How the U.S. became a science superpower • Hacker News Board

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#161

Post by linksnapzz » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:15 PM UTC

jack_h wrote: post #117

Retric wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results. This is unlike say corn subsidies which not only reduce economic efficiency but also have direct negative heath impacts furthering the harm. Medicare spending is problematic because it’s consumptive, but there’s ways to minimize the expense without massively reducing care. The VA for example dramaticall…

Even if those attribution studies are 100% correct that doesn’t mean this system optimally allocates resources. The ultimate issue with our social programs is due to demographics. An aging population whose replacement rate is projected to go negative (more deaths than births) within the next few years is catastrophic for the way we fund those programs. We absolutely should try and reduce their operating costs though;…

As a purely practical matter, trying to fix federal budget outlays by cutting indirect funds attached to NSF/NIH/DOE etc. grants is like telling a guy who is morbidly obese by 350lbs that you can lose weight quickly by shaving your head and trimming your fingernails really, really close.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#162

Post by goldchainposse » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

oldprogrammer2 wrote: post #63

cs702 wrote: post #7

Worth reading in its entirety. The following four paragraphs, about post-WWII funding of science in Britain versus the US, are spot-on, in my view: > Britain’s focused, centralized model using government research labs was created in a struggle for short-term survival. They achieved brilliant breakthroughs but lacked the scale, integration and capital needed to dominate in the post-war world. > The U.S. built a decent…

Systems don’t remain constant, though, and every system gets “gamed” once the incentives are well understood. I’m 100% for investment in scientific research, but I’m skeptical that the current system is efficient at allocating the funds. We’ve seen so many reports of celebrity scientists committing fraud at our most elite institutions, and a publish or perish model that encourages that bad behavior as well as junk sc…

Whether or not it's efficient isn't as much of a concern as if it's being gamed. Reports of growing university administrations, increase in the cost of an education, and biases in the publish-or-perish model show the old model is no longer effective.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#163

Post by apical_dendrite » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #147

apical_dendrite wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war…

> How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the w…

No, not really. The fact that we import so much is a function of our wealth, not our poverty. We import food because we like to have a variety of produce year round and we like alcohol from foreign countries and we can afford it. Britain was importing food because otherwise there would be famine.

These are not equivalent situations.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#164

Post by philwelch » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:24 PM UTC

jasonhong wrote: post #151

philwelch wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US government funding of science isn’t a net cost due to taxes on the long term economic productivity that results. There's an assumption here that deserves some closer examination. If we are taking this as a justification for federal science spending, we would have to also support a policy of awarding research grants on the basis of expected long term return on investment, which is not the criteria applied now. Fu…

First, it's highly unclear a priori which scientific discoveries will pay off. The discoverer of Green Fluorescent Protein was denied funding, with others eventually winning the Nobel Prize for it. Same for mRNA vaccines, most recently featured in COVID-19 vaccine, which also recently won a Nobel Prize. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3 Second, w…

If we're going to count the COVID-19 vaccine as a benefit of federal research funding, surely we need to also count COVID-19 itself as a cost, given the strong evidence that the virus was a product of US-funded gain of function research.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#165

Post by jay_kyburz » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:24 PM UTC

9283409232 wrote: post #98

jack_h wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economic projections I’ve seen have shown taxing the rich will increase tax revenue by around 1.5% of GDP. We’re slated to borrow 7.3%. That math doesn’t work. To be fair, the republican math with cuts (assuming no tax cuts) also doesn’t work. Neither side is serious about this issue.

Taxing billionaires is just one of many necessary steps but it is the most important and vital step in my opinion. There are fundamental problems with how the US is run down to the local level but it starts with taxing billionaires and getting money out of politics.

Why point at billionaires, anyone with more than a million is living a comfortable life, everybody should be doing their part.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#166

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

blululu wrote: post #118

>> Prior to WWII the U.S was a distant second in science and engineering. By the time the war was over, U.S. science and engineering had blown past the British, and led the world for 85 years. Citation needed. The United States has been a scientific powerhouse for most of its history. On the eve of WWII the United States was the largest producer of automobiles, airplanes and railway trains on earth. It had largest te…

And now come back with per capita numbers.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#167

Post by fallingknife » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:33 PM UTC

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #107

fallingknife wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any reason why specifically "indirect cost reimbursement" is anything to do with this. Sure, individually billing labs is administrative burden, but it's a tiny drop in the ocean of inane bureaucracy that university researchers already have to deal with today. And maybe if we got rid of the blanket overhead percentage, it would put pressure on universities to cut a lot of the crap. Researchers are much mo…

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of research funding, and quite frankly repeating it without even basic research borders on negligence. Universities use indirect funds for maintaining facilities, the shared equipment, bulk purchases of materials, staff for things like cleaning and disposal. It is pivotal that these funds are available in the right amount or research physically cannot happen despite being "indir…

I do not believe that sharing costs of facilities and equipment is so difficult that research universities can't handle it while every condo association in the US somehow manages to pull it off. I do not believe you that this is aggressively negotiated down by the government because private research grants come with much lower indirect costs percentages.

> Can university administration be trimmed? Can their heads be paid less? Of course. But the idea that that's going to happen is absurd.

Well I guess we just have to pay for endlessly expanding bureaucracy then, because apparently expecting research universities to be somewhat efficient with their resources is "absurd."

> If you want to stop that, you make laws and regulations.

Good idea! Maybe we can limit how much they can spend on overhead. Oh, wait...

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#168

Post by renewiltord » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:34 PM UTC

arunabha wrote: post #15

rayiner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The GP post explicitly mentioned the growth of Chinese research capability that they directly saw. It's no secret that China has explicitly and deliberately invested in ramping up R&D. Also, requiring absolute proof in a system as vast and complex as R&D at the scale of the US leads to complete paralysis. It's a bit like cutting off your fingers because you want to lose weight.

That makes the opposite point since Chinese indirect costs are 5-25%. e.g. this grant is at 25% https://www.nsfc.gov.cn/publish/portal0/tab434/info94303.htm

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#169

Post by someNameIG » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:34 PM UTC

Permit wrote: post #25

Arubis wrote: post #9

Being the sole western industrialized nation that hadn't just had most of their infrastructure bombed to rubble can't have hurt.

Canada and Australia are smaller but surely count as industrialized western nations (Canada is like 9th by GDP) whose infrastructure was not bombed to rubble.

Here in Australia we just didn't have the population to have a large global influence. We had a population of around 7.5 million in 1945, compared to the US that had about 150,000 million.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#170

Post by fallingknife » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

saulpw wrote: post #106

fallingknife wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality isn't the cause of our problems in the US. It's basically the same as it was in the 90s https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA Inequality in general is a complaint that is most often heard from people making 6 figures complaining about billionaires, but you don't actually hear it from the "poorly educated masses of people without access to the gold" as you put it.

You can quote statistics to show that "inequality is the same", but that's obviously not the case. To wit, Bill Gates became the richest person in the '90s with wealth of $13 billion. There are now 10 people with more than $100 billion each. Meanwhile inflation since 1990 has been only 2.5x. The richest individuals have an order of magnitude more wealth, and you can't say this is inconsequential when the richest pers…

Yes, your anecdote about one person out of 300 million has convinced me that the statistics compiled by the Federal Reserve about the entire population are clearly incorrect.