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NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

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Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#71

Post by curt15 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #20
oh_my_goodness wrote: post #4

Please understand that the goal of these policies is to weaken scientific research in the US. The people who push this stuff acknowledge openly that they oppose science, experts, and accurate information. This isn't a misunderstanding or a fumble.

Can anyone explain the reasoning behind it? I can understand (not saying I approve) targeted opposition to specific scientific claims to favor commercial interests (climate change denial to favor oil & gas, etc), but wouldn't a general anti-science movement make the country less competitive in the long run and directly hurt industries like pharma/etc?

A body of independent subject matter experts who command public respect is anathema to authoritarian governments. It's why authoritarian takeovers frequently start by targeting major universities.

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#72

Post by bdangubic »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #52
oh_my_goodness wrote: post #4

Please understand that the goal of these policies is to weaken scientific research in the US. The people who push this stuff acknowledge openly that they oppose science, experts, and accurate information. This isn't a misunderstanding or a fumble.

My job depends on NIH continuing to function, but it is not immediately clear that this particular decision follows other worrying trends discussed here previously. Removing K-awards for clinical trials (but not regular, cheaper study formats) might simply be a recognition that clinical trials are too expensive for the K-format and conducting underpowered clinical trials does not help anyone much.

might simply be is exactly right, very unlikely… and knowing what you know and have seen since Jan of 2025 you know how slim that “might” is

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#74

Post by emj »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #30
kingleopold wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please understand that so many high IQ tech and science people support this, they voted and decided.

Why did many high IQ tech and science people vote for their own defunding? I’m not asking out of anger I genuinely don’t get it. Culture war issues like, idk, people becoming more brown by default in America, or a trans teenager participating in a game, they’re… they don’t seem as important as ensuring well funded science??

They continue to support him, you have lots of republicans here they see him as at best a lesser evil.

I am sure I just naive, I guess we can hope all the international bad will is going away with Trump.

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#75

Post by kraken_cult »

curt15 wrote: post #71
Nextgrid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone explain the reasoning behind it? I can understand (not saying I approve) targeted opposition to specific scientific claims to favor commercial interests (climate change denial to favor oil & gas, etc), but wouldn't a general anti-science movement make the country less competitive in the long run and directly hurt industries like pharma/etc?

A body of independent subject matter experts who command public respect is anathema to authoritarian governments. It's why authoritarian takeovers frequently start by targeting major universities.

Except we both know they weren't really that independent though... This was on HN a few days ago https://archive.is/Ayf4R

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#76

Post by jjtheblunt »

epistasis wrote: post #47
userbinator wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, there were many other companies doing it too. General Electric, General Motors, Sylvania, etc.

That's not what I was saying. The foundational research that built the massive economic engine of the current US did not come from industrial research.

Did you overlook the transistor?

Built at Bell Labs in 1947, getting a Nobel prize for Bardeen, Shockley, and Brittain a few years later?

It's hard to think of a part of any economic engine that doesn't rely on transistors for the last many decades.

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#77

Post by afpx »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #66
afpx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be incentivizing researchers who have histories of publishing research that has been independently replicated. Way too much fraud going on that’s seeping into the real world.

Why would you bring up fraud in the midst of science research in the US being burned to the ground? Fraud is not the reason it is happening. Even the people who are making the cuts in this case have clarified the purported reason and it has nothing to do with fraud.

There are too may bad scientists, and I don't want to fund them. When the sciences became status-oriented, group-think and profit-seeking became the norm.

This administration is trash, but I'm still tired of paying taxes to fund jokers.

If your 'science' is so important, then any other country in the world will be happy to scoop you up. gtfo

Just one example out of many: Today, I looked up research on EMDR treatments. Major problems in replication for things outside of PTSD. Yet, therapists are told by their boards to push the treatment for all sorts of things.

Have many of you actually looked at a lot of the garbage funded by NIH?

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#78

Post by talon8635 »

jmcgough wrote: post #10

We're seeing a generational loss of young talent that will be hard to reverse. PhD grads who would normally stay in the US after graduation are returning to their home countries. My American post-doc friends have had funding for cancer research, Alzheimer's research, Parkinson's disease; some have left the US, others are making plans to do so. And for what? Any money we "saved" by killing our research pipeline has al…

Your comment has an implication bigger than your point. Returning to their home countries… are there not American PHD at American university? Has the ratio of native to international shifted over the years?

I’m being somewhat sarcastic, given I see an overwhelming representation of internationals in the American grad/phd programs I’m familiar with. But I honestly don’t have insight across every department. I’d be interested what people have to say about this across STEM throughout the country. Anyone have a rough idea on the trend lines?

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#79

Post by talon8635 »

apothegm wrote: post #27
Escapado wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a US citizen. From the outside it looks like the US administration simply does not care about advancing science and technology or care for their citizens or their future very much. It looks like it cares about furthering wealth and influence of the head of the in-group by means of fear mongering, scape goating and dismantling structures that threaten this agenda. And if there is a penny to save and a misinformati…

It looks like that from inside the US too. At least, to a lot of us.

I’d agree, and I’d add “by both sides”. The erosion of rigor and exceptionalism under the progressive mentality has been profoundly damaging as well. Both sides seem so driven by a culture war circle jerk that they have totally lost the plot in term of academic mission.

I’ll add, the perverse incentives of publish or perish is also responsible for an aimless and irresponsible churn that lead us into the reproducibility crisis. So really the ship has been falling apart in every regard for a very long time. Not it’s just impossible to ignore. Not to mention, the obvious cost and waste of the institutions and life ending debt… it’s just all a mess

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#80

Post by stonogo »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #9
epistasis wrote: post #2

It's hard to overstate how chaotic and mismanaged NIH has been in the past two years. Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice, so it's hard to impute motives here. A lot of labs are being defunded for no good reason, losing researchers, losing the thread, and putting entire directions of useful research on ice, likely forever. There are some clear indications of where it is pure malice and…

> At 60, Eddy had planned to continue working through the next decade with his team. "For someone of my career stage, this is probably not recoverable," he says. Why doesn't he continue his research inside big pharma?

Big pharma won't hire anyone they can't push around. This means people who expect decent salaries and only working forty hours a week need not apply.
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