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U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

51–60 of 1001 posts

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#51
post #22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that man is a foreign actor.

Whatever happened to stripping criminal immigrants of their US citizenship and putting them in a torture cell in El Salvador? Not a policy I'd usually support, but I think a certain South African has really done enough damage to justify it.

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Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#53
post #41
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all should feel sad and angry. That said, this was never about saving money. This is about keeping scientists under tight control by the government, in order to suppress research on climate change and other controversial topics. If the government can cut your grant at any time without notice or appeal you will think twice before publishing results that go against their ideology, or even before publishing a critici…

I just want to vent: climate change is not a controversial topic, it's an inconvenient topic for people making a lot of money.

And these same people likely fund "reports" and "news" with misinformation to make it confusing for the average person.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#54
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not own goals, they're achieving what they set out to do.

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Unironically parroting uniparty lines is moronic. Sure there are problems with the Democrats, but both-sideism is at this point being wilfully blind.

As an external observer to US politics it would be great for the country to move past the two-party system, but to say they are the same is ridiculous.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#55
post #41
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all should feel sad and angry. That said, this was never about saving money. This is about keeping scientists under tight control by the government, in order to suppress research on climate change and other controversial topics. If the government can cut your grant at any time without notice or appeal you will think twice before publishing results that go against their ideology, or even before publishing a critici…

I just want to vent: climate change is not a controversial topic, it's an inconvenient topic for people making a lot of money.

Indeed! Not scientifically controversial at all, but politically controversial, unfortunately.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#56
post #21

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Science is partisan, at least the 'science' being addressed in this article, because the funding for this science comes from a finite source and there are competing demands placed on this finite source. As any competent scientist knows, taking something from a finite source leaves less in the source. There are differing ideas and beliefs, some partisan (including those of the esteemed Mr. Colbert), on how best to div…

Exactly. One side prefers being miserly on science while spending lavishly on needless wars.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#58
post #21

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Science is partisan, at least the 'science' being addressed in this article, because the funding for this science comes from a finite source and there are competing demands placed on this finite source. As any competent scientist knows, taking something from a finite source leaves less in the source. There are differing ideas and beliefs, some partisan (including those of the esteemed Mr. Colbert), on how best to div…

> there are competing demands placed on this finite source

The US national debt has gone up by 2 trillion under the current administration. They are spending money they don't have at a faster rate than any time in history.

Whatever else you can say about the cuts to science, you can't say they're due to "competing demands." They're not cutting in order to fund better research, they're cutting (in the most counterproductive way) to send a message to scientists that politically inconvenient research is not welcome.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please explain? I fail to understand your comment.

He means GGP saved GP the chore of reading by pegging the article as a typical Elon hit piece. You know how HN articles can be so longwinded.

Thank you.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#60
post #9

> The hardest part, though, is how it happened. DOGE’s cuts sliced through American research grants like a thresher, “but this was much murkier,” Reynolds says. “We were never canceled. We were just starved to death.” Maybe time to sue the richest man alive for helping destroy American science. More efficient than any foreign actor

There used to be a time when you came across accounts from 100 years ago - and you'd just be flabbergasted by the whimsical stupidity when laid out so plainly.

Now we lament that in 70 years somebody is going to chuckle when they read such non-sequiturs as: The great Texas protein crisis of the late '20s was made several orders of magnitude worse - if not right out caused - by the first trillionaire's purge of the government. At the time justified as a cost saving measure while the president would spend >35% more than its income while saying things were going great and had never been so great at anytime in history.

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