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What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#201

Post by anonylizard »

flocciput wrote: post #108
alaxhn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don't think being forced to include a statement on diversity in every single grant request reviewed by the NIH was "injecting dumb politics" but you do think that being forced to NOT include a statement on diversity in every single grant request is?

> forced to NOT include == "not being allowed to include" i.e. a restriction on free speech with more worrying implications than "injecting dumb politics"

Compelled speech is far, far, far worse than constricting speech by every conceivable dimension.

Even in day to day interaction, forcing someone to be silent, is far more of a gentler 'social action' than forcing someone to speak.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#202

Post by bamboozled »

bloopernova wrote: post #78
joe_the_user wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I find strange is that the other wealthy and powerful stand for the destruction of things that gave the US a huge competitive advantage. The average person isn't hit immediately by the destruction of science. But a far-sighted person with some power should by self-interest not want this. And this, I think, points to the corruption of the entire political class in America with just being upshot.

The wealthy will just take their money and leave the country. And for all you HN readers supporting these massive changes: you'd test changes beforehand and plan their deployment carefully if this were software. So why why do you support explicitly not doing those things when the livelihood of 300 million people depend on the economy being stable?!? And before the inevitable derail or whatabout attempt: Don't play po…

Where do you suppose they will go? Russia?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#205

Post by bilbo0s »

willvarfar wrote: post #49
bawolff wrote: post #4

Seems like a good opportunity for other countries to recruit scientists. I think its underappreciated how much of America's modern success comes down to attracting scientists and intellectuals from war torn europe in the 30s-50s.

China, for example, could set up a very European-style English-speaking institute in Hong Kong or Macau with high salaries to attract scientists. Singapore and South Korea too. One day Americans might well follow the money and the research freedom?

China's drowning in their own PhD's. The competition is fierce, and the pressure is enormous. The best and brightest over there are insanely capable men and women.

In all honesty, it's hard to see China wanting many of the PhD's that would be available from the US in a worst case scenario NSF/NIH funding collapse. There may be a place for the top 0.1%? But for 99.9% of PhD's, there are Chinese replacements that are, frankly, better and cheaper.

Hate to bring it back to money like that, but there it is.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#206

Post by softwaredoug »

The big thing is this isn't really about any real monetary savings. What we get out of these budgets is a bargain:

> The biggest single share of the NIH budget goes to the NCI ($7.8 billion in 2024), and the second-most to the NIAID ($6.5 billion) with the National Institute of Aging coming in third at $4.4 billion. (See the tables on numbered pages 11 and 46 of that link at the beginning of the paragraph for the details).

> And to put those into perspective, the largest single oulay for the Federal government is Social Security benefits ($1.4 trillion by themselves), with interest on the national debt coming in second at $949 billion, Medicare comes in third at $870 billion, and the Department of Defense fourth at $826 billion and Medicaid next at $618 billion.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#207

Post by wileydragonfly »

magicink81 wrote: post #192
throwfgtpwd234 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrecked how? Fixed how? Can you describe either or are you just saying words?

US scientific research funding is largely driven by nepotism and favoritism. Insiders know but don't talk too much about it. They have a few options: a) just quietly stay in the system trying their best to do good work b) join the gravy train through social climbing c) quietly leave and move on with their careers.

lol no

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#209

Post by anonylizard »

Trasmatta wrote: post #147
throwawaymaths wrote: post #66

just two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910829 the problems that led to these frauds are structural --no amount of patching the system will fix this. maybe we should consider the possibility that we are due for a refactor, which is often painful, but especially painful for people (or code) with an entrenched incentive to continue existing. i dont mean to defend what the administration is doing but I…

> no amount of patching the system will fix this. > maybe we should consider the possibility that we are due for a refactor People in tech need to stop with those analogies. A government is not a codebase. You can not apply the principles of "refactoring" and "patching" in the same way. It just doesn't work like that. But the problem is we have a bunch of people (some malicious, some clueless) trying to do exactly th…

Government is exactly a codebase. Government bureaucracies is essentially constricting human judgement to more robotic code-like behavior, that's the only way to build large systems.

You say government is not like code, then what exactly is it? Can you describe it in an effective way? Or are you just going to raise your hand up and say there's nothing we can do about it, nothing we can do about the $2 trillion/year titanic deficit?

Historical governments often needed little beyond an army and a tax collection system. And tax collection system was primarily data gathering and analysis, since if you knew how much property someone owned, you can easily tax them for an appropiate amount.

The tech way of thinking has proven extremely successful in many industries already. That's why tech companies (and tech adjacent ones, like say quant trading, or even index fund trading) have been so economically dominant, and utterly kicked out the traditional MBAs from their pedestals.

Stop being a self hating programmer who despises the mentality of tech.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#210

Post by lumost »

scarab92 wrote: post #170
sseagull wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a scientist currently on an NSF grant. I am certainly poking around other countries to see what’s out there, and I’m not the only one. A lot of scientists (at least in my field, computational chemistry) have decent skills that are transferrable to other areas. So I expect quite a few to move on.

There’s not that many jobs going in academia in other countries, and you’ll be looking at a significant pay cut due to the strong US dollar. Most likely, people who leave academia will be leaving for industry instead. I do feel for those in the hard sciences, they have become collateral damage in what is mostly a battle between politicians and humanities departments.

I've been suspicious that the quality of life cut is distinct from the pay cut.

Living in a dense European city, you do not need a car, healthcare is free, and you are generally afforded more time off and a stricter wlb compromise compared to the US. One doesn't need to eat takeout as often if there is time to cook. Depending on the country, rent/housing costs are more or less under control.

On the other hand swiss/Netherlands food is expensive even by bay area standards.

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