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U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#321

Post by gs17 »

conception wrote: post #293
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What tax dollars are you referring to? America famously does not pay for people to go to higher education at any real scale.

They're talking about PhDs, many of which are funded by grants.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#322

Post by noosphr »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #299
okeuro49 wrote: post #231

> 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 unheard of until now. It is odd how removal of DEI is framed as being political, when it is the other way round. DEI schemes were deeply political, and depended on who can claim to be the bi…

It's not odd. If the institution of it is political, the removal of it is therefore also political. It is not, however, based on who can claim to be the biggest victim. It is based on a simple statistical analysis of demographics.

In a previous project I ended up talking with a scientist who couldn't shut up about how she was 1/4th Indigenous and how many grants that could open for our collaboration.

If I wanted racial purity in my collaborators it get a time machine to 1930s Germany. That someone was doing this in 2022 was extremely off-putting. That they were getting government support because of it makes the me not care much about the fact the system is being burned down today.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#323

Post by Covzire »

The article buried the lede. DEI was the bridge too far that lit a massive tinderbox among the electorate who wanted the vast majority of what happened with DOGE, to happen. DEI was the appetizer, and once the teeth starting biting it found a lot more than anticipated (USAID). The lesson is that real scientists should have stood up en masse to the political commandeering of their institutions by fringe activists peddling pseudoscience and this would have been avoided.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#324

Post by drnick1 »

IsTom wrote: post #41
gignico wrote: 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.

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

If you’d like to do your part against climate change, you can start by walking everywhere today, avoiding heating and cooling your home, and never flying a plane again. These are changes I’m not willing to make, so the issue isn’t just inconvenient for the wealthy—it’s inconvenient for everyone. It’s easy to shift the problem onto others without doing anything about it yourself.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#326

Post by gs17 »

drnick1 wrote: post #320
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…

> they were unable to follow through on hiring many of the grad students they had planned to hire Most of the "research" done by graduate students and even tenured faculty as a whole is laughable at best. For every lab that produces groundbreaking output, there are countless humanities graduate programs that do nothing but produce and spread left-wing propaganda.

Then it should have been easy to cut only those grants instead of the "real science", right?

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#327

Post by noosphr »

api wrote: post #16

After the election my very first thought was that this is the start of the Chinese century, since America has voted to step down. Seems to be playing out.

For a Chinese century you'd need there to be anyone in China in a century. With the one child policy they have run out of young women and are running out of middle aged men. The Chinese, and Asian, population pyramids make Europe look young and vibrant.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#328

Post by randusername »

Balgair wrote: post #220

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 to…

I think all the following can be true simultaneously:

The whiplash cuts are stupid, short-sighted and causing major damage

The bullying tactics around protests and immigration are villainous and are eroding one of our greatest institutions

Science and higher education have fallen short of their ideals and need reform

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#329

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Science has always been in Chaos. I know of zero laboratories doing “science” that isn’t biased or otherwise tainted with politics or money

The US public never cared about science anyway. Go read Carl Sagan’s 1996 demon haunted world and it’s only gotten worse from there

You could do a search for this headline and get a result for every year since Francis Bacon started publishing

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#330

Post by gs17 »

btrettel wrote: post #207
stainablesteel wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As a US citizen with a PhD, I didn't experience any clear discrimination in favor of foreign students during grad school. I think the main reason so few US citizens get PhDs is because PhD "student" (they're actually workers) positions pay so poorly. Make PhD student positions have non-poverty wages and you'll see a lot more interest from US citizens. On the flip side, I think foreign students experienced a lot of ab…

I've seen clear discrimination in favor of foreign students, but it was specifically because of those abusive conditions. I know of professors who exclusively tried to recruit specific foreign nationalities (their own, typically) because they could get away with treating them worse than American students. I wouldn't have been able to get into those labs, but I also wouldn't want to.
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