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NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

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Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#31

Post by fnordpiglet »

kingleopold wrote: post #29
oh_my_goodness wrote: post #4

Please understand that the goal of these policies is to weaken scientific research in the US. The people who push this stuff acknowledge openly that they oppose science, experts, and accurate information. This isn't a misunderstanding or a fumble.

Please understand that so many high IQ tech and science people support this, they voted and decided.

Many is a misnomer for “some.” The current administration won by a plurality, 49%, not even a majority. This was 32% of possible voters. Of people with a PhD, approximately 30% voted for Trump. Of Trump voters 1% had a PhD.

This is still many people, but only in that “many” is more than a “few.” It’s not the case that most people voted for Trump, or even most voters. Or even most phds who voted. 70% of phds who voted didn’t vote for Trump.

This is why they are facing political retribution. He is creating suffering for revenge, the national interest be damned. Trump is more interested in the credulous, easily manipulated, low knowledge and easily conned masses. Many high IQ tech and science people are them, but not most. There are probably a few that aren’t easily manipulated and are instead just self serving sociopaths buying influence and contracts - but compared to the scale of the nation, this is indeed a few.

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#32

Post by etc-hosts »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #30
kingleopold wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please understand that so many high IQ tech and science people support this, they voted and decided.

Why did many high IQ tech and science people vote for their own defunding? I’m not asking out of anger I genuinely don’t get it. Culture war issues like, idk, people becoming more brown by default in America, or a trans teenager participating in a game, they’re… they don’t seem as important as ensuring well funded science??

current administration is guided by the looniest of the loons Claremont Institute, who truly believe that any dollar not spent on border defense or offensive military capability is wasted.

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#33

Post by sixothree »

epistasis wrote: post #2

It's hard to overstate how chaotic and mismanaged NIH has been in the past two years. Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice, so it's hard to impute motives here. A lot of labs are being defunded for no good reason, losing researchers, losing the thread, and putting entire directions of useful research on ice, likely forever. There are some clear indications of where it is pure malice and…

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is malice.

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#34

Post by nemomarx »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #30
kingleopold wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please understand that so many high IQ tech and science people support this, they voted and decided.

Why did many high IQ tech and science people vote for their own defunding? I’m not asking out of anger I genuinely don’t get it. Culture war issues like, idk, people becoming more brown by default in America, or a trans teenager participating in a game, they’re… they don’t seem as important as ensuring well funded science??

Lots of voters didn't believe Trump would do the things he campaigned on. "I'll defund research" can be interpreted as "probably that other research, the stuff I don't like or think is useless" by some.

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#35

Post by sixothree »

somethinsfishy wrote: post #25

Derek Lowe sees darker motives in the program of cuts to Federal research grants in NIH and NFS. I don't know how to fix some of the problems with how and to whom grants are awarded, but throwing the baby out with the bathwater, deliberately, looks like the very bad kind of malice. (I think this article may have been referenced on HN.) https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/assault-science-fu...

If I had been told a foreign adversary had broadly infiltrated our government at the highest levels, I would have a hard time differentiating between that and what is currently happening.

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#36

Post by gpm »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #31
kingleopold wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please understand that so many high IQ tech and science people support this, they voted and decided.

Many is a misnomer for “some.” The current administration won by a plurality, 49%, not even a majority. This was 32% of possible voters. Of people with a PhD, approximately 30% voted for Trump. Of Trump voters 1% had a PhD. This is still many people, but only in that “many” is more than a “few.” It’s not the case that most people voted for Trump, or even most voters. Or even most phds who voted. 70% of phds who voted…

30% doesn't seem anywhere near as low as it should be though... I'd say that qualifies as "so many".

That said I question both your and grandparents choice to look at only people who chose to vote. 68% of people who could have voted against this did not - either actively supporting it with a vote or deciding that they didn't give a fuck if it happened by not voting. Every potential voter either knew or ought to have known the result of this election result...

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#37

Post by userbinator »

jltsiren wrote: post #11
jjtheblunt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At 60, Eddy had planned to continue working through the next decade with his team. "For someone of my career stage, this is probably not recoverable," he says. Why doesn't he continue his research inside big pharma?

Big pharma is not like Bell Labs of old. Their researchers are expected to do work their bosses consider productive. They have no need for people who want to do curiosity-driven research and release the results to the public.

Big pharma is not like Bell Labs of old.

Then maybe this is a sign that things should change back towards that direction.

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#38

Post by spankibalt »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #26
Escapado wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a US citizen. From the outside it looks like the US administration simply does not care about advancing science and technology or care for their citizens or their future very much. It looks like it cares about furthering wealth and influence of the head of the in-group by means of fear mongering, scape goating and dismantling structures that threaten this agenda. And if there is a penny to save and a misinformati…

As others have said, this is about deliberate reality-destruction. Scientists are notorious for believing in things like observable reality, truth, scientific and academic integrity, etc. That puts them in opposition to the people currently running the US government — who absolutely do not want "experts" pointing-out the deficiencies in their policies and scams. Ron Suskind's quote of a Bush2-era politician sums it u…

Essentially Brandolini's Law with a serving of dumbed-down-for-managers OODA-loop in action; all together essential ingredients for any cook specializing in post-truth dishes. Shake it well with learned helplessness and plenty of distraction-providing scapegoats, e. g. minorities, and your got a splendid poison stew people will line up for. Before they are lined up, in one fashion or another.

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#39

Post by spankibalt »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #30
kingleopold wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please understand that so many high IQ tech and science people support this, they voted and decided.

Why did many high IQ tech and science people vote for their own defunding? I’m not asking out of anger I genuinely don’t get it. Culture war issues like, idk, people becoming more brown by default in America, or a trans teenager participating in a game, they’re… they don’t seem as important as ensuring well funded science??

> Why did many high IQ tech and science people vote for their own defunding?

The list is long. First and foremost, it's never a good idea to forget that wherever there's intelligence there's always also stupidity. Then it's generally good advice not to confuse intelligence for wisdom. And between this and very long lists of cognitive biases, there's always the good old "Fuck ya, got mine!" Rule of Acquisition to remember. Et cetera.

Re: NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

#40

Post by numpad0 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #20
oh_my_goodness wrote: post #4

Please understand that the goal of these policies is to weaken scientific research in the US. The people who push this stuff acknowledge openly that they oppose science, experts, and accurate information. This isn't a misunderstanding or a fumble.

Can anyone explain the reasoning behind it? I can understand (not saying I approve) targeted opposition to specific scientific claims to favor commercial interests (climate change denial to favor oil & gas, etc), but wouldn't a general anti-science movement make the country less competitive in the long run and directly hurt industries like pharma/etc?

I know this isn't HN type of a topic or a comment, but looking at US from outside, the theme looks to be explicitly destroying US hegemony and meritocracy...

What I feel to be a common denominator for Trump, Thiel/Musk, and MAGA types, is that they are the people who "otherwise wouldn't have been chosen" for one reason or another. I've had stupidly engaged in a pointless argument with MAGA type people on some anonymous forum, and what I slowly realized is that a lot of them fail to hide having an okay picture of the actual reality when absolutely cornered and pushed hard, with the caveat that the chances for them getting any win whatsoever by embracing some alternative, conspiracy, false narratives is above zero, whereas the same for not doing so is at very most zero. There have been news reports of Bill Gates and Elon Musk both having engaged in quite some reprehensible acts on some island, but Gates would still always come first on headlines whenever they would be in a photo together. This would be contrast to how media universally reports Musk throwing the Nazi salute(which is the worst I've seen in any media that unironically makes me wonder how a real neo nazi would pause, exhale, say "you know," and shut up in German on camera reviewing it), which do yield a bunch of single name headlines. They would not have a chance of getting dopamine hit standing straight on both feet and looking straight ahead uttering all the correct words. Destroying everything that gets in the way to end this their "suffering" seem like the goal to me.

I mean, there's a very succinct and less nice word for that group of people that begins with the letter in the middle of the logo under the crown for the Dutch royal airline, but that word doesn't feel like it captures the verticality of this phenomenon.

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