6 ms·

Some US scientists consider moving overseas to continue their research

25 points by ekm2 13y ago

yummyfajitas 13y ago
This might be as bad as the time Bush was reelected and all the scientists moved to Canada! Or when all those hardworking small business owners fled the country after Obama's election - we still haven't recovered from that one. In all seriousness, the title should be fixed. Scientists telling a survey they might leave != scientists leaving. Incidentally, here is data on science funding over time. For anyone wanting to make political points (which appears to be everyone else commenting so far), the data probably doesn't map onto your narrative all that well. http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fy2013/hist13pDefNon.pdf http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fy2013/hist13pDefNon.pdf http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fy2013/hist13pAgcyRes.pdf http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fy2013/hist13pAgcyRes.pdf
- spoiledtechie 13y ago
  Sources for the first two accusations?
  - ankushnarula 13y ago
    /sarcasm
- ankushnarula 13y ago
  I think that the headline of the article might be link bait but there are much more salient points made within the text.
- timr 13y ago
  "For anyone wanting to make political points (which appears to be everyone else commenting so far), the data probably doesn't map onto your narrative all that well." Right. Because it's not like you're trying to make a (conservative) political point every time I see one of your comments. The problem with the data you've cited is that it actually shows the problem you're dismissing: science funding has declined in real terms (let alone inflation-adjusted terms) since the end of the Clinton administration. There's been a huge bloodletting -- across the board -- over the last 13 years. An entire generation of US scientists has been decimated by pointless budget cuts. If you don't know anything at all about science, you might look at the overall trend of this graph and say: "science funding has gone up since 1976, so shut up and stop whining". This is the simpleton's interpretation of the graph. A more nuanced interpretation is that we invested billions of dollars into training of new scientists starting in the Clinton administration (~1996), and right about the time those new scientists hit the point in their careers when they needed funding to really get their labs started (~2000), we stranded them. There's an entire generation of scientists with structural under-employment because of this phenomenon, and yes, they're leaving the country (I personally know a few who have, and I can't fault their reasoning. You go where you can work. If I were still doing science, I'd probably be gone, too.) But that's not even the most important story. An intelligent observer looks at this graph and says: the US budget for 2013 is $3.8 TRILLION. We spend $600 BILLION on the department of defense, and nearly $900 BILLION on Social Security (aka: old people who contribute almost nothing to the growth of the economy). Yet we're trying to "save money" by shaving a few tens of billions (that's 0.8% of total federal spending, in case you're bad at math) off of the one tiny part of our government that has consistently delivered outsized real returns to the economy. Any economist -- conservative or liberal -- will tell you that you don't make your budget by nibbling at the smallest line items while ignoring big expenses. This is what we call "cutting off your nose to spite your face". Stupid, pointless, and definitely not conservative.
  - yequalsx 13y ago
    Your response is excellent. I do however have one nitpick. Social Security is not a budget expense. I know it's listed as one but it shouldn't be. Social Security is an actuarially sound self-funded pension system. There is a slight under funding right now however its payments are not budgetary items.
    - timr 13y ago
      A fair point. I just went to the FY2013 federal budget numbers, but didn't think about the fact that social security has a rather large tax of its own, and is therefore (mostly) "funded". That said, every dollar we spend is a dollar that we could be spending on something else, so I think it's still fair to consider the expense of social security relative to other things we buy. We obviously can't abandon old people, but if someone said to me "we should find a way to cut social security by 0.8% to restore science funding", I'd be inclined to think it was a good idea, all other things being equal. I'm definitely not a doctrinaire liberal -- I think we should have a social safety net (including things like single-payer health insurance), but I think we have plenty of other places we can look to balance the books before we start cutting into science and technology.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    The data is adjusted for inflation - that's what "in billions of constant FY 2012 dollars" means. Funding rose about 50% in the early 2000's and leveled off after that. The only bloodletting has been recent - 2010-2012 or 2011-2013 (the xticks on the graph confuse me). I'm not sure what political point you think I'm trying to make. As for spending on science relative to wealth transfers, I agree with you. I'm not sure why you wish to imply I don't.
    - timr 13y ago
      "The data is adjusted for inflation" Yes, that's why I said "in real terms". The situation is worse in inflated dollars -- even if we'd held the budgets steady in real dollars, we'd be losing to inflation. "Funding rose about 50% in the early 2000's and leveled off after that." Non-defense R&D climbed from 1996-2003, then declined. Defense R&D increased from 2001-2003 (thanks mainly to 9/11), held steady for most of the decade, and began to decline in 2010. Defense R&D is not spending on "science" by any conventional definition (most of that money goes to the defense industry), but it does employ some scientists, so we count it. "I'm not sure what political point you think I'm trying to make." You were arguing that the data doesn't support the thesis of the story, and implied that those who supported the thesis were making "political points" (at the time of your comment, almost all of the other comments were in support of the thesis).
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  The main thing that jumps out at me from this graph is that (irrelevantly) that we've tripled NIH spending in real terms over the last 25 years but have seen relatively small gains in life expectancy and things like infant mortality have largely stayed static, suggesting we're into an era of diminishing returns :-/ As for scientists leaving the country, I half-agree with you. It's not a sudden crisis in the US, but has more to do with the improving and more competitive economies of other nations, which in turn makes them more attractive places for scientists to work. In the past, you could assume that people would come to the US because it was the best place for academic freedom and to have a financially rewarding science career. Now that there is more competition, we should probably be looking for ways to maintain that status rather than resting on the assumption that we're #1.
kaila 13y ago
It's not just the funding. The politics in science (I don't know about internationally, but definitely here in the US) can be pretty ridiculous.
spodek 13y ago
The writing on the wall became apparent to me with the 1993 cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider, when I was getting my PhD in physics. I didn't know the numbers for a cost-benefit analysis, but I couldn't then nor can I now see cancellation as helpful to the U.S. The U.S. would have stayed way ahead of the rest of the world in particle physics and all the accompanying jobs, discoveries, and innovation. Instead we look to the rest of the world for leadership. The Forbes article paints a picture of a United States full of ambition and curiosity driving innovation. That part exists, but it has just as long been a country of puritanism, self-righteousness, and fundamentalism. The article points to politics as a major problem. That politics reflects this tradition among the people. A large fraction of the population here genuinely dislikes science, no matter how much they like the computers and cd players it brought. I grew up liking idealism because I thought I was right about so many things. I since dropped my need to be right a priori in favor of what works after testing. Politics in this country does have an idealistic view of the individual -- each person should do for him or herself and anyone helping them will decrease their ability to achieve and lower their motivation. Healthcare, welfare, education, and so on are viewed by a large block of voters as detrimental to the nation. We, as a nation if not readers of this site, stick to this principle in the face of nearly the entire world providing evidence to the contrary. We put down other countries for doing things against our ideals, saying they don't work, even as they pass us in countless measures of quality of life and community. Choosing idealism in the face of contrary evidence of what works is a recipe for disaster.
- lispm 13y ago
  The funding is in other areas. Work for the NSA, CIA, Homeland Security or Military. They spend a lot of money on innovation. Just one example: The F-35 fighter plane project has an estimated cost over its lifespan of 1.5 trillion (no joke) dollars. Another example: the Virginia Class fast-attack submarine. 2 billion a piece. Around 30 are planned. Who cares about a superconducting super collider? It's even peanuts in terms of money. Fusion reactor? Renewable energy? Infrastructure? You are at the wrong side of innovation.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
eliteraspberrie 13y ago
The title isn't descriptive of the article. The author discusses serious issues with decreasing funding of science in the US, but there is no exodus of scientists. Let's hope Mars can be the national (I include Canada because of the close relationship) project that fuels science and innovation for our generation.
- VLM 13y ago
  "there is no exodus of scientists." If there's one thing American's like its creating their personal identity solely using their job title. I believe the article assumes domestic readers know this peculiarity. The article is full of "Fifty-five percent know a colleague who has lost a job or expects to soon." and “I have just laid off my technician and will lose my postdoc in six months,” There are no open jobs, and those unemployed workers will have to do "something" if they intend to eat and obtain medical care and shelter. So I would assume once they're hired as day care workers or bartenders or waiters, displacing the mere high school diploma holders, they'll no longer be considered scientists, but be considered taxi drivers or whatever. There should be data on numbers employed, or fraction of the population employed, or salaries in those fields. For example if there were an extreme shortage of biology grads, you'd expect to see starting salaries for the DNR around $200K or so. Oh wait, most of those grads end up at Starbucks.
pazimzadeh 13y ago
I'm having a hard time finding any data that support the conclusions of this article. My mom is an immunologist, and in 1999 my family moved from France to the US due to better opportunities for her as a scientist.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Sick and aging people are a growth industry for the next 20-30 years, thanks to the demographic bulge the country experienced following WW2 resulting in a large and wealthy generation known as the 'baby boomers,' who are now retiring en masse. Other developed economies had similar demographic bulges, but none large as the US or with the same sort of competitive medical services market. As I pointed out above, funding for health research (through the NIH) has tripled over the last 25 years. The picture is not as rosy for scientists outside the medical field.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
VLM 13y ago
In the old days, as a scientist, if you studied hard and worked hard, before you got downsized for being too old, you might make local management rich. They happen to own the government. No great surprise the feds back student loans and encourage the myth of a STEM shortage, feed more minds into the gristle mill. You don't need some kind of actively managed centrally controlled conspiracy, you just need individual actors following their own pocketbooks. In the modern era, lets say post 1990, as a scientist, if you studied hard and worked hard, before you got downsized for being too old, you might make some factory owner in China who stole your idea and research, and the Chinese .gov bribe takers, very rich. The local management makes all their money off non-scientific stuff like social networks and chat programs, so they certainly don't need science, they've pivoted out of the physical market and left it for the Chinese. Because the rich guys own the government, the .gov also don't care much anymore. The best hope for modern scientists is to hope for sponsorship / patronage from the Chinese government and hope they can outperform the more numerous locals. Good Luck, you'll need it.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
Jiminy cricket, guys, enough with the linkbait on HN already. 1 in 5 scientists have considered leaving the U.S. That's the news here, if there is news. By way of comparison, another recent study shows 9% of the total population has considered leaving. People consider lots of things, and surveys show all kinds of nifty trends, like the percentage of people who believe we have been visited by aliens, or those thinking the moon landing was faked -- both of which, last I checked, had more traction in the public than the idea of leaving the country. People believe weird shit and hold interesting opinions. Film at 11. So the title doesn't match the essay. But wait! That's not all! The body of the text, supposedly from a non-partisan viewpoint, is pretty much an attack on one of the political parties in the U.S. I won't spoil the surprise for you, but I bet you can guess. Among the shifting and meandering logic, we get a nice confusion of whether or not funding equals science (the two are not necessarily related) and a nice slam across corporate America's face with the old "They're just in it for the profits" routine. All fairly normal and pedestrian rhetoric, but nothing much newsworthy, nothing with a supporting argument for the thesis, and nothing, frankly, that interesting. Unless you want to make a call for political action as part of supporting some political message, which this author does. That's great, but I'm not sure what to do with it on HN. Argue politics with all the usual players taking up the usual roles? Not so much. At least for me.

25 points by ekm2 13y ago

This might be as bad as the time Bush was reelected and all the scientists moved to Canada! Or when all those hardworking small business owners fled the country after Obama's election - we still haven't recovered from that one. In all seriousness, the title should be fixed. Scientists telling a survey they might leave != scientists leaving. Incidentally, here is data on science funding over time. For anyone wanting to make political points (which appears to be everyone else commenting so far), the data probably doesn't map onto your narrative all that well. http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fy2013/hist13pDefNon.pdf http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fy2013/hist13pDefNon.pdf http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fy2013/hist13pAgcyRes.pdf http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fy2013/hist13pAgcyRes.pdf

spoiledtechie 13y ago
Sources for the first two accusations?
- ankushnarula 13y ago
  /sarcasm
ankushnarula 13y ago
I think that the headline of the article might be link bait but there are much more salient points made within the text.
timr 13y ago
"For anyone wanting to make political points (which appears to be everyone else commenting so far), the data probably doesn't map onto your narrative all that well." Right. Because it's not like you're trying to make a (conservative) political point every time I see one of your comments. The problem with the data you've cited is that it actually shows the problem you're dismissing: science funding has declined in real terms (let alone inflation-adjusted terms) since the end of the Clinton administration. There's been a huge bloodletting -- across the board -- over the last 13 years. An entire generation of US scientists has been decimated by pointless budget cuts. If you don't know anything at all about science, you might look at the overall trend of this graph and say: "science funding has gone up since 1976, so shut up and stop whining". This is the simpleton's interpretation of the graph. A more nuanced interpretation is that we invested billions of dollars into training of new scientists starting in the Clinton administration (~1996), and right about the time those new scientists hit the point in their careers when they needed funding to really get their labs started (~2000), we stranded them. There's an entire generation of scientists with structural under-employment because of this phenomenon, and yes, they're leaving the country (I personally know a few who have, and I can't fault their reasoning. You go where you can work. If I were still doing science, I'd probably be gone, too.) But that's not even the most important story. An intelligent observer looks at this graph and says: the US budget for 2013 is $3.8 TRILLION. We spend $600 BILLION on the department of defense, and nearly $900 BILLION on Social Security (aka: old people who contribute almost nothing to the growth of the economy). Yet we're trying to "save money" by shaving a few tens of billions (that's 0.8% of total federal spending, in case you're bad at math) off of the one tiny part of our government that has consistently delivered outsized real returns to the economy. Any economist -- conservative or liberal -- will tell you that you don't make your budget by nibbling at the smallest line items while ignoring big expenses. This is what we call "cutting off your nose to spite your face". Stupid, pointless, and definitely not conservative.
- yequalsx 13y ago
  Your response is excellent. I do however have one nitpick. Social Security is not a budget expense. I know it's listed as one but it shouldn't be. Social Security is an actuarially sound self-funded pension system. There is a slight under funding right now however its payments are not budgetary items.
  - timr 13y ago
    A fair point. I just went to the FY2013 federal budget numbers, but didn't think about the fact that social security has a rather large tax of its own, and is therefore (mostly) "funded". That said, every dollar we spend is a dollar that we could be spending on something else, so I think it's still fair to consider the expense of social security relative to other things we buy. We obviously can't abandon old people, but if someone said to me "we should find a way to cut social security by 0.8% to restore science funding", I'd be inclined to think it was a good idea, all other things being equal. I'm definitely not a doctrinaire liberal -- I think we should have a social safety net (including things like single-payer health insurance), but I think we have plenty of other places we can look to balance the books before we start cutting into science and technology.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  The data is adjusted for inflation - that's what "in billions of constant FY 2012 dollars" means. Funding rose about 50% in the early 2000's and leveled off after that. The only bloodletting has been recent - 2010-2012 or 2011-2013 (the xticks on the graph confuse me). I'm not sure what political point you think I'm trying to make. As for spending on science relative to wealth transfers, I agree with you. I'm not sure why you wish to imply I don't.
  - timr 13y ago
    "The data is adjusted for inflation" Yes, that's why I said "in real terms". The situation is worse in inflated dollars -- even if we'd held the budgets steady in real dollars, we'd be losing to inflation. "Funding rose about 50% in the early 2000's and leveled off after that." Non-defense R&D climbed from 1996-2003, then declined. Defense R&D increased from 2001-2003 (thanks mainly to 9/11), held steady for most of the decade, and began to decline in 2010. Defense R&D is not spending on "science" by any conventional definition (most of that money goes to the defense industry), but it does employ some scientists, so we count it. "I'm not sure what political point you think I'm trying to make." You were arguing that the data doesn't support the thesis of the story, and implied that those who supported the thesis were making "political points" (at the time of your comment, almost all of the other comments were in support of the thesis).
anigbrowl 13y ago
The main thing that jumps out at me from this graph is that (irrelevantly) that we've tripled NIH spending in real terms over the last 25 years but have seen relatively small gains in life expectancy and things like infant mortality have largely stayed static, suggesting we're into an era of diminishing returns :-/ As for scientists leaving the country, I half-agree with you. It's not a sudden crisis in the US, but has more to do with the improving and more competitive economies of other nations, which in turn makes them more attractive places for scientists to work. In the past, you could assume that people would come to the US because it was the best place for academic freedom and to have a financially rewarding science career. Now that there is more competition, we should probably be looking for ways to maintain that status rather than resting on the assumption that we're #1.

kaila 13y ago

It's not just the funding. The politics in science (I don't know about internationally, but definitely here in the US) can be pretty ridiculous.

spodek 13y ago

The writing on the wall became apparent to me with the 1993 cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider, when I was getting my PhD in physics. I didn't know the numbers for a cost-benefit analysis, but I couldn't then nor can I now see cancellation as helpful to the U.S. The U.S. would have stayed way ahead of the rest of the world in particle physics and all the accompanying jobs, discoveries, and innovation. Instead we look to the rest of the world for leadership. The Forbes article paints a picture of a United States full of ambition and curiosity driving innovation. That part exists, but it has just as long been a country of puritanism, self-righteousness, and fundamentalism. The article points to politics as a major problem. That politics reflects this tradition among the people. A large fraction of the population here genuinely dislikes science, no matter how much they like the computers and cd players it brought. I grew up liking idealism because I thought I was right about so many things. I since dropped my need to be right a priori in favor of what works after testing. Politics in this country does have an idealistic view of the individual -- each person should do for him or herself and anyone helping them will decrease their ability to achieve and lower their motivation. Healthcare, welfare, education, and so on are viewed by a large block of voters as detrimental to the nation. We, as a nation if not readers of this site, stick to this principle in the face of nearly the entire world providing evidence to the contrary. We put down other countries for doing things against our ideals, saying they don't work, even as they pass us in countless measures of quality of life and community. Choosing idealism in the face of contrary evidence of what works is a recipe for disaster.

lispm 13y ago
The funding is in other areas. Work for the NSA, CIA, Homeland Security or Military. They spend a lot of money on innovation. Just one example: The F-35 fighter plane project has an estimated cost over its lifespan of 1.5 trillion (no joke) dollars. Another example: the Virginia Class fast-attack submarine. 2 billion a piece. Around 30 are planned. Who cares about a superconducting super collider? It's even peanuts in terms of money. Fusion reactor? Renewable energy? Infrastructure? You are at the wrong side of innovation.
- anigbrowl 13y ago

eliteraspberrie 13y ago

The title isn't descriptive of the article. The author discusses serious issues with decreasing funding of science in the US, but there is no exodus of scientists. Let's hope Mars can be the national (I include Canada because of the close relationship) project that fuels science and innovation for our generation.

VLM 13y ago
"there is no exodus of scientists." If there's one thing American's like its creating their personal identity solely using their job title. I believe the article assumes domestic readers know this peculiarity. The article is full of "Fifty-five percent know a colleague who has lost a job or expects to soon." and “I have just laid off my technician and will lose my postdoc in six months,” There are no open jobs, and those unemployed workers will have to do "something" if they intend to eat and obtain medical care and shelter. So I would assume once they're hired as day care workers or bartenders or waiters, displacing the mere high school diploma holders, they'll no longer be considered scientists, but be considered taxi drivers or whatever. There should be data on numbers employed, or fraction of the population employed, or salaries in those fields. For example if there were an extreme shortage of biology grads, you'd expect to see starting salaries for the DNR around $200K or so. Oh wait, most of those grads end up at Starbucks.

pazimzadeh 13y ago

I'm having a hard time finding any data that support the conclusions of this article. My mom is an immunologist, and in 1999 my family moved from France to the US due to better opportunities for her as a scientist.

anigbrowl 13y ago
Sick and aging people are a growth industry for the next 20-30 years, thanks to the demographic bulge the country experienced following WW2 resulting in a large and wealthy generation known as the 'baby boomers,' who are now retiring en masse. Other developed economies had similar demographic bulges, but none large as the US or with the same sort of competitive medical services market. As I pointed out above, funding for health research (through the NIH) has tripled over the last 25 years. The picture is not as rosy for scientists outside the medical field.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

VLM 13y ago

In the old days, as a scientist, if you studied hard and worked hard, before you got downsized for being too old, you might make local management rich. They happen to own the government. No great surprise the feds back student loans and encourage the myth of a STEM shortage, feed more minds into the gristle mill. You don't need some kind of actively managed centrally controlled conspiracy, you just need individual actors following their own pocketbooks. In the modern era, lets say post 1990, as a scientist, if you studied hard and worked hard, before you got downsized for being too old, you might make some factory owner in China who stole your idea and research, and the Chinese .gov bribe takers, very rich. The local management makes all their money off non-scientific stuff like social networks and chat programs, so they certainly don't need science, they've pivoted out of the physical market and left it for the Chinese. Because the rich guys own the government, the .gov also don't care much anymore. The best hope for modern scientists is to hope for sponsorship / patronage from the Chinese government and hope they can outperform the more numerous locals. Good Luck, you'll need it.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

Jiminy cricket, guys, enough with the linkbait on HN already. 1 in 5 scientists have considered leaving the U.S. That's the news here, if there is news. By way of comparison, another recent study shows 9% of the total population has considered leaving. People consider lots of things, and surveys show all kinds of nifty trends, like the percentage of people who believe we have been visited by aliens, or those thinking the moon landing was faked -- both of which, last I checked, had more traction in the public than the idea of leaving the country. People believe weird shit and hold interesting opinions. Film at 11. So the title doesn't match the essay. But wait! That's not all! The body of the text, supposedly from a non-partisan viewpoint, is pretty much an attack on one of the political parties in the U.S. I won't spoil the surprise for you, but I bet you can guess. Among the shifting and meandering logic, we get a nice confusion of whether or not funding equals science (the two are not necessarily related) and a nice slam across corporate America's face with the old "They're just in it for the profits" routine. All fairly normal and pedestrian rhetoric, but nothing much newsworthy, nothing with a supporting argument for the thesis, and nothing, frankly, that interesting. Unless you want to make a call for political action as part of supporting some political message, which this author does. That's great, but I'm not sure what to do with it on HN. Argue politics with all the usual players taking up the usual roles? Not so much. At least for me.