Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

time.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 336 posts

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#171

Post by whatshisface »

naasking wrote: post #146
whatshisface wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Each of these has a long answer, so I'll pick this one:

>[Chemistry]? Such as? What benefits do you expect to see?

Everything around us is made up of "molecules," assemblages of parts called atoms. Since it's not possible to manipulate the molecules directly in sufficient numbers (one pound of plastic is made of 2000000000000000000000 individual molecules), we have to assemble molecules en masse by subjecting them to processes that cause each step to happen to all of them at once. How does that work?

Let's say you have a molecule. Its structure will have exposed parts, and some bonds will be weaker than others. If you want to replace a part with another part (one step in the assembly of the final product), you might go about it by letting another molecule come along that has a greater affinity to bond with the location of the part you want to replace, and also has a tendency to be in turn itself replaced with the part you want to add. How can you know which molecule to use for this? You could run a computer simulation, apply a rule of thumb, or look it up in a book. In order to write the simulations, deduce the correct rules of thumb and write the books, scientists need to try a lot of combinations of molecules to see what parts swap with what other parts when they're mixed, and then think very hard about what's happening and why it is happening. This practice is known as, "chemistry."

Once a lot of the rules for a certain molecule are mapped out, engineers with an application in mind can go to the library and ask, "what sequence of steps will take me from available molecules to a molecule I can sell in a way that succeeds very often?" This is called, "industrial chemistry." If there was no library and no knowledge in it, industrial chemistry would be impossible. That is the relationship between science and engineering.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#172

Post by vessenes »

mettamage wrote: post #164
burkaman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

500 million euro's to attract scientists? 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..…

Here’s the thing: scientists follow roughly a double power law in breakthrough and skills. What if that 1250 is 50 top tier and 1200 of their chosen lab mates?

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#173

Post by alabastervlog »

Onawa wrote: post #156
naasking wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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…

[flagged]

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#174

Post by rtkwe »

wat10000 wrote: post #84
rtkwe wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We were, it’s just that this special property was owning our own private continent.

True I meant more in the political/economic sphere. Being isolated geographically from both WW1 and WW2 was a major boon to the US economy, we got the economic benefit of the wars without the damage (beyond lives lost of course).

And as time has gone on that geography is less and less effective as a shield.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#175

Post by naasking »

hnaccount_rng wrote: post #163
naasking wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Basically none of modern optics would exist without astronomy (well at least astronomy is a convenient cover for military/intelligence interests funding better optics). Most of statistics and efficient cameras originate in astronomy/astrophysics (mostly because you have to count all the photons and you are never getting a second relevant measurement point) There are huge parts of physics which are only publicly funde…

> well at least astronomy is a convenient cover for military/intelligence interests funding better optics

Right, defense can and has funded research for its own purposes, and sometimes those purposes can find wider commercial application (like the internet). That's all great, national defense is one of the government's primary purposes.

> There are huge parts of physics which are only publicly funded.

Yes, and? Is this an argument that they cannot be funded in other ways, or an argument that the parts of physics that cannot be funded in any other way ought to be publicly funded? There's just this blanket assumption that this is true but it simply doesn't follow.

For instance, the newest super collider project that some people are pushing for completely misses the opportunity cost of not funding other projects that could be far more impactful, like wakefield accelerators, which would reduce the size and cost of particle accelerators by orders of magnitude.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#176

Post by naasking »

alabastervlog wrote: post #173
Onawa wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#177

Post by piva00 »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #145
mystraline wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 new wave of authoritarianism uses the bureaucracy and state machine against itself. They've learnt from the past, there's no Night of the Long Knives, or the burning of the Reichstag, that's too overt.

Look at Orbán, Erdogan, and similar new authoritarians, the coup is a slow grinding of every facet of democracy: grind the press, grind the judiciary, throw a new law into the mix made up by your cronies in the parliament/Congress, keep grinding at the foundations of democracy over decades and you get a shell of institutions that used to be the foundation of a democratic state being re-purposed to push the agenda of the dictator.

The veneer of institutions is the point, it's to make you have exactly this reaction:

> I genuinely don't understand how this can be a coup when all three branches agree.

Because you are expecting an overt coup, not a slow moving covert one.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#178

Post by jsbg »

kashunstva wrote: post #160
jsbg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> you think it's bleak that one's research now has to be profitable … ? The connection between new knowledge and profit is often indirect and cannot be clearly predicted beforehand. And, why must something be profitable in order to justify it? Are there no valid outcomes other than profit?

> why must something be profitable in order to justify it? Are there no valid outcomes other than profit?

Because if it isn't profitable then it needs to be subsidized to continue. Given the replication crisis I don't think it's most people's priority to use part of their paycheck for this.

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#179

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

mystraline wrote: post #162
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> I genuinely don't understand how this can be a coup when all three branches agree. 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…

>The courts have been captured and politicized heavily

This isn't a real thing. They're not captured, people are just on them that you don't like and they're ruling against your values.

>Congress has a bare majority for republicans

So the majority is governing?

Re: Why I'm resigning from the National Science Foundation

#180

Post by seanmcdirmid »

alabastervlog wrote: post #173
Onawa wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

It is what we used to call FUD. Like parent says, it never gets near a prosecutor, even a prosecutor "on their side" in a state with a judiciary "on their side" because we still have the semblance of rule of law in this country. DOGE makes a claim, and it sticks permanently into Trump-supporter minds, never mind that they quietly walk it back a few weeks later or it never makes it to the DOJ.
Post reply on HN