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The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

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Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#201

Post by defrost »

ETH_start wrote: post #195

[flagged]

> I read the paper,

Link?

Are you perhaps refering to a Letter to Science titled Protect US racial affinity groups published 27 Feb 2025? - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq4733

> These kinds of experiences have completely shattered any credibility that mainstream scientific establishment has for me.

Is it true that a letter to a magazine has shattered the credibility of papers such as TIGR-Tas: A family of modular RNA-guided DNA-targeting systems in prokaryotes and their viruses for you?

That seems ... oddly fragile.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#202

Post by throwaway48476 »

chasing wrote: post #120
nielsbot wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW a lot of people didn't vote for this even if they voted for Trump and the GOP.

This is true. The GOP prey on gullible low-information voters. He repeatedly denied knowledge of the Project 2025 plan that's now in action.

Project 2025 isn't even ideologically consistent because it's written by a grab bag of heritage affiliated authors.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#203

Post by tastyfreeze »

Terr_ wrote: post #79
afavour wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know if I believe there's any chance of this myself but it's worth pointing out that Republicans currently have a House majority of... 2. It's unlikely but not inconceivable that a few house members could be persuaded to vote with Democrats to push back, simply because they're in a swing state and we keep seeing videos of very mad voters confronting their representatives. Anyone in a swing district inter…

What scares me is that even if a slim Pro-Sanity coalition exists in both houses, Trump can simply continue to violate the Constitution willy-nilly if a core of Republicans remain complicit and block removal from office. After all, we're not just talking about an illegal retroactive on-demand line-item veto here, but plenty of other data-points, like a President that has blanket-pardoned criminals who already violent…

[flagged]

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#204

Post by throwaway48476 »

btilly wrote: post #194
IAmGraydon wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FDR's order regarding gold was part of a broader effort to combat the Great Depression by stopping gold hoarding, allowing the government to inflate the money supply and stimulate the economy. It wasn’t a total seizure — people were compensated at the then-official rate of $20.67 per ounce. The comparison doesn't hold water whatsoever.

Name me 5 executive orders by Trump which, combined, disrupt normal economic affairs by as much as that single one. As for the broader efforts, the New Deal required various things like reinterpreting the Commerce Clause. Look up "the switch in time which saved nine" for why the Supreme Court went along with it. Not to mention things like the internment of Japanese-Americans during WW 2. No, FDR was the closest thing…

Closest since Lincoln.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#205

Post by afavour »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #197
afavour wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d suggest your viewpoint is a pretty sheltered one. Many people (relatives of mine included, sadly) marinate in a stew of social media algorithms showing them things that confirm their priors and they aren’t exposed to any oppositional media. Perhaps they don’t deserve a vote. But if they don’t then a lot of voters don’t deserve a vote. And maybe we ought to be asking ourselves “what systems have we set up that hav…

If only they were only exposed to my propaganda. "Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth and sooner or later that debt is paid"

I don’t see the value in your contribution here. There is an objective truth I think everyone participating in the discussion agrees on: Trump lied in campaign speeches and the reality was clear to those in possession of all the facts. Events post election have indeed confirmed that he was lying.

So what is “my propaganda” you’re referring to? There’s just a truth that some people weren’t made aware of.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#206

Post by psyklic »

arp242 wrote: post #142
jmcgough wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> roughly half the country is ecstatic about what he is doing A number of his actions are wildly unpopular. The Jan 6th Pardons, and his pro-Putin agenda. His polling is historically poor for a month into a president's term, and there are large protests around the country. In another month, his polling will be completely underwater.

"Only" 58% oppose the pardons according to [1]. I mean, it's a majority, but it's not what I'd call "wildly unpopular". It was always going to be opposed by a vast majority of Democrat voters, so relatively few Republican voters oppose it. I find it rather concerning. Back in the day much was said about Bush's "historically low" approval ratings too. It was somewhat satisfying to see, but in the end it didn't really…

As of Feb 18, WaPo says merely 14% of US adults overall support pardoning people convicted of violent crimes (and only 32% of Republicans).

For nonviolent pardons, 42% overall support it (and 76% of Republicans).

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/20/trump-pol...

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#207

Post by EdwardDiego »

zdragnar wrote: post #131
EdwardDiego wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citations needed. All the citations please.

The director of the NIH testified to Congress that they funded gain of function research in Wuhan: https://oversight.house.gov/release/hearing-wrap-up-nih-repe... The OIG also made clear the NIH and EcoHealth did not have proper oversight: https://oig.hhs.gov/reports/all/2023/the-national-institutes... Edit: I missed the bit about the funding being specific to COVID 19. The CIA endorsed the lab leak hypothesis with l…

Cheers. I wish I could still quote the comment I was replying to, but IIRC, they stated that the NIH funded gain of function research on the virus that became known as Covid-19 after it escaped from the lab in Wuhan.

Honestly, lab escape has always been plausible to me, but there's sadly so much politics in assessments of lab-escape by governmental non-scientific agencies, whether it be the "oil on troubled water to placate China" potential bias or "blame China for it as part of an economic biffo" potential bias, that I hold out no hope of ever finding the truth.

Because China was never going to allow investigations by anyone, WHO, UN bodies, whoever, into the physical facilities and processes and data thereof, of that lab in Wuhan.

And, gain of function is an ethically dubious line of research, especially debated amongst scientists, and I'm dubious on it also.

But it's not illegal, and it has some scientific value. (Whether the value is worth the potential risk, well, scientists, debating, so yeah)

So then it comes down to...

Did NIH exceed any policy boundaries set when funding GoF? Did they contradict any laws?

Did they ignore a preponderance of evidence when making this decision?

If not, then using this as justification for crippling the NIH is solely based on personal agenda.

I have no particular dog in this fight but "NIH did ~~9/11~~ Covid-19!" is a really long bow to draw. (Which is how I read the original comment, not yours, to be clear)

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#208

Post by scarab92 »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #170

When some other state-power, perhaps the Chinese, starts sucking up American intellectual capital, then the US will collapse. So long as the US still offers the highest standard of living for high-wage workers, there won't be any sort of collapse. Grants from the NIH will presumably move to the private sector. Is this a good thing? Perhaps not, but in the eyes of our new overlords the lifeblood of the economy is not…

The clickbait article title is completely unsupported by the actual content of the article.

The NIH isn't being slashed and burned. It's simply redirecting more of it's funding to actual grant recipients, to do actual research, rather than allowing NIH funding to be siphoned off by the universities for largely unrelated purposes.

Harvard siphoned off a whopping 69% of the grant amount, and it's not going to funding equipment or similar, those expenses also comes out of the remaining 31%.

If people actually cared about increasing the overall NIH research output, they should be supportive of these changes.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#209

Post by throwaway48476 »

afavour wrote: post #205
throwaway48476 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only they were only exposed to my propaganda. "Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth and sooner or later that debt is paid"

I don’t see the value in your contribution here. There is an objective truth I think everyone participating in the discussion agrees on: Trump lied in campaign speeches and the reality was clear to those in possession of all the facts. Events post election have indeed confirmed that he was lying. So what is “my propaganda” you’re referring to? There’s just a truth that some people weren’t made aware of.

I see lying as institutional laziness on the decade scale.

The propaganda is pervasive enough to not realize its there at all. You shouldn't accuse others of being in their own informational bubble without realizing you're in your own. The desire to disenfranchise is also an extreme authoritarian impulse.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#210

Post by scarab92 »

orforforof wrote: post #196
lostmsu wrote: post #163

Can somebody help me understand: say I have a research grant and my cap on how much university can take for its operations is 15%. Does it mean that from my 85% I can not buy/rent necessary equipment/facilities previously provided by university anymore?

I can think of two factors. First, some direct costs could be prohibited. But more importantly, to make this work universities would need to restructure to make all of their services fee-based, and researchers would need to allocate these fees item by item in their proposals. Which seems doable, but is no way to run an efficient operation. Even if the bottom line looked the same, the value to NIH and taxpayers would…

More likely, overpriced institutions like Harvard will cease to be competitive for grants, and those which offer better value for money will be better placed to submit competitive grant proposals.
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