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U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

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Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#321

Post by UncleMeat »

guywithahat wrote: post #216
titzer wrote: post #163

It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them. NSF budget was cut 55% in the first year. The administration is doing everything possible to make it clear that no foreigners are welcome here. America is stabbing itself directly in the brain.

> It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them If it’s harder to fund them then it should be easier to recruit them. I don’t think both can be true at the same time, unless you’re saying it’s harder to fund foreign PhD’s with US tax dollars in which case I think you’ll find limited sympathy for your cause.

The NSF buys research. PhD funding is not a gift, it is payment for a job. Buying research from citizens or noncitizens is not meaningfully different.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#322

Post by [deleted] »

sheikhnbake wrote: post #302
Insanity wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. I keep mentioning that to people when they bring up a quite anti-China narrative (or paranoia). Most people in the western hemisphere are way more likely to be negatively impacted by the US than China. Europeans, Canadians etc are less likely to travel to China so of course Chinese media spying would be less immediately detrimental than the spying of US companies. But even when traveling to China, it's les…

We in the US have been so propagandized against China that even relatively progressive people that are completely against the Trump admin think China is an authoritarian hellscape. And while China is obviously not a utopia, I'd be hard pressed to find a metric there that hasn't surpassed our own.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#323

Post by AnotherGoodName »

mandevil wrote: post #234
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australians will complain a lot but honestly the future is very bright. Higher exports than imports, government debt isn’t completely out of line and it’s not going exponential like some regions, it has European like public services, a median wealth 2.5x that of the USA, good employment figures. It’s not perfect but i still think it’s pretty good.

But how much of the Australian economy is extraction for the Chinese economy? My brief understanding of the Aussie economy is that a large part of it is iron, hydrocarbons, copper, etc. going abroad, largely going to feed the Chinese economic machine. So economic performance is heavily tied into Chinese performance. And the median wealth number is another way of saying "house prices are insane" right?

For the median wealth somewhat house price driven although there’s also the reality that median and mean wealth in Australia is remarkably close together. You can’t have median wealth driven by home equity if no one has a house yet in australia the median and say top 25% have remarkably similar houses.

So yes they are high but it’s not like the disparity in the USA where the median is well below Australia (lot’s of people in the USA lost wealth in 2008 and never recovered) while the mean is well above (driven by the few that are extremely wealthy living a lifestyle unattainable to the commoners).

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#324

Post by quietsegfault »

moduspol wrote: post #143
quietsegfault wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re confusing two different questions. ‘Should we have more STEM PhDs in government?’ is a reasonable policy debate. ‘Is losing 10,000 STEM PhDs in weeks a problem?’ has a clearer answer… yes, because institutional knowledge doesn’t rebuild quickly. Also, there’s no evidence this was performance-based attrition. Lastly, recruitment becomes harder after mass departures signal instability. The burden isn’t on critic…

I disagree--we're all paying for it, so it should be justified regardless. And I don't need an optimal number. But the common refrain is essentially that more is always better, and fewer means we're losing our standing in the world. Always. Maybe keeping a lot of them but shedding some percentage is actually more optimal. But I'm open to being wrong. That's why I'm asking for metrics.

If this was intentional workforce reduction, then the agencies affected should show improved efficiency or output with fewer people. We should see faster regulatory reviews, better grant decisions, stronger technical evaluations, just with leaner teams.

Instead, what we’re likely to see is degraded capacity, slower timelines, and reduced technical oversight. If that happens, will you acknowledge this was a mistake? Or will any negative outcome just get blamed on the remaining employees?

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#325

Post by tsoukase »

Scientists of >=PhD level sacrifice their lifetime to a low-profit goal. They could very well be occupied in the industry and earn millions (granted not all of them) with their talent. Instead they demand and enjoy social respect and at the moment Europe respects them more than the USA.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#326

Post by briantakita »

drdaeman wrote: post #280
Intralexical wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So congratulations to the Trump team: your stupidity and your hate for intellectualism is directly fueling new technologies to the country you consider 'your enemy'. Do we have any evidence that they actually consider China (or Russia) to be "the enemy"? They are fellow authoritarians, with a shared goal of normalizing domestic political suppression.

It’s both. Every authoritarian country thrives on “we’re surrounded by enemies, enemies everywhere” trope. But, of course, all those glorious leaders happily shake hands and dine with each other, patting their backs and sharing ideas on how to keep peasants in check and themselves in power.

Kayfaybe...Donald Trump worked with WWE for a reason...

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#327

Post by briantakita »

munificent wrote: post #292
john_moscow wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: there has been a steady decline of standards in the research community in the past decade or two. First reproducibility crisis. Then, some topics becoming political taboo where the unorthodox opinion would get you fired and canceled. The credibility of the science in the West has been falling, and the recent change of administration is predictably axing something that has a perceived strong bias in…

> back to unbiased science Science has always struggled with biases. There was no perfect time in the past that you are imagining where that wasn't an issue. If it seems worse today, it's largely because the systemic biases that were already there are becoming more visible, which is a sign of progress.

When Science replaced Religion...Science took the place of Religion...

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#328

Post by jwhitlark »

Hikikomori wrote: post #208
CharlieDigital wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an interesting Freakonomics podcast a few months back that pointed out an interesting divide in how the US and China thinks about its leaders[0]. > China is a country that is run by engineers, while the U.S. is a country run by lawyers. Engineers, he explains, are driven to build while lawyers are driven to argue, and obstruct. Even Trump: > And even though Donald Trump is not a lawyer by any means, I think…

Not just lawyerly society, special kind of asshole lawyer, as he was a protégé of Roy Cohn.

Supposedly Roy Cohn was startled by how easily he was discarded when he wasn’t useful anymore. Makes me wonder who will be the next in line with the knife.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#329

Post by karmakurtisaani »

RealityVoid wrote: post #317
Herring wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want you to go to your favorite frontier LLM and ask how much it would cost the US to implement Vienna-style public housing. Figure in paying off current homeowners to get their support. Restrict it to major cities where housing is the worst, just to make it easier. I bet you it's well over $10T long-term. Iraq was $2-3T long term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War

You know what? I'll bite. I just went to Gemini and asked this and the answer was between 2.5 and 5 trillion. So less than 2 Iraq wars. Deff a tractable problem if so.

A word of warning: the US government will read this and figure out the solution is another Iraq war.

Re: U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

#330

Post by johanyc »

retired wrote: post #123
ixtli wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear you got priced out :( Unfortunately i am also quite pessimistic about the future of europe and the us, too.

The Netherlands is taking action against the brain drain by rapidly importing highly skilled migrants through various tax lowering schemes in the first five years of living here. However plenty of those people leave after that period. Especially with the upcoming 36% unrealized capital gains tax on all your savings and investments. Feels a bit like ISPs giving discounts to new customers only.

> brain drain

Where are they draining to?

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