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U.S. science is in chaos
131–140 of 1001 posts
Re: U.S. science is in chaos
#132> 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…
Yours is an "ends justify the means" argument, but are you comfortable with the way these cuts were done? Would you approve so robustly of your own research being cut with a keyword search for government-unapproved terms?
Re: U.S. science is in chaos
#133Earlier 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…
> Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of innovation
Spoken like somebody who has no idea what they are talking about.
Apart from the large share of fundamental science which Europe has always been bigger in and better at (I mean, there's a huge tunnel in Texas to show that Americans at some point understood this and tried to compete), Europe is funding the military tools of the next generation in Ukraine.
Americans used to be excellent executors, then China took that role. What's left?
Re: U.S. science is in chaos
#134Reminder that the most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.
Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...
Re: U.S. science is in chaos
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think I've ever met a leftist denying evolution.
Totally, but there’s a lot more to science than just evolution.
Sure, but that's one of examples OP gave and it doesn't match my experience. Doesn't leave a great impression of the rest of the argument.
Re: U.S. science is in chaos
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think I've ever met a leftist denying evolution.
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This is a good point.
There are times where lefties will deny science in an effort to avoid mass atrocities, which I think is a fraught situation.
Inversely, righties tend to deny science in order to justify mass atrocities (like industrial-scale animal suffering or cataclysmic extinction events).
These are basically the same thing! /s
Re: U.S. science is in chaos
#137Currently there are lots of systems that are in chaos. Rather than demand reversion back to mean, we should be asking, "Before we reset this system back to the way it was, was it working and are there improvements to be made?" Because the current chaos can be viewed as an opportunity to improve, and we should take it because may of the systems in chaos today, were dysfunctional or in need of modernization yesterday.
It's not an opportunity to improve until the source of chaos is removed. You don't rebuild from a hurricane while the winds are still 150 mph.
You're right, and yet it's also true that existing institutions have ossified. There is immense inertia.
Re: U.S. science is in chaos
#138Re: U.S. science is in chaos
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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Re: U.S. science is in chaos
#140A research system can adapt to lower funding if the rules are stable. What it can't adapt to is grants being frozen, staff disappearing mid-project, forbidden vocabulary changing