx-s1-5828768/science-funding...
- nielsbot 2mo agoI'm going to call it malice. Either way the people running the government now are the avowed enemies of functioning institutions. No need to give these freaks the benefit of the doubt. (See Russ Vought's comments about putting all government workers in trauma just for one and he's head of OMB.)
- tokioyoyo 2mo agoFrom the outside, I can see how they want to revamp the institutions with hopes to accelerate timelines, and reduce waste. But it’s also funny because it’s not something that can be achieved in a span of 4 years and without long term goals/objectives/process changes/changing the pipelines/etc. I’ve mentioned it in the past as well, but everything that US has done in the past looks like as a knee-jerk reaction to China’s achievements. That being said, I sincerely hope they can compete in advancing the tech and research, since competition is good for the world.
- nielsbot 2mo ago> From the outside, I can see how they want to revamp the institutions with hopes to accelerate timelines, and reduce waste. That's just a cover story--don't be fooled.
- SubiculumCode 2mo agoIt's not the regulars at NIH. If anything they are pulling more unofficial overtime than ever before to try to compensate for what is coming from on top and what DOGE destroyed
- nielsbot 2mo agoYes, I am not impugning the normal career staff--I mainly assume they're there for the opportunity to serve the public.
- dgellow 2mo agoWhy would you ever give the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt after the past 10y? They’ve been more than clear about the fact they want to destroy federal and scientific institutions (other than ICE of course)
- jjtheblunt 2mo ago> At 60, Eddy had planned to continue working through the next decade with his team. "For someone of my career stage, this is probably not recoverable," he says. Why doesn't he continue his research inside big pharma?
- jltsiren 2mo agoBig pharma is not like Bell Labs of old. Their researchers are expected to do work their bosses consider productive. They have no need for people who want to do curiosity-driven research and release the results to the public.
- userbinator 2mo agoBig pharma is not like Bell Labs of old. Then maybe this is a sign that things should change back towards that direction.
- epistasis 2mo agoEven Bell Labs would not be doing the type of research that is necessary. Look at all the innovation in science that happened back then! Bell Labs was an outlier but it was not the primary driver of science by any means.
- userbinator 2mo agoYou're right, there were many other companies doing it too. General Electric, General Motors, Sylvania, etc.
- epistasis 2mo agoThat's not what I was saying. The foundational research that built the massive economic engine of the current US did not come from industrial research.
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- sixothree 2mo agoSufficiently advanced incompetence is malice.