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U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#831

Post by sunrisetiger »

josephg wrote: post #816
xnx wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American exceptionalism is regressing to the mean.

Strangely enough, america's tech sector is still exceptional on a global stage. I'm not entirely sure why. There's something magic that happens in the bay area as a result of funding and talent density. Its weird - I'm australian. We have the same caliber of software engineers here. But there's not the same ambition amongst skilled engineers to solve problems at the world stage. And its far more difficult to convince…

Likely because California is not beholden to other interests. Even rural voices in California are subdued when it comes to big city politics, especially San Francisco.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#832

Post by runako »

edg5000 wrote: post #821
xnx wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American exceptionalism is regressing to the mean.

@josephg Being from the EU myself, I'm surprised in the same way you are. There is certainly something good going on there as well, at least when looking at certain technologies in isolation, where the US leads. How come there's still no better desktop processor than Intel/AMD on a per core basis? This is just one example. Nobody's made anything at that level still.

These are companies built in the heyday of American hegemony. The concern is not around dominance of existing science. Rather, the issues are:

- science that simply will not get done, and may be lost to humanity altogether. There is research the US would have done this year that will not get done elsewhere this year. Once the individual researchers leave the field, there is no guarantee the research will get done this decade, or the next, or the next.

- Intel and AMD lean on technology developed in the 1950s. US science and R&D done in 2026 similarly will underwrite US industrial success in the 2050s and beyond. This is like the classical warning against eating your seed corn (instead of saving it to plant). Pressing pause will have an impact, but one would not expect it to show up in the industry league tables for some time.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#833

Post by BobbyTables2 »

epsteingpt wrote: post #744

This will get downvoted to oblivion, but it's not obvious to me this shakeup is a bad thing. Some thoughts: 1. US Spending on R&D has gone up from $50B -> $1T annually, and from $3B -> $115B on purchasing power terms 2. The labs rely on government grants, which are hard to get and typically awarded 'equally' or 'by gatekeepers' 3. There is and have been massive scandals that question academic integrity - reproducibil…

That is certainly a massive increase in spending... Seems a bit hard to believe.

Is it actually separate from the AI related mania?

I feel like even the COVID related R&D surge couldn’t have been anywhere close.

(Perhaps technically unfair, but I don’t view AI related stuff as traditional R&D given the irrational forces driving it. Seems closer to the Dutch Tulip Mania episode).

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#834

Post by fwipsy »

josephg wrote: post #816
xnx wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American exceptionalism is regressing to the mean.

Strangely enough, america's tech sector is still exceptional on a global stage. I'm not entirely sure why. There's something magic that happens in the bay area as a result of funding and talent density. Its weird - I'm australian. We have the same caliber of software engineers here. But there's not the same ambition amongst skilled engineers to solve problems at the world stage. And its far more difficult to convince…

My half-baked sense is that America is good at making the best things for the highest cost, but tends to be meh at making good or adequate things at a competitive price. Our military seems like the strongest example, but I feel like it also describes healthcare/biotech, education, and maybe housing.

This works well for tech, because a good design can be scaled to serve the whole world, and we can outsource manufacturing to companies like China or Taiwan who are better at cost-effectiveness. (And have lower wages. Maybe that's the entire explanation.)

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#835

Post by runako »

josephg wrote: post #816
xnx wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American exceptionalism is regressing to the mean.

Strangely enough, america's tech sector is still exceptional on a global stage. I'm not entirely sure why. There's something magic that happens in the bay area as a result of funding and talent density. Its weird - I'm australian. We have the same caliber of software engineers here. But there's not the same ambition amongst skilled engineers to solve problems at the world stage. And its far more difficult to convince…

> The technology sector is propping up the US economy

Probably more accurate to say the healthcare sector is propping up the US economy. The only sector broadly hiring through all the layoffs of recent years.

Tech grabs the headlines and has extremely valuable firms concentrated in a handful of cities. On the other hand, those firms tend not to employ a lot of people. Healthcare is less flashy, but every city has a hospital (or a few) that (each) does a few billion $ in revenue while providing thousands of recession-resistant jobs.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#836

Post by opsnooperfax »

matsemann wrote: post #570
burningChrome wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best friend had a masters in Biotech and same thing happened in the mid aughts. All of his funding dried up. He was told repeatedly to leave academia, its not worth it. He had a hard time leaving because he really did love the research they were doing. Said it was one of the hardest decisions he had to make. He was lucky. He was able to make arrangements to go back to school to get his law degree. He then passed the…

I wonder what discoveries that could've helped people are now pushed back years if not decades.

Given the reproducibility crisis and perverse incentives of the past several decades, it may be less significant than you think. There’s no philosopher stone that turns money into impactful research. Fewer people in it for the love of the game focused on fewer problems may actually be a good thing.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#837

Post by annzabelle »

vkou wrote: post #652
cryptoegorophy wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada? For lower salary and lower life quality?

Higher intangible quality of life, lower spending power. There are a lot of QOL advantages to living in a less violent, less polarized, less cruelty-driven society that isn't actively trying to dismantle all of its institutions and destroy itself. Especially if you're one of those people who are in the crosshairs of jack-booted thugs and their cheerleaders.

There are a lot of QOL disadvantages to being an immigrant on a visa anywhere. I moved to NZ for the next couple of years recently, and my QOL has dropped in many ways from the move. My much lower income buys a lot less housing here, so I went from a 2 bed apartment to myself to a moldy studio. I'm extremely far from family and friends, and there are weird cultural gaps with most everyone around me because we grew up on different media, sports, and education systems. I'm constantly having to figure out how things are done here, from taxes to bank accounts to renting, and I know I have different worker protections, but I don't really know what exactly they are. My status in the country ends after my visa is up in 2 years, and I don't know if I will even be able to extend it with a sponsor because there are health requirements that I may or may not meet for the visa I would need.

Hell, Canada extended its citizenship by descent law last December, and has been issuing citizenship certificates under it. Just this week many of the people who'd received these certificates had them revoked while there is further investigation into their documentation. Many of them are people who'd been living in Canada on temporary visas, and gave up their visa when they got proof of citizenship. Now they're in limbo with invalid passports and no legal status in the country.

Being an immigrant anywhere, and yes, that includes American "expats" in Canada or western Europe, means that you are at the whims of a capricious and chaotic immigration system that changes at the whims of a government you have no say in.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#838

Post by evenman02 »

sltkr wrote: post #710
enragedcacti wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think requiring prospective hires to write a DEI statement is equally as political as illegally cancelling already funded and approved research into e.g. racial disparities in maternal mortality, or health equity gaps for rural Americans (yes, it's DEI even if it's for predominantly white people).

How is forcing prospective academics to pledge alegiance to the American woke left anything _but_ political? DEI statements were nothing more than obligatory loyalty oaths.

People that view DEI like this are incredibly lost. The vast majority of cases of DEI initiatives are so tame, and nothing like they are portrayed as. "Pledge allegiance to the left" come on be real. The modern conservative movement is so unserious.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#839

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

jarjoura wrote: post #770
anon84873628 wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. Michael Wolff illustrates nicely how Trump is the literal embodiment of the "greed is good" 80's culture. Of course we also have Ronald Reagan to thank. And that administration spawned the career of John Roberts, which we can now see as a through line to the destruction of The Court.

It's a bit reductive to pin this on Ronald Reagan. The entire western world had been shifting towards neoliberalism as a direct response to the eastern world shifting towards communism since WW2. Trump also isn't the embodiment of anything other than the guy who didn't take it seriously and suddenly ended up with the job because the voters in the country decided it couldn't be any worse under him than whatever the cu…

Or you could go all the way back to Reconstruction. The same way that an embittered Germany led to WWII, we are living with an embittered, mutant form of Confederate culture taking its revenge on the Union that put it down 160 years ago. The current culture war intermingles Southern Christian Conservative and Neoliberal interests. They're angry that the world has rapidly grown more progressive, as much as they're angry they lost their war. It might only take 5-10 years and eventually swing back, but it could also get worse, if their leaders become more extreme (strongman leaders often do get worse, as do religious extremists).

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#840

Post by runako »

littlekey wrote: post #423
twothreeone wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which really tells you more about the state of mind of people asking that question. What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence, or the nature of the physical reality they live in (and yes, by "being curious" I mean "being willing to put a tax dollar amount to them")?

>What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence A person who struggles to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, for one.

> A person who struggles to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, for one.

Most of humanity shared this existence, and yet the language, institutions, ontologies, etc around existence come from those people who did not have the food and housing security of most Americans.

The counterexamples are numerous, but just start at the arts and you'll quickly see there is not a correlation between material comfort and basic curiosity.

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