Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 299 posts

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#151

Post by jfengel »

epistasis wrote: post #140
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. This is what is so hard for me to handle, and it really feels like I'm grieving a death. Because no matter what happens, even if some things eventually get better, I feel like the US as I knew it is dead - there is simply no coming back from the fact that it's been laid bare how quickly and easily vast swaths of our political leadership would…

The primary system means that nobody with any principles is left in the Republican Party, unfortunately. But not all is lost. Many are very eager for the reins of power to come back and for laws to be enforced. Sure, the Trump regime may tell itself that it's immune from tax audits ever again, but that's not legal and as soon as the force of law is back there are many eager attorneys with high principles that will be…

I wish I could share your optimism. But just because a voter has an unfavorable opinion, it doesn't mean that they won't vote for them. Many will choose "the lesser of two evils", and the current administration has devoted a lot of effort to convincing supporters that their opponents are even worse.

The President is not in fact on the ballot this year, and quite a few will say "I don't like the President, but I like the local Republican candidate more than the local Democratic candidate". Except that the President should be on the ballot: the only serious question facing Congress is whether they will support his policies or take measures to oppose them. That's going to happen exclusively along party lines. Nothing else that either candidate promises actually matters.

It's all made worse by efforts to put a thumb on the scale. That, above all else, makes this feel like the last chance we'll have to fix this. I'm going to hold out hope that we'll take it.

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#152

Post by kergonath »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #131
epistasis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership. Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. See also the way that grants are now being distributed at NCI and NSF. Only very large grants for many m…

> Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. This is what is so hard for me to handle, and it really feels like I'm grieving a death. Because no matter what happens, even if some things eventually get better, I feel like the US as I knew it is dead - there is simply no coming back from the fact that it's been laid bare how quickly and easily vast swaths of our political leadership would…

> there is simply no coming back from the fact that it's been laid bare how quickly and easily vast swaths of our political leadership would sell out to completely destroy our Constitutional principles.

I think you are right. At the same time it’s also an opportunity to get rid of an outdated constitution and have another go, with the benefit of 250 more years of experience. Just don’t fall into complacency: this government was voted in, partly because of a toxic and polarised culture that sees compromise and consensus as weaknesses (and gerrymandering, and the electoral college, and disenfranchisement, fair enough), but also partly because a lot of people did not bother showing up. Republicans have had a grassroots strategy for decades, where they seized everything they could get, even very modest positions. That’s how they progressively ended up redrawing maps and steering politics at the state or county level. You need a long term plan and a good strategy to counter this. So don’t give up (I beg you, from the other side of the Atlantic). Even if things are bad now, they can get better tomorrow.

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#153

Post by vladms »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #101
Hikikomori wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been there so much longer, even Carl Sagan talked about it, and its inherently tied to religion.

We just did a 30 year run of “religious people are dumb and holding bus back” and it didn’t start a science boom and just made people more unhappy and disaffected. And 2020 further revealed that science is not immune from politics or its own religious ideals.

Do you imply that last 30 years lacked significant science progress? Even if I ignore the tech ones (simpler to associate with the US), there were quite some impressive progress I heard of in other fields (in which US was significantly involved).

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#154

Post by [deleted] »

jorblumesea wrote: post #51
epistasis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership. Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. See also the way that grants are now being distributed at NCI and NSF. Only very large grants for many m…

The US is trending towards a Russian style oligarchy and these latest moves are just one of a wider pattern of trying to suppress academia, freedom of speech, personal freedoms.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#155

Post by fc417fc802 »

brookst wrote: post #105
JCTheDenthog wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bureaucrats who must follow the rule of law is what you want. Under Chevron we had the opposite of that: bureaucrats who had ridiculously wide latitude to make their own rules. What we actually need is for congress to take back control instead of passing all power and authority to the executive branch.

Are you saying Congress should be domain experts every area they allocate funds to? From maritime safety to preschool nutrition, congress should be expert enough in everything to specify all important details, and then the agencies (staffed by actual domain experts in each area) are mere accountants to execute the policies? I don’t think it’s workable. At best it just swaps lobbyists for civil servants.

More realistically you'd end up with an official advisory body where the exact same experts would write the regulations, they would be intermittently passed by congress between their regular bouts of systemic dysfunction, and the current crop of bureaucrats would be replaced by mindless pencil pushers. Add an official title for members of this government run advisory body such as "sage" and give them lifelong tenure and we've about completed the process.

On paper it's different but in practice congress would largely be rubber stamping things. I predict the differences would be largely negative. More room for non-experts to meddle, more room for lobbyists to insert themselves into the process, and more room for broad capture of the advisory body to go unnoticed.

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#156

Post by jfengel »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #147
epistasis wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary system means that nobody with any principles is left in the Republican Party, unfortunately. But not all is lost. Many are very eager for the reins of power to come back and for laws to be enforced. Sure, the Trump regime may tell itself that it's immune from tax audits ever again, but that's not legal and as soon as the force of law is back there are many eager attorneys with high principles that will be…

I wonder, is there an appetite left to remain a democracy, or more like an appetite for an autocrat who pays a little more attention to the façade and doesn't go out of his way to offend even his most loyal followers?

Right now, there is a lot of support for candidates who do go out of their way to offend even their most loyal followers. They like the offense, even if it occasionally hurts their own feelings, because it hurts other people more.

Politicians have long understood that it's easier to get elected by being fearful of their opponents than with your own merits. We've just taken the next logical step: actively attacking them, in words and with restrictive actions. It hasn't yet proceeded to violence, for the most part, but that's only because people still haven't gotten bored with this level of harassment.

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#157

Post by matthewdgreen »

wyldberry wrote: post #61
matthewdgreen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many graduate students, faculty and post-docs are foreign citizens. So banning them from conducting research could potentially shut down big research projects. It is not surprising to me that the NIH and other funding agencies didn't want to do this. (It is also unsurprising to me that the current administration would have few qualms about disrupting research: we know they don't care, ask the cancer studies that had…

I don't have great sources on hand, this is just coming from a career situated in or adjacent to protecting research and IP from espionage. As the national labs and prime defense contractors got exceptional at defending their networks, this pushed state actors into attempting espionage at the university level. It's a lot easier to get access to underpaid graduate students, fresh post-docs, etc who are doing the heavy…

Again, the output of most University research is published in journals and conferences, with raw data increasingly available as artifacts. Publication does not always give all the data! Some proprietary datasets and tools exist, but the implications here usually affect academic competitiveness, not national security.

There are, of course, exceptions. Some Universities do classified or sensitive research where the result is not broadly published. There are fully classified labs associated with Universities, and some that just have sensitive research. But in general these are special exceptions and should be approached on a case-by-case basis, rather than with some blanket law. The assumption for University research should be: assumed fully transparent, except where there is a specific reason it isn't.

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#158

Post by elzbardico »

Most right-wing politicians behind this kind of thing have no idea how much foreign students are essential for american scientific and technological leadership.

If they are so hell bent on keeping the "Empire at all costs", on keeping America as a hegemon, brain-draining their adversaries is an excellent strategy. Any chinese materials sciences specialist working on hypersonic missiles in America is on one less chinese guy doing the same in China.

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#159

Post by golem14 » 

   One has no rules
   Is not precise
   One rarely acts
   The same way twice
   One spurns no device
   Practicing the art of the possible

   One always picks
   The easy fight
   One praises fools
   One smothers light
   One shifts left to right
   It's part of the art of the possible

   ...

   One always claims
   Mistakes were planned
   When risk is slight
   One takes one's stand
   With much sleight of hand
   Politics—the art of the possible

   - Evita

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#160

Post by elzbardico »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #131
epistasis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership. Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. See also the way that grants are now being distributed at NCI and NSF. Only very large grants for many m…

> Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. This is what is so hard for me to handle, and it really feels like I'm grieving a death. Because no matter what happens, even if some things eventually get better, I feel like the US as I knew it is dead - there is simply no coming back from the fact that it's been laid bare how quickly and easily vast swaths of our political leadership would…

Sometimes you have to die to get back stronger. Ask the chinese.
Post reply on HN