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After the election my very first thought was that this is the start of the Chinese century, since America has voted to step down. Seems to be playing out.
Unfortunately there is another possibility: a return to great power competition.
After the election my very first thought was that this is the start of the Chinese century, since America has voted to step down. Seems to be playing out.
> When the shutdown ended in mid-November, Reynolds’s team had just two weeks to get on budget. It failed. The plan the group submitted would cost too much and take too long. “Our last hope was that NASA headquarters would understand what had gone on and give us some leeway,” Reynolds says. NASA did not. After nearly 10 years of work, AXIS was dead. If the scientists haven't left science behind after an experience li…
Well, unfortunately, this is completely normal in science and it happened, basically forever. Scientific projects, especially the massive ones, go through several cycles, and they get completely stopped or even canceled during their life, and then later, sometimes decades later, they do restart. This happened with the LHC, ISS, James Webb telescope, the Hubble telescope, ITER, etc, etc, etc Now, I know that in certai…
> Applying for highly competitive grants with limited funding is what scientists have always had to do to carry out the science—a flawed process with few alternatives. But arbitrary cancellations and delayed disbursements are unprecedented. And justifying them on the basis of politics—prohibiting, for instance, grants that include language referencing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)—was unheard of until now.
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This administration is both fundamentally anti-science and wants to enforce political control over all government institutions. Science was never a particularly stable work environment, but the sheer insanity you have now makes it a deeply unattractive place. You have no idea if your grant might be denied, or even canceled at any point later by some political commissar that doesn't understand science. And it's not ju…
Science, or more specific to what we're talking about, public research which happens mostly in universities, has turned political long before this administration. That's the simple reality. Administrations impose their politics, but also universities do the same, and they're not any more noble for doing so. Research groups need to have more independence and that can only happens through a very meritocratic funding pr…
Science will appear political to you if you claim that climate change isn't real, that vaccines and Tylenol give autism, that oil prices will soon go down when the wells are destroyed, that the economy is hotter than ever when everything's going to shit, that the weather channel is just anti-American and woke when they predict rain for the UFC Freedom 250 held for the emperor's birthday...
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The rest of your comment is just nice fiction.
This administration is both fundamentally anti-science and wants to enforce political control over all government institutions. Science was never a particularly stable work environment, but the sheer insanity you have now makes it a deeply unattractive place. You have no idea if your grant might be denied, or even canceled at any point later by some political commissar that doesn't understand science. And it's not ju…
Science, or more specific to what we're talking about, public research which happens mostly in universities, has turned political long before this administration. That's the simple reality. Administrations impose their politics, but also universities do the same, and they're not any more noble for doing so. Research groups need to have more independence and that can only happens through a very meritocratic funding pr…
Unless america does it _very_ different than the rest of the western world, this is already the case. STEM research receive way more public funding and have way more PhDs than other fields, in my country it's almost two order of magnitude (this has to do with the cost of instrumentation mostly, but not only).
On the "science have turned political", yes, but that has always been the case. You can be political and non-partisan. UNSCEAR has been political from its creation, but is still non-partisan, anybody can use its research to make partisan proposition on nuclear. Same for WHO, it was _obvisouly_ political, advanced the interest of the first world in poorer countries, but it stayed non-partisan. This is probably the same for any medical research: obviously what is researched is political. Non-partisan though. Just because heart attack research was done by, with and for men, women also benefit from the research (although to a way lower degree until like 2010).
The only counter-example i can think of is the GIEC group3. I don't think it is partisan, but i can hear arguments that say that it is, and debate. But it has the lowest amount of funding of the 3 groups, and Group 1 and 2 are not partisan at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately there is another possibility: a return to great power competition.
Nah, that fantasy is over, with the new Era of Moron Power. The future of humanity of absolutely Asian. Western culture is Rome on Fire.
They thought we were crashing, rushed the cockpit, and pushed forward as hard as they could on the stick. Forward is up, right?