161–170 of 336 posts
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> realize that you will most likely end up in industry. > Things are quite bleak right now... you think it's bleak that one's research now has to be profitable rather than being subsidized by people paying taxes?
If it results in megacorps 'forcing' papers that misrepresent the truth for their own gains, yeah that's pretty bleak. Think weed killers, sugar, etc.
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A clusterfuck us usually no real plan, and everyone deciding on their own, causing chaos. No, what we are seeing is a coup. The USA has exhausted in causing coups in other parts of the world. Now, we are in a coup caused by the USA government. The executive branch is captured. The courts are captured. Most of Congress is captured. Those left over whinge about 'illegal' and basically send out more emails for more dona…
>the exec, the courts, and a majority of congress I genuinely don't understand how this can be a coup when all three branches agree. I mean sure, we are well outside the strict scope of Constitution, but that ship left generations ago.
The courts have been captured and politicized heavily. Clearance Thomas should be expelled for emoluments. Kavanaugh also for lying on the stand.
Congress has a bare majority for republicans. So getting impeachments for actual crimes by republicans is a non-starter.
POTUS and executive branch can run roughshod, and order all sorts of illegal actions. Congress won't impeach. And they can pardon anybody underneath them. Musk is a perfect example - no clearance, yet somehow 'legally' is destroying sections of government that was investigating him. And given a complete pass. Its also how ICE can kidnap and traffick people, all the while flaunting disobeidance from a federal judge.
This is a coup by the oligarchy against the people. And aside violent uprisings (of which I do not condone), there's not much at all we can do.
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Here is an incomplete list of things that it's impossible to research in industry: 1. Astronomy. 2. Physics. 3. Geophysics concerning the parts of the Earth deeper than the crust. 4. Biology aside from medicine. 5. Chemistry aside from industrial chemistry. 6. Theoretical computer science. 7. Mathematics. I'm not blaming you for not knowing this, but I am holding my head in my hands - how can people not know about as…
> Astronomy. What benefits do you expect to see from the kinds astronomy that require this sort of funding? Sure, knowing things can be nice but this ignores opportunity costs, eg. would practical knowledge like fusion research be further along if talent weren't focused on impractical knowledge? > Physics. Not strictly true, see quantum computing for instance, lasers, semiconductors and so on. There are some types of…
There are huge parts of physics which are only publicly funded. Results are often spun out into companies, but there is no institution that can fund experiments that require timelines of multiple decades (even things like fusion power is nearly completely government funds)
And those are the only two parts where I actually have some competence. So yeah.. I wouldn't buy
Good read; too long to sway public opinion though. The most convincing and interesting thing I’ve read about the US’s science standing is just a reminder that it wasn’t always considered a global science leader. A few people saw the opportunity created by Nazi ideological purges of scientists and built, among other things, Princeton’s IAS. Considered most charitably, the current administration sees itself as trying t…
They're working on it: https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/05/europe-launches-prog... Here's an article from a European perspective: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/usa-scientists-lo...
I asked ChatGPT, it thought for 3 minutes and 36 seconds. You can see the Q&A here [1].
Assuming that a one year salary of the average scientist is 100K euro's [2] then that means you're trying to attract an extra 1250 scientists that will work for 4 years.
That doesn't sound like a lot on a continental scale.
[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/682376a6-5c68-8005-89ab-2bedd453c7...
[2] It's definitely lower than 100K, but it allows for unexpected hidden overhead that ChatGPT potentially didn't account for.
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Not doing basic research, and your research is entirely driven by short-term profit motives rather than long term benefit of humanity.
Bell Labs is a counterexample that ran for decades, and pharma companies have internal research labs, I know Motorola and Apple have, too. In my experience, industry can be vastly better funded, but the industry labs are internal and perhaps very hard to find.
And pharma companies do a lot of research but it's almost entirely applied, taking the basic processes discovered by NIH funded research and figuring out how to turn them into feasible drugs. You need both halves there to sustain our current progress.
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I watched 15 years of Alzheimer's research shut down by NSF and NIH because they refused to touch anything but Amyloid beta. the idea that they are bastions of open mindedness, ethics, or efficiency seems laughable to me.
The important point here is that science corrected itself. It saw a lack of progress from a direction of inquiry and using its established mechanisms rerouted that inquiry. To expect that every effort will succeed and be perfect is just naive. What matters is that the system has a mechanism to self-evaluate its results and change the consensus. Which it did. Which means it works. We means we shouldn't burn it down.
I was reacting to the idea that the NIH and NSF academic ethics requirements are that critical self correction mechanism, or they that these institutions were responsible for pushing back and overturning the Aβ hypothesis. In reality, it is the opposite. Grant funding is gate held by review panels staffed by leading researchers in the field, and therefore bias towards the current dogma. I don't know if there is a better way, but it's inherently tied to the status quo.
Edit: to be clear on my biases, I spent about 10 years trying to get funding for non Aβ research, and continually shut down by Grant review panels staffed by prominent supporters and authors on the hypothesis.
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Honestly way more with just being the one super power standing after the war. We were basically untouched, even accounting for dead and wounded we only lost ~1 million people and practically zero manufacturing infrastructure so we came out of the war roaring and flush with cash. That catapulted the US to where it has been for the whole of the time since but a lot of people seem to have believed we were owed that or e…
This feels revisionist to me. It was not accidental. The US had the booming wartime economy, AND it had a State department that went at solidifying global influence. Essentially the "greatest generation" locked in America's situation, and doubled down on cultural and economic dominance. The combination of state, industry and WMF-type loans extended American power globally. It was a very very good time to be American.…
> This feels revisionist to me.
Reexamining past narratives/theories based on new data or ways of viewing things is the core of science. It's particularly important in softer social sciences where so much of the effects can only be viewed in the long term.
> Boomers remember this America and want the growth, wealth and dominance back
My point is you can't go back to there, at least not without another massive war and this time the chances the US gets by unscathed is practically zero.
Not to mention shattering the alliances that put the US in that position isn't the way to get back there either. Even if we tried countries are going to be a lot more wary of trusting the US for critical things like military protection which was a major part of the deal for the US's position, we extend a military umbrella across your country and we get good access to your markets.
Trump et al fundamentally misunderstand why we were in the position we were and their actions push us further away rather than bringing us back to it.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334182/wwii-pre-war-gdp...
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Please provide evidence of fraud in government funding. I have yet to see any real evidence of fraud from the DOGE reports, just contracts and projects that don't align with the current administration's world view and priorities. Yes, scientists are human and there are certainly instances of scientific misconduct that take time to root out. In the grand scheme of things, funding for science generates many times its v…
Are you serious? Just go look at the recent Alzheimer's research scandal. It's the tip of the iceberg.
Good read; too long to sway public opinion though. The most convincing and interesting thing I’ve read about the US’s science standing is just a reminder that it wasn’t always considered a global science leader. A few people saw the opportunity created by Nazi ideological purges of scientists and built, among other things, Princeton’s IAS. Considered most charitably, the current administration sees itself as trying t…
> If I were in charge of science in a wealthy country right now I would be working overtime to brain drain US researchers. European universities would love to do so, the problem is that our model of funding is just as braindead as it is in the US (if not worse, like in Germany) and our politicians are too braindead or unwilling to fix the circumstances.
One country that will actually drain American researchers will be China.
Evidently the president appointed one of his personal attorneys to be the new librarian of Congress. The library turned him away because Congress hasn't approved him. It seems it's becoming more of a clusterfuck just about every day.