American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

Post by illiac786 » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 7:34 PM UTC

senectus1 wrote: post #102

dotnet00 wrote: post #79

This has definitely been my feeling too as a fresh postdoc. For a while it has been feeling more and more like the US isn't worth the effort and stress. Sure, I make more money here, but is it worth dealing with nonsensical immigration policies, haphazard funding cuts, crumbling infrastructure, completely random rulemaking, and demoralized colleagues facing severe and nonsensical budget cuts when various other countr…

I see Trump as being a socially acceptable widening of this sort of behavior. AI is just an enabling of the the imagination of the now widened bracket of behavior. As has been often remarked on. this is a really shit timeline to exist in.

Post by bakuninsbart » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 3:24 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #103

dotnet00 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of overlap between science and engineering, a lot of the things being affected by the cuts would be engineering by your definition. E.g. designing scientific instruments. The fundamental physics and chemistry can be well understood, and yet you need a strong overlap of scientists and engineers to produce and run something that actually collects useful data, especially at the cutting edge, where new thin…

Scientific research groups hire engineers to engineer, and industry teams hire scientists to serve as specialized engineers, but there is next to no scientific research in the industrial sector.

Post by foxglacier » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 7:30 PM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #86

foxglacier wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea that's practically nothing, even accounting for your population. It's $2/person compared to NASA's pre-cut budget of about $80/person/year. Where are all these other countries that might pick up the slack? Seems nobody else in the world wants to pay for science. They might complain about American science funding cuts but are happy to keep their already tiny science budgets tiny. Norway's overall science budget is…

Where did you get that $1 billion figure from? From what I can see[1][2], it's more like $4.6 billion? In that case it would be more like $920/person/year. [1]: https://www.fpol.no/det-norske-statsbudsjettet-2025-gir-en-n... [2]: https://nifu.brage.unit.no/nifu-xmlui/handle/11250/3166076 (second page, first section)

Post by ted_dunning » Fri, Jul 11, 2025, 2:55 AM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #22

givemeethekeys wrote: post #8

Are institutions elsewhere massively increasing funding and positions? Aren't all the non-bankruptible tuition fees providing plenty of funding already? Where's that money going? The football team?

The gov't here in Norway put $10 million on the table[1] for 2026 as a response to what's going on in the US. Due to reasons they can't direct it solely at US researchers, but the intent is there: The minister has followed the recent developments in the United States closely: "Academic freedom is under pressure in the United States, and it is an unpredictable situation for many researchers in what has been the world'…

Post by ted_dunning » Fri, Jul 11, 2025, 3:01 AM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #89

bobthepanda wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explains why you would want researchers to teach students, but not why students (who generally have little to no income to speak of and are already struggling with university costs in the US) should directly pay for research

Perhaps I was unclear. The argument is that being educated by a groundbreaking researcher is better than being educated by someone who merely knows things, and so it’s worth a tuition premium. Like I said, I think that position is full of holes, but it’s not incoherent.