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U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

571–580 of 1001 posts

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#571
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that the people who screamed the most that Rome was on fire aggressively pushed for what you brilliantly call Moron Power. They thought we were crashing, rushed the cockpit, and pushed forward as hard as they could on the stick. Forward is up, right?

I'm sorry but Rome certainly didn't have airplanes.

I'm referring to this, which has aged quite poorly:

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-ele...

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada, Europe, China.

not much talent is going from US to Canada, it's almost always the reverse if you look at top canadian universities

US citizen moves to Canada on a CUSMA visa:

  - 30-50% pay cut

  - points and lottery based immigration system that penalizes them for each year you age after 30

  - frequent unfavorable rule changes

  - fear of being trapped forever on a temporary visa and eventually sent back to the USA, poorer than their peers who stayed stateside.
Canadian citizen moves to us on equivalent CUSMA visa:

  - huge pay raise

  - retire back home wealthier than their peers and still enjoy socialized healthcare.
Canada's immigration system is just structurally tilted toward brain drain. It's all stick and no carrot.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

americans pretending they aren't immigrants by using the term expat always cracks me up

I guess I think of "expat" as a possibly-temporary state where full assimilation is not the goal. American expats also pay American taxes unless they give up US citizenship. Technically of course you are right.

> American expats also pay American taxes unless they give up US citizenship.

Practically, they barely pay anything significant.

The lower net salary in Europe / Asia associated with rather high local tax means that most Americans citizens oversea barely own anything significant back to the state.

However it does remain an annoyance to fill the tax declaration every year: I know several American who chose to give up their citizenahip just to avoid this specific issue.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If I wanted racial purity in my collaborators it get a time machine to 1930s Germany.

If you knew more about it than some memes about racism, you'd know that the nihilism, this thin-skinned "at least we'll take them with us" sentiment you just expressed, was at the heart of it. But they had a lost war and the 1920s to be bitter about, the treaty of Versailles, not someone who "couldn't shut up" about something. The mind boggles.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#575

My wife operates an optical trap (a sophisticated microscope, she uses it for studying gene/dna physical properties) and she's pretty good at working with that instrument. The number of people good at working that microscope are in the ballpark of 2000 (+- 1000) in the world! She has cried a lot in the last one year for the mess science research has become. We are moving out of the country at the end of August.

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Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#576
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's actually kind of a hard problem. There are tens of thousands of grants. Some of them are classified as "medicine" and study things like hormones, some are classified as "computer science" or "mathematics" and study things like statistical bias. Which of these are the "real science" ones (e.g. HRT in older people with menopause or low-T) and which are the partisan-coded ones (e.g. gender HRT)? Put aside whether o…

Just do as DOGE/Musk: ctrl+f for "diversity" and deny all grants. Even if it had nothing to do with "woke", for instance diversity in bacteria cultures or whatever...

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is best to say that it is a religious topic. Everybody has strong opinions about it, but nobody has ever bothered to look into any details of atmosphere physics. Everybody thinks he knows everything about the subject, but nobody ever checked anything. If people go into the details of some absorption spectrum they risk to get cancelled Wat I am just a climate science hobbyist: my graduate work was in another scie…

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This is really vague.

Are you saying that some of the commonly-accepted science is significantly incorrect? If so, which parts?

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#578
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The institutions and trust that generations of Americans carefully built has been gleefully torched by cruel incompetents in the space of a handful years. The damage, physical and social, is incalculable. The unpunished crimes, endless. The reconstruction, if it happens at all, will take decades. It was all so unnecessary, so foolish.

I for one welcome -the ̶̶̶̶̶screw ̶̶̶̶worm- our new AI overlords.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If I wanted racial purity in my collaborators it get a time machine to 1930s Germany. If you knew more about it than some memes about racism, you'd know that the nihilism, this thin-skinned "at least we'll take them with us" sentiment you just expressed, was at the heart of it. But they had a lost war and the 1920s to be bitter about, the treaty of Versailles, not someone who "couldn't shut up" about something. The…

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Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#580
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The controversy is over whether we should learn more about it and take appropriate actions, or ignore it. This fundamental disagreement makes it a controversial topic. Reminds me of the when all the catholic priests were molesting kids and being moved around instead of outed and prosecuted. This was also a controversial topic too for the same reasons. Some people wanted to take action, while other (more powerful) peo…

Everyone wants someone else to deal with it. It's like we have a live grenade and rather than defusing it or disposing of it we keep passing it around hoping it explodes on someone else.
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