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U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#211

Post by alecco »

"The Cost of Excess" The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) (2021) https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/The-Cost-o...

"How Much Is Too Much? Controlling Administrative Costs through Effective Oversight" (2017) https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/ee/download/contro...

For the past 20 years the budgets ballooned out of control (alongside the student debt). Yes, this WH admin is anti-science but US academia is due some introspection.

Disclaimer: I'm not from US

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#212

Post by carlosjobim »

IsTom wrote: post #70
ffsm8 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me neither. Lots of them deny that certain differences between humanity exist however, and that's just biology. Eg. Fe-/male and racial differences. They exist, yet they cannot be admitted to and any reference to them will have the political left call you a nazi, racist, sexist and pedo to boot, because the other terms are already less impactful from overuse

> any reference to them will have the political left call you a nazi, racist, sexist and pedo to boot I think this boils down to the fact it's typically just a thin veil for motivated reasoning.

And that's the most anti-scientific attitude a person can possibly have, what you just said.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#213

Post by Windchaser »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #124
nixon_why69 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not well-versed in social science either so I don't have a slam dunk here, but I'd be very willing to bet it's more involved than you're portraying. To flip it on your space telescope, another one? They've been doing this for years, they're just going to tell us there's a lot of galaxies out there, boring.

[flagged]

I don't follow. Are there not sciences that primarily study a type of human relationship? Economics, for instance, which covers our financial relationships with each other.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#214

Post by eitally »

stainablesteel wrote: post #185
Schlagbohrer wrote: post #33

My friends from grad school who went on to become professors tell me that not only did their grant funding dry up, but they were unable to follow through on hiring many of the grad students they had planned to hire, since the students came from foreign countries and faced new visa restrictions. So the money for science is gone, the people to do to the science are gone, and the institutions continue to not support the…

[flagged]

When I was in grad school (2008-2011), of the 60 people in my program only 5 were American. The vast majority were Indian or Chinese (~50). I wouldn't say there was discrimination, though. The matriculation statistics were interest-based, mostly. A lot of the Americans who received their BS went immediately to industry.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#215

Post by Windchaser »

timr wrote: post #150
djeastm wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Yours is an "ends justify the means" argument, but are you comfortable with the way these cuts were done? Generally no. But I also think that certain classes of keyword filtering were probably a good idea. Filtering for any grants with "structural determinants of health" and reviewing them intensively with the goal of defunding 99%, for example, is probably a good idea. > Would you approve so robustly of your own r…

> I mean, there's zero chance my research would have fallen afoul of any such terms, but let me put it this way: my field was completely up-ended by DeepMind. They not only won a Nobel for that work in record time, but used an approach so severely out of fashion that it couldn't really get any attention.

Someone else mentioned that a project got cut because they used the term "engendered".

The keywords search cuts were not exactly skillfully enacted.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#216

Post by tennfown »

eitally wrote: post #214
stainablesteel wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

When I was in grad school (2008-2011), of the 60 people in my program only 5 were American. The vast majority were Indian or Chinese (~50). I wouldn't say there was discrimination, though. The matriculation statistics were interest-based, mostly. A lot of the Americans who received their BS went immediately to industry.

My understanding this is because being a grad student is hardly an economically good deal for a typical American student, but for the sort of foreigner who can afford to send their child to school in the US, it can still be valuable.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#217

Post by throwaway173738 »

inigyou wrote: post #89
rzwitserloot wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In normal times, what you say is obviously true. But specifically at this moment in time what you've written is total hogwash. Currently the US is spending money as if it's, specifically, an infinite resource. Hence, this kaibosh on science funding can only be explained because the powers that be want it dead and gone . Do with that info what you will. The various flavours of conspiracy-theory-leaning ideas on wantin…

Currently, in the US, money is an infinite resource. One need only look at the world's latest one point five trillionaire. Where is the money coming from to support that valuation? And why is it being spent to maintain that valuation? Part of it is accounting tricks (sell 5% of a company for $20, and you're worth $400 with only $20 changing hands) but there's also genuinely a massive unexplained amount of money in ex…

Valuations are often an absurd fantasy. The notion is that Musk could find a buyer who would be willing to pay that based on the value of each share he owns. It’s not real money. He can borrow against it but not too much, and he will have to find a way of paying the lender back without selling stock. The money is not real.

If he dumped all of his shares the value of them would essentially go away, like with any commodity.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#218

Post by timr »

dluan wrote: post #108
timr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

America is facing a multi-generational technical decline never before seen that will do irreparable harm across all fields of research, let alone the human cost especially borne by young scientists who have more to lose, and your grand insightful take is that well, some of it deserved to get cut, when you're not even the one making the decisions of which ones do receive funding.

> America is facing a multi-generational technical decline never before seen that will do irreparable harm across all fields of research

This sounds very bad! But since I'm not arguing in favor of technical decline and irreparable harm, it doesn't mean that my argument is wrong.

> let alone the human cost especially borne by young scientists who have more to lose,

I'm confused: is science funding a welfare state for people who want to be scientists, or is it a meritocracy by which we fund the development of science?

> and your grand insightful take is that well, some of it deserved to get cut,

Well...yes.

> when you're not even the one making the decisions of which ones do receive funding.

Erm, so what? I can't have an opinion on bad science?

You're not making the decision either, but apparently you're allowed to have one.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#219

Post by Hikikomori »

kingnothing wrote: post #195
svachalek wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US situation is mitigated by both Russia and China deciding to make massive, foolish maneuvers at the same time as ours. However neither can match how stupendously we are lighting our future on fire in every possible dimension.

What are the foolish maneuvers that China is making?

At this point they can use the Gaben strategy and easily win.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#220

Post by Balgair »

Academic Science in the U.S. was pretty ill and needed a lot of reforms. We can all admit that.

But this solution is absolutely not the way to go about doing that.

From my psuedo-outsider [0] perspective, the capable and good people are fleeing or being forced out, but the jerks and asshats that were ruining it all are staying. If you thought in the late 2010s that we were boiling low tide in the ivory tower, then today we're just concentrating raw sewage. The abuse cases are exploding among grad students, anecdotally.

[0] I have a lot of friends and family in academia

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