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U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#461

Post by paytonjjones »

gs17 wrote: post #445
paytonjjones wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you think this would be an easy task. It strikes me as quite difficult! Separating scientific wheat from chaff requires a lot of effort and expertise. As one famous example, Sokal intentionally made up funny bullshit and still fooled a ton of people!

I don't think it's an easy task in reality, but they were claiming there's "countless humanities graduate programs that do nothing but produce and spread left-wing propaganda" outnumbering the important grants and taking up all the funding, which should be a lot easier to audit for and cut a large portion of it without killing any "real science". Instead, we got a clumsy keyword search.

I'm sure I'll get heat for this, but I think a low-resolution first pass a la keyword search was actually an excellent call from a macro standpoint. It (1) clears out a good chunk of cruft, instantly, with little effort and (2) scares people away from doing further explicitly ideological work.

There are a surprising number of social scientists who engage in both good basic research and useless ideological bone-picking, and the low resolution pass effectively pushes them to focus on their real work.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#462

Post by amanaplanacanal »

gs17 wrote: post #326
drnick1 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Research on weather and climate is now considered "woke". Anything can be labeled as partisan. Safer to stop funding all research, unless it can be shown to support what we already believe.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#463

Post by ryandrake »

iAMkenough wrote: post #346
helterskelter wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if they thought it was a DEI thing.

If the 20-something’s at DOGE proved anything last year, the keyword “black” associated with grant funding probably put the research on a list of DEI cuts.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. This is exactly the kind of expertise and competence we have in the Administration right now. It is totally believable that they would do a substring search for "black" and "trans" and defund black hole research and transistor science.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#465

Post by wins32767 »

LadyCailin wrote: post #443
wins32767 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's foolish. There is certainly an amount of money on funding research that is unreasonable! Determining where that line should rest is an inherently political question. Determining who should get funding for that is also a political question. The latter question was able to be papered over for many years because the scientific community generally contained roughly equal members of both parties. Since that isn't t…

I’m not convinced academia purged itself, at least not in any way that they should be ashamed of. Reality has a liberal bias, and my extremely conservative uncle at one point mentioned how he didn’t want his kids to go to college, because college turns kids atheist. Actually, learning things opens your mind, and so the standard conservative positions come off looking pretty stupid after critical examination, so conse…

Do you have any idea how smug this sounds to about half the people that need to pay for the scientific funding? I'm not a Republican, but even I'm turned off by this sort of attitude.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#466

Post by smallmancontrov »

dirck-norman wrote: post #394
smallmancontrov wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refusing to bail out real estate speculators was bold and painful, but I'm not sure it was wrong.

Not at all what’s happening. China’s government privatized real estate and was the engine of the bubble by disallowing localities from taxing and only allowing revenues via land sales. See above how central planning in the CCP has forced massive debt upon localities. State banks backed Evergrande’s with cheap credit and govt guarantees. Local officials were promoted for hitting GDP growth targets - see above how they…

The citizens with real estate were the speculators. They gambled on being able to squeeze even more out of the next guy and they lost. In the US, we would just have taxed the kids (again) to bail out the homeowners (again). I have a hard time calling that more responsible.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#467

Post by sQL_inject »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #296
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…

Americans voted to bring the country back to the 1950's and the plan is working perfectly

"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."

You could rewrite this the other way for the prior administration, simply replace the word "include" with preclude.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#468

Post by MarkusQ »

Hikikomori wrote: post #219
kingnothing wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the foolish maneuvers that China is making?

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

That would require making babies and not making mistakes. Humans are generally/historically better at the former, but these days both seem to be a challenge.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#469

Post by amanaplanacanal »

wins32767 wrote: post #449
wins32767 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's foolish. There is certainly an amount of money on funding research that is unreasonable! Determining where that line should rest is an inherently political question. Determining who should get funding for that is also a political question. The latter question was able to be papered over for many years because the scientific community generally contained roughly equal members of both parties. Since that isn't t…

Like this from the article: > When Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD), first got to the NIH 12 years ago, she wanted to increase research into the social determinants of health—structural racism in home-loan practices meant that nonwhite people got iced out of home ownership and generational wealth, which forced them to live in neighborhoo…

The better question is: Why is it that when republicans hear the word "racism" they immediately think people are talking about them? Are they afraid of what research on racism will show?

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#470

Post by jasonlotito »

WarmWash wrote: post #433
MisterTea wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conservatives have been basically purged from academia over the last 30 years, Any citations on this?

Sure https://www.aei.org/articles/partisan-professors/ I'd be shocked to find anyone surprised by this.

That doesn't show they were purged. There are many reasons their numbers declined.
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