Live data from Hacker News

U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

991–1000 of 1001 posts

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#991

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't follow. Are there not sciences that primarily study a type of human relationship? Economics, for instance, which covers our financial relationships with each other.

Economics is not a science either. It's a collection of factoids with correlations retrofitted to claim causation.

This is all it is: "if x goes up then y goes down."

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#992

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reparations to Iran

tbf, it's unclear to me at this point how much of that is going to represent $$ out of the American pocket. A lot of it is "guarantees of financing and investment" by other gulf states. Probably we're subsidizing Iran re-investment, and the costs of that are intentionally ambiguous.

If its USD dollars that are going to be spent, its not different than Fed literally printing money out of thin air and sending to Iran. The mere consumption of these dollars will have some effect on global inflation and will strenghten Iran long term

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#993

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the deffinition to you is anything the admin does then that's hard to argue.

the admin cuts funding by 40% ~ cutting something by 40% is bad for it ~ burning something down is an euphemism for acting on something in a way that's bad for it. what are you not following?

[flagged]

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#994
post #250

No wonder Trump is referred to as “nation builder” in China since he’s building them up by tearing down America.

tbf I don't think Chinese citizens are faring any better than the West reporting on the ground, it's also possible there are numerous problems coalescing at the same time for humanity on a global scale.

Fair call, we are in an era of converging crises.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#995

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those were all ultimately for profit companies. You can only get so far with basic science if some bean counter is looking for a return on investment in the near future. What those companies did is notable, but I think you are overselling their contributions to science. We've gotten way more scientific advancement from publicly funded science. There are private companies allowed to do R&D all over the world. Publicly…

I’ve seen it claimed that higher taxes on corporate profits incentivized that lab model. Better to invest in risky research than have that money taxed away. When the regulatory environment changed, shareholders insisted they should get that money through dividends and stock buybacks, and goodbye Bell Labs. I don’t know how accurate that argument is, but it certainly sounds plausible.

My father worked at Bell Labs. He said the rules of the monopoly signed with the US govt drove innovation. AT&T, which operated Bell Labs, could charge cost plus a fixed percentage, but it was based on costs from N years earlier. I believe N=3. Anyway, if AT&T improved costs, it became more profitable.

The profits of the company depended on innovation. The employees knew that. And it innovated.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#996

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever diversity sections were required in grant proposals are nothing compared to the situation right now. If your guy couldn’t say stuff like we will do outreach to local CCs, will design summer research programs, etc, then they’re just not a very good grant writer

Why attach this stuff to every grant? This guy was dealing was dealing cutting edge research using multi million dollar equipment. Stuff only a few people world wide know about. That’s difficult enough. This leads to purely performative diversity statements that mean nothing in the real world.

>Stuff only a few people world wide know about.

Sounds like a good thing to try to increase diversity and recruitment.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#997

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your starting talking point is that half the country is irrational or detached from reality you've already abandoned the work of building consensus. We can keep doing the "Jon Stewart" thing and scoring points by calling the other side idiots, or we can grow up, act like adults, and do the much harder work of convincing people. THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SCIENCE. The science is doing research and writing report…

You are 100% correct. The (horrible) abandoning of funding for these needed science projects is not science, but politics. My entire point. We need to try and bring these people back to reality not using science but persuasion/being politically intelligent in our speech with them, not dumb destructive (but feels good for a minute) Jon Stewart style belittling.

Do you honestly believe the Trump administration will set aside their anti-vaccine vengeance tour and anti-woke activism because someone talks to them persuasively??

You can't use logic to get someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#998

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a better way, that's not the Chinese way? What I mean is more centralized oversight over research priorities, metric-driven rewards, and preference for political favorites?

More decentralized decision-making (in the hands of universities and institutes), requirements for permanent positions as a requirement for funding, more funding of individuals and programs rather than projects, more randomized funding (lotteries etc), requirements for trainee positions to be tied to projected permanent positions, more early career development and retraining funding, etc etc etc. The traditional mode…

i'm very late but i just wanted to give you kudos for a succinct yet spot-on comment on the state of funding. you captured everything i've been trying to put into words and failing miserably at.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#999
post #959

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know what a CUSMA visa is - I thought CUSMA was a trade deal?, but it seems very convenient to compare the standard Express Entry points-based immigration track versus (nothing) on the US side. Convenient is an euphemism, reality basically the opposite of what you're saying: Moving to Canada: - Rational points-based immigration system with transparent rules which you can actually look up and prepare for, star…

CUSMA goes both ways, it allows Canadian and US Citizens to obtain 3 year temporary work permits for many skilled occupations with low friction, across both countries.

It's another contributing factor to the "brain drain" effect. In that it's a worse deal for a US Citizen to move to Canada on a CUSMA visa than for the opposite.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#1000

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is undergoing a 2008 style financial crisis due to real estate speculation and deflation due to very weak domestic spending. They have drowned their municipalities in debt cumulatively equivalent to the US federal and state debt as a percentage of GDP. Localities aren’t allowed to tax but are responsible for local services and industry. Local governments borrowed heavily to hit GDP growth targets and compete wi…

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

They bailed out the little people and jailed the CEO's.

What happened was these companies went into massive debt building buildings based on the belief that real estate prices would increase forever infinitely.

The Chinese govt popped the bubble.

These real estate companies went bankrupt, many of them took payments from retail for apartments that weren't built.

They arrested the CEO's and upper management, siezed and sold their assets.

But the people did get bailed out by the government, all the little folk who bought apartments were refunded or had the construction project finished by the government.

Post reply on HN