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NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

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Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#151

Post by jltsiren »

timschmidt wrote: post #143
jltsiren wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of those working for a PI are students and postdocs, which are inherently trainee positions. Though, depending on the field and the PI, trainees may also have plenty of freedom to work on their own topics. If you want an actual career in the academia, the main options are becoming a PI or choosing a teaching-focused position. There are some staff scientists and similar, but such positions are rarer…

> postdocs > inherently trainee positions Do we live on the same planet? I understand that the point of being an academic is to always be learning, but there's no place on earth I know of that thinks of someone with a PhD as a trainee. > the main options are becoming a PI or choosing a teaching-focused position. There are some staff scientists and similar, but such positions are rarer than tenured professors. Implyin…

A postdoc is a training position, where the individual further develops their skills and tries to build an independent profile while being mentored by a more senior academic. PhDs who work in someone else's projects without focusing as much on personal development typically have other job titles, such as project scientist or staff scientist.

Receiving a doctorate does not mean that you have finished your training. Some countries have habilitations or higher doctorates, which can be understood as more formal versions of postdoctoral training. Medical doctors are expected to specialize and receive more training as residents. Other fields have similar arrangements, some more and others less formal. If a full career is 50 years and the job requires a high degree of specialization, it can make sense to use the first ~15 years for training.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#152

Post by groby_b »

ziddoap wrote: post #147
AcerbicZero wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in a hierarchical structure and someone higher up gives you an ultimatum, your choices are: comply, resist and face consequences, or find subversive, incremental ways to undermine it. None of those are cost-free. "Fighting" isn't about magic moves that keep everything safe. It's about choosing when and how to accept the risks. Expecting a fight with no threat to your position is cowardice disguised as pragm…

> or find subversive, incremental ways to undermine it. I'm asking for concrete examples of what "subversive, incremental ways to undermine it" would be. You basically just reworded the vague suggestion of "fight back". What are some specific examples of what the NSF director could have done that are subversive, incremental ways to undermine the orders which ultimately came from the president?

In labor circles, the "subversive, incremental ways" are known as "work to rule".

You simply do as you're told. Orders are never completely without ambiguity, and the person giving the order has less direct experience with the subject than the person receiving the order. There's wiggle room.

Concrete example: The order is "Do X". The person charged with executing it actually understands that the consequences will be that Y and Z (which the person giving the order cares about) will actually be on fire if you do X.

In a functioning relationship, you speak up and say "Happy to do X, but here's what'll happen, maybe we should consider a different way to achieve your goals". If you're going the subversive route, you say "Sure thing. I'll get right on X. I'll overdeliver on it". Then you do X, and nudge it towards maximally bad impact on Y/Z.

Followed by "Oh, who could've foreseen! Y and Z are in ruins! What would you like me to do, boss?"

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#153

Post by jfengel »

ttoinou wrote: post #24
jfengel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we'll have stuck it to the woke, and that's what counts.

“stick it to all the too-tolerent people who let the woke movement gain power” would be a good steel manning of your argument

It's not a good steel manning. You haven't explained what "too tolerant" is, or how much power we're talking about.

My comment was bitter sarcasm lamenting how much is lost and how little gained, not an argument. And you could call that out. But just flopping the words around doesn't turn it into an argument.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#154

Post by tootie »

jimbokun wrote: post #87
bananapub wrote: post #15

Pretty distressing at how there’s basically zero pushback from the American elites at the destruction of all strategic American advantages and only ineffective pushback from the public. There will be entire genres of books written about how America just said “eh” to being gutted by a bunch of rich psychopaths.

Two failed impeachment attempts, countless lawsuits, and now the Supreme Court has more or less inoculated Trump from any further prosecution attempts. The checks and balances have all been exhausted. There are no bullets left in the gun.

Checks and balances aside, a plurality of people voted for this. They saw Jan 6 happen. They saw all the lawsuits and criminal charges. They saw the impeachments. And they just want him anyway. It's been debated ad nauseum already and I don't think anyone has given a satisfactory explanation for how he keeps doing this.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#155

Post by ryandrake »

bananapub wrote: post #15

Pretty distressing at how there’s basically zero pushback from the American elites at the destruction of all strategic American advantages and only ineffective pushback from the public. There will be entire genres of books written about how America just said “eh” to being gutted by a bunch of rich psychopaths.

It's been truly amazing how ineffective and half-assed the opposition to this administration has been. I mean, in Trump's recent joint address to Congress, a handful of D's in Congress held up little signs in protest. Little signs! They might as well have shrugged and not done anything. These are the people the other side elected to fight this madness, and they're sitting there on their asses holding up little signs and making frowny faces. If that's all the opposition feels they are capable of doing, they might as well all just resign.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#156

Post by linkregister »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #136
linkregister wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would slow down the operation of the organization. In this case, it's counterproductive to the director's aims. The director's goal is to maximize grant funding; a functional bureaucracy is essential for that goal. There is nothing the director can do to increase the funding, which is being cut by an external source. The legality of the funding cut is unclear, but the director has no agency in the outcome of a leg…

But how would sending the http link slow things down? Most link parsers, browsers, and sites will happily redirect you to available encrypted sites these days. And even when they don't this is extremely dangerous advice to give for people who aren't technical.

It's a silly novelty website. Maybe this no longer happens, but for a period of time, browsers would present a warning that the website was insecure. The user would need to switch to https by updating the address. It was inconvenient.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#157

Post by anthomtb »

ziddoap wrote: post #13
sathackr wrote: post #4

One thing I don't understand is people resigning on principles. If something bad is happening to an organization that I hold a significant amount of clout and power in, I'm not just going to leave and hand the reigns to someone on 'their side' -- I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can. So many people are just leaving...instead of fighting. Which seems like it's going to have the effect of j…

> I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can. Can you give me some examples of how you would fight? Boss comes in (or whoever more powerful than me, e.g. someone acting on the president's orders), says something with the gist of "Do this, or get fired". What are the next steps that I can take that won't get me fired, but also count as fighting back?

If you are a Reddit user r/MaliciousCompliance is full of stories* of people follow orders to the most exacting and absurd extent. Most of them are peon-level folks so I am not sure how those actions would map to a person in a position of real power.

*fact vs embellished fact vs straight fiction is always questionable on Reddit.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#158

Post by dreamcompiler »

sathackr wrote: post #4

One thing I don't understand is people resigning on principles. If something bad is happening to an organization that I hold a significant amount of clout and power in, I'm not just going to leave and hand the reigns to someone on 'their side' -- I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can. So many people are just leaving...instead of fighting. Which seems like it's going to have the effect of j…

Congress could stop all this nonsense if they wanted to. The congressional leadership just doesn't want to.

And in this context it's reins not reigns.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#159

Post by brianmurphy »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #18
sathackr wrote: post #4

One thing I don't understand is people resigning on principles. If something bad is happening to an organization that I hold a significant amount of clout and power in, I'm not just going to leave and hand the reigns to someone on 'their side' -- I'm going to stay and fight and try to make whatever impact I can. So many people are just leaving...instead of fighting. Which seems like it's going to have the effect of j…

I think there are two problems: - How can you fight from the inside against people who can get you fired at will? I think it's more effective to fight from the outside. - Science requires a lot of honesty, trust and assumes people generally act in good faith. So Scientists are not well equipped for political fights against hardcore ideologues. Just look at climate or vaccine denial.

It's funny you say science requires a lot of honesty and trust, then point at what happened in the past 5 years.

Very few people believe "safe and effective" was telling the truth when it neither stopped someone from getting sick or from passing the virus on to other people. Now the lack of trust is spilling over into other v's that have been effective in eradicating past ailments like polio and measles. The "scientists" have no one to blame but themselves.

Re: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy

#160

Post by brianmurphy »

warkdarrior wrote: post #59
sathackr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protecting your family is why you should fight.

Say you have a family and that you have this NSF director position. You get some orders that you do not agree with, and at the same time you know that your partner could be disappeared tomorrow to El Salvador, by mistake of course. What is your plan to fight and protect your family?

Perhaps take some vacation days to get that "partner" of yours citizenship?
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