U.S. science is in chaos • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#251

Post by TomasBM » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

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…

Do you have a specific example of a wasteful STEM research project that was cut?

My (perhaps wrong) impression was that wastefulness was given as the reason for making the cuts, but that the cuts were done broadly and indiscriminately [1].

In other words, the actions don't match the stated goal of reducing wastefulness. They seem more like a punishment for the members of all scientific institutions, and deterrence for curiosity-driven research.

[1] For example, the cuts to the STEM grants & projects didn't seem attached to any evidence of said projects' wastefulness.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#252

Post by handle584 » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #236

chneu wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really true but white Americans love to say that. Americans are the biggest bullies and and victims.

I know a ton of people who would love to get their Phd. When they can't make it work but see graduate programs heavily populated by foreign students (who may or may not stay) funded by (what they see as) their tax dollars, some become resentful. That's a pretty normal human reaction, not a uniquely white or American one. Understanding human realities and optics might have helped here. But instead you chose 'white peo…

Well why Americans are not willing to take those PhD offers that pay barely above poverty line for 5 years or so? The answer is obvious, they would rather take a job in industry that pays miles better.

There is really no reason to be resentful because it is a voluntary choice, and foreign students are worse off in every aspect to start with. Leaving friends & family behind, travel often involves long-haul flights, different culture to blend in, not eligible for NSF grants and national lab jobs, etc.

Situation is really similar to H1B workers discussed here a while ago. The options for Americans are plenty while for foreigners very scarce, and with the recent change it is getting even more so without giving Americans a bigger incentive, so it is really a lose-lose outcome.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#253

Post by mech998877 » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

brnt wrote: post #133

marcyb5st wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Am…

Look at GDP growth in the US vs EU over the last 10 years or so if you want to talk about innovation. Europe has been stagnating economically and real productivity growth is critical to a modern economy. The large hadron collider does some impressive research, but it doesn't move the sort of innovation in practical machinery and infrastructure that powers a modern economy.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#254

Post by smallmancontrov » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:47 PM UTC

adornKey wrote: post #246

mothballed wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One example is that whenever patents expire on some refrigerants or related process somehow magically at that same exact moment Dupont or other chemical IP behemoth magically find a new one safe for the ozone, the science magically all aligns at that moment, and congress/EPA finds the time to change the law before one iota of generic industry can squeeze out. I think the generic idea of the science and global warming…

Ozone is an interesting topic. CFCs seem to be very potent climate gases. But I haven't checked any calculations about them, yet. I'd love to see a good analysis of the absorption-spectrum. Adding something new to the atmosphere has a lot of warming potential - but the question always is how fast it reaches a level of saturation. For ozone and CFCs years of media coverage haven't brought any insight. Having 3 differe…

> most likely people haven't bothered to check

Searching "cfc concentration in atmosphere" on scholar.google.com returns 60000 papers. Cruising the first few pages, most of them easily qualify as "bothering to check." Your estimation of the scientific community is five orders of magnitude off.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#255

Post by chneu » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #236

chneu wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really true but white Americans love to say that. Americans are the biggest bullies and and victims.

I know a ton of people who would love to get their Phd. When they can't make it work but see graduate programs heavily populated by foreign students (who may or may not stay) funded by (what they see as) their tax dollars, some become resentful. That's a pretty normal human reaction, not a uniquely white or American one. Understanding human realities and optics might have helped here. But instead you chose 'white peo…

I'm a white American and I've heard a handful of my fellow white Americans say this, but they can't actually show me real world examples or show me how it actually affected them.

It's willfull victim hood. It's a viewpoint of "I'm a victim in a system that has benefited me, why isn't it benefiting me over those other people anymore?" White Americans are so acquainted to benefitting the systemic issues that hold others back that equality seems unequal to white Americans. "Why is that immigrant applying for a PhD? They're pushing out a good white American!!"

When I go to academic events in the US(less often now since Trump) it's still 95% white folks. Wild how that happens.

Lol constant victims. I'm not trying to be a dick or rude. It's just that white Americans have no idea how entitled they are. The second someone else gets a morsel of a crumb it becomes a question of "Why did this person get something?" This is the exact thing trump and conservatives say to rile up their base and it works. It's endemic to American culture so there's no denying this. It's a question of "How much?" not if.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#256

Post by archagon » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

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]

Having mingled and worked at length with PhD-level folks in both STEM and the social sciences, rest assured: social scientists are some of the smartest researchers out there, almost to a frightening degree. So your dismissal is genuinely chuckle-inducing to me.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#257

Post by Integrape » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 3:02 PM UTC

brookst wrote: post #174

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No other country punches itself in the face as hard or as often as the usa does.

And if you tell us to stop, we’ll punch ourselves in the face even harder just to prove you can’t tell us what to do.

Never underestimate the power of American spite.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#258

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 3:02 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#259

Post by arjie » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 3:07 PM UTC

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #223

eitally wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

During my engineering grad program I was fascinated by the gender disparity among americans (almost no women) versus the nearly equal gender balance among engineering grad students from India, the Middle East (including Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia), and China. The engineering gender imbalance seems to be almost unique to the USA. Countries with awful records on women's rights sent just as many women to get PhDs as men…

Others have observed this as well, but it is considered a disputed finding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#260

Post by frickinLasers » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 3:11 PM UTC

MemoryHoleHQ wrote: post #42

qnpnpmqppnp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting the article: > 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 unh…

[flagged]

I'm not going to bother to write an essay like the other person.

Here is a scientific outcome that directly impacts the quality of medicine a majority of American citizens receive: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Research in progress to address these issues was cancelled by DOGE because "melanin content of the skin." "Do your own research" if you care to, or fuck off.