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U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#91

Post by fireflash38 »

timr wrote: post #30
embedding-shape wrote: post #4

> 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…

> If the scientists haven't left science behind after an experience like this, probably nothing will....I think I should feel angry, but I just feel sad for all the humans involved here, I hope they manage to come out with a more positive perspective than I'm able to here. As someone who spent far too much of my life pursuing that goal, I have an unpopular opinion: US science needs some cuts. The first project (the s…

> work which burns through money repeating things we already know (racism is bad! poor people are sicker!) and accomplishing exactly nothing

Why do we need to study the sun? We already know it goes around the Earth.

Flippant, but the point should be clear. Some of the most taken for granted things can also be the ones least studied... And least understood. Wouldn't you like to know why being poor leads to worse outcomes? Perhaps confounding factors?

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#92

Post by inigyou »

marcyb5st wrote: post #45
collinmcnulty wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately there is another possibility: a return to great power competition.

I don't see that happening. The US debt will hinder any big expense that could keep it in any game long term. Take AI for instance. The US grid is struggling to keep up with demand, while Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually, this could be solved by an increase in spending lasting a few years which would make the debt tick up, but that would've been an absolutely fine use of debt since it buys some shiny new…

The US can just hyperinflate to pay its debts.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#93

Post by Weallneedclima »

I looked at the greenland ice sheet website regularly and its defunded since last year:

https://nsidc.org/ice-sheets-today

There is no reason at all that the biggest military power, richest from GDP and the biggest co2 producer country invests anything in climate research /s

I hope the USA goes down, fast...

Shout out to Elon Musk, the richest asshole on our planet who wants to leave earth to go to a planet which is not inhabitable and a planet which can't keep humans alive without our blue marble...

But hey when we all have starlink in every remote corner of our planet, who cares if our atmosphere is getting poisned by all these rocket starts.

Btw. Starlink has 10 Million customers and putting only a single 'small' datacenter into space needs over 350 starship starts. go figure

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#94

Post by mDyJzDPmBdG »

inigyou wrote: post #85
timr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the scientists haven't left science behind after an experience like this, probably nothing will....I think I should feel angry, but I just feel sad for all the humans involved here, I hope they manage to come out with a more positive perspective than I'm able to here. As someone who spent far too much of my life pursuing that goal, I have an unpopular opinion: US science needs some cuts. The first project (the s…

Like that program to study the mating patterns of sterile flies in Panama, right? They cut that because it was a $300k waste of money. Do you know what happened after they cut it? The US got a $300m infestation of those flies.

How does it feel to spread miss-information on internet? The Panama barrier was broken by screwworms 2 years before the cuts. It was dumb decision but didn't directly cause current infestation.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#95

Post by timr »

fireflash38 wrote: post #91
timr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the scientists haven't left science behind after an experience like this, probably nothing will....I think I should feel angry, but I just feel sad for all the humans involved here, I hope they manage to come out with a more positive perspective than I'm able to here. As someone who spent far too much of my life pursuing that goal, I have an unpopular opinion: US science needs some cuts. The first project (the s…

> work which burns through money repeating things we already know (racism is bad! poor people are sicker!) and accomplishing exactly nothing Why do we need to study the sun? We already know it goes around the Earth. Flippant, but the point should be clear. Some of the most taken for granted things can also be the ones least studied... And least understood. Wouldn't you like to know why being poor leads to worse outco…

Yes, we should fund grants to make sure that the heliocentric model is still wrong.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#96

Post by inigyou »

vrganj wrote: post #22
tokai wrote: 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.

Policy doesn't matter any more. Every case is judged as an individual case. Elon hasn't had his citizenship stripped because he's powerful and the president likes him, that's it.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#97

Post by mold_aid »

timr wrote: post #83
jfengel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem strongly in favor science that you understand, and opposed to research that you don't take an interest in or have read. I don't think you'd accept news media accounts of space science. But you're accepting their synopses of social science without looking deeper. Perhaps I am wrong and you're actually an expert on sociology or some related field. But you are not accurately describing how the field works and w…

> You seem strongly in favor science that you understand, and opposed to research that you don't take an interest in or have read. Just say it the clear way, so that everyone can see what you're doing: if I don't like it, it must be because I don't understand it.

Perhaps better than "if I don't like it, it deserves to have its funding cut"

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#98

Post by ModernMech »

hackyhacky wrote: post #58
johnp314 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 counterprod…

Trump's 17 months in office saw $17T increase in debt, 30% of the entire US debt, representing about 220 years of what had accumulated prior to ever electing him.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#99

Post by carlosjobim »

ModernMech wrote: post #72
timr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the scientists haven't left science behind after an experience like this, probably nothing will....I think I should feel angry, but I just feel sad for all the humans involved here, I hope they manage to come out with a more positive perspective than I'm able to here. As someone who spent far too much of my life pursuing that goal, I have an unpopular opinion: US science needs some cuts. The first project (the s…

So where are researchers who want to study topics you don't personally like supposed to get funding, in your view?

From anywhere except from the tax payer. Lord knows there are academic institutions sitting on a lot of cash.
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