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We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

theguardian.com

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Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#21

Post by tehjoker »

I understand that the government is now too coarse to use soft power, and maybe it wasn't even working as well as it used to, but it is bizarre to undercut the sciences when their military capability is derived almost entirely from high technology since they can't field or lose lots of soldiers. I get they want to be Rome 3.0 or some bullshit, but Rome was famous for investing in engineering.

A bunch of dunces.

Or perhaps they are so far up their own assholes that they think AI is going to do research by itself with no funding from now on.

Ironically enough, the guy that coined the term "soft power" recently died. He did his doctorate with Henry Kissinger.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#22

Post by ProjectArcturis »

KevinMS wrote: post #7

> In the normal trajectory of a life in science, Morgan would be planning to set up his own laboratory conducting groundbreaking research designed to win the war on superbugs. But with an ongoing hiring freeze at NIH, his options are limited. That seems a bit too optimistic to be a valid argument.

Well, he might be planning to set up a lab. Probably wouldn't, though, statistically.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#23

Post by yacthing »

nathan_compton wrote: post #12
deepsun wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I feel like if you care about taxes on capital gains you are rich enough not to care about taxes on capital gains.

If you want to comfortably retire, then one of the following is probably true:

1. you have a solid pension

2. you should care about capital gains taxes

3. you're REALLY rich and don't care.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#25

Post by beloch »

>"Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets, almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired."

----------------

Scientists go where science is funded. A large proportion of U.S. scientists are also immigrants, who will tend to go where immigrants are welcomed.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#27

Post by tensor »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #20

This kind of Level 1 analysis misses what is really going on. "Brain drain" is not really a concern. There is a tremendous glut of talented biomedical researchers. We have been overproducing them for decades. Even before the cuts, it was incredibly hard to go from a PhD to a tenured professorship. 5-15% would achieve that, depending how you measured. The cuts have made things worse, but European/RoW funding is even s…

This kind of analysis isn't much better. First, many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]).

Secondly, it's about more than funding. The US is also no longer safe for a great many of the scientists that would normally choose come to the US to work. And even for those that aren't too worried about ICE, scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal. The US has suddenly become a very undesirable place to live if you value these things.

Third, scientific freedom is under attack in the US. And there is nothing scientists value more than the freedom to pursue their research.

My take is that most Americans can't imagine a world where they are not number one. But that is a very naive idea.

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-develop...

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#28

Post by KK7NIL »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #17
deepsun wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Oh yeah, and just wait until you see you have to pay the US taxes on your income too. Tax system for US citizens living abroad is insanely bad.

> Oh yeah, and just wait until you see you have to pay the US taxes on your income too.

No, you don't. You still have to file but you get "Federal Tax Credits" for income tax paid abroad and seeing how a EU country's income tax will almost certainly be higher than the US', you'll end up paying nothing. There's also tax treaties to avoid double taxation in other ways.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#29

Post by mtsr »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #20

This kind of Level 1 analysis misses what is really going on. "Brain drain" is not really a concern. There is a tremendous glut of talented biomedical researchers. We have been overproducing them for decades. Even before the cuts, it was incredibly hard to go from a PhD to a tenured professorship. 5-15% would achieve that, depending how you measured. The cuts have made things worse, but European/RoW funding is even s…

You are forgetting that tenured researchers often need lots of PhD students to actually do their research. So that ratio of 8 PhDs to a tenured researchers could actually be pretty good.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#30

Post by lukev »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #20

This kind of Level 1 analysis misses what is really going on. "Brain drain" is not really a concern. There is a tremendous glut of talented biomedical researchers. We have been overproducing them for decades. Even before the cuts, it was incredibly hard to go from a PhD to a tenured professorship. 5-15% would achieve that, depending how you measured. The cuts have made things worse, but European/RoW funding is even s…

Set aside the question of how we might implement this (which I grant is complex and path-dependent)... but imagine if 5% of the wealth of every US billionaire were instead allocated to research and development.

Ultimately I don't think even the billionaires would be unhappy.

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