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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

#351

Post by 77pt77 »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #281
ggm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to believe some will move for lifestyle reasons, but the problem is the post war IPO landscape (post 1980s really) across biotech and ICT has made one stark barrier: USA is a place where you can go from $100k to $100m vesting if you are lucky. That very few do achieve this isn't the point: you cannot do it, in almost any other economy. You have to be socially smart enough to see that a $100k salary and lifesty…

There's a lot of other benefits to the USA attracting high skill talent than just salary: * English language school system so your kids (if you have them) will speak a world language. * Racially and culturally diverse cultures, cuisines, and communities. * Exposure to goods from most of the world, even if marked up. * Availability of international franchises headquartered in other countries in major metros. * A stron…

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#352

Post by meowface »

nmfisher wrote: post #173
lanstin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And really who would choose to stay in 1938 Germany if you could leave. Even if you are some rich upper class Herr Doktor Professor, life for the next 20 years in Germany wasn't that great compared to England or the US. Why risk having your children killed paratrooping into Greenland. The world is still quite beautiful and quite full of kind people.

Interestingly, Werner Heisenberg was decidedly non-Nazi (and was regularly attacked as a “white jew”), and even though he had ample opportunity to leave, he chose to stay to work on the German nuclear fission program. I don’t think it tarnished his scientific legacy, but it definitely created some friction in the post-war years.

It's funny how the politicization of science in Nazi Germany led to things like "Aryan physics" to counter the "Jewish physics" of Einstein's relativity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik

Along with the flight/expulsion/imprisonment/murder of top scientists who weren't ideologically or racially "pure", it's no wonder their nuclear program was such a failure.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#353

Post by miki123211 »

arrosenberg wrote: post #250
jaredklewis wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social security yes, but it seems to me that reducing the cost of Medicare and Medicaid should be very much possible. We need to provide healthcare but it should be possible to make that less expensive

Medicare would become cheaper tomorrow if the government would negotiate drug prices down. Trump isn't going to do that.

What leverage does the US government actually have?

Is "we just won't fund your drug, even though people will die and you're the only option on the market" actually something that could happen? Would that be politically palatable to anybody?

I guess there's patent invalidation and forced genericization, but that would kill innovation real quick.

I think a far better idea would be to impose very strict caps on admin / non-medical costs, potentially at the expense of paying a bit more to fraudsters, changing FDA regulations to minimize (death from side effects + death from no available drugs) instead of just the former, as well as becoming a lot more aggressive about expensive and unnecessary procedures that doctors perform to get rich quick.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#354

Post by 77pt77 »

kortilla wrote: post #283
amelius wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USA is a place where you can go from $100k to $100m vesting if you are lucky. That very few do achieve this isn't the point: you cannot do it, in almost any other economy. That's a kind of lottery-mentality that Europe doesn't want to attract anyway.

That’s not lottery mentality and thinking that it’s equivalent is why Europe isn’t innovating. If someone wins the lottery and gets rich, society isn’t better off. If someone starts a new company that made a cure for some disease and gets rich, society is much better off. You absolutely want to attract people that want to make huge breakthroughs with unlikely odds of success.

> If someone starts a new company that made a cure for some disease and gets rich, society is much better off.

The reality is that you get crap like Facebook, Instagram, Xwitter.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#355

Post by kilroy123 »

dan_can_code wrote: post #3

The cynic in me thinks that the US is going to roll over and take this fascist shake down. The optimist in me thinks that the people will rise up with a resounding NO and do something about it. Right now I'm not sure which I believe.

This is classic anacyclosis in action so none of this is surprising to me. I've talked about this for years, hell even here on HN.

We're at the final stage of the cycle—ochlocracy. (Mob rule)

I don't think Trump will be king, to be blunt he's too old and not skilled enough.

I'm worried about the next guy or the one after that.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#356

Post by sashank_1509 »

I got to hand it to Elon Musk, I was in the “nothing ever happens” camp and he completely, absolutely proved me wrong. The Great men theory of history posits that a lot of History happens due to the action of a few great men. Great has a baggage of positive connotation, I prefer calling it the “Important People of History” theory (to also be gender neutral). It posits that if Hitler didn’t exist, Germany wouldn’t go down the path it did, if Gandhi didn’t exist, India wouldn’t go down the path it did. It is an alternative to the more modern view, that tries to find sociological, economic and environmental reasons for Historic Change. I leaned towards the Great Men View but was not fully convinced by it. Looking at Elon Musk, leads me to believe that this theory is true.

If Elon did not exist/ tie himself to Trump, I don’t think Trump could have done even 10% of the dismantling of the Administrative State that Elon has done. Elon has a certain will to power, flagrantly breaks all norms but advertises it on Twitter for his Twitter supporters, an insane sense of urgency to move fast, an ability to attract talented 20 yr olds to join him for “low pay”, and “100 hr weeks” that gets stuff done. The Trump ecosystem was mostly professional grifter (and crypto scammers), polemicists who only talked the talk, and a small set of true believers who never had a private sector job in their life. If it was just them, I might have been right in the “Nothing Ever Happens” camp. Elon and his ecosystem has given them fangs. They still probably can direct Elon, to a limit, at some things like H1b immigration they will probably concede to Elon but in return they will actually remake the government in their image. Elon is turning out to be one of the “Important People in History”.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#357

Post by khazhoux »

kristjansson wrote: post #308
softwaredoug wrote: post #206

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 det…

Even quoting the NIH/NSF budgets (or their line items) misses the point of the current actions. Yes, they're smaller fractions of the USG budget, but they not immaterial. This is not an attempt to 'save money' at the NSF and NIH (and USAID). A serious, rational effort to reduce their costs / increase their efficiency does not start with grep-ing manuscripts for 'underrepresented'. Part Five of TFA is on the money. Th…

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#358

Post by tomlockwood »

Gabriel54 wrote: post #334
tomlockwood wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any verifiable numbers to back up the impact?

> ...Faculty Diversity Action Plan, a special funding program for diversity-focused faculty hiring, which ran until 2023, when it was restructured and renamed. Created in 2020, the program played a significant role in dictating whom the university hired. In a 2022 faculty meeting, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences was asked how many professors were hired through the program since it began. He estimated tha…

What was the impact?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#359

Post by 77pt77 »

scarab92 wrote: post #197
amelius wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USA is a place where you can go from $100k to $100m vesting if you are lucky. That very few do achieve this isn't the point: you cannot do it, in almost any other economy. That's a kind of lottery-mentality that Europe doesn't want to attract anyway.

> That's a kind of lottery-mentality that Europe doesn't want to attract anyway. Except that it’s the opposite of a lottery. It’s almost entirely based on your skills and the decisions you make. There are right-place right-time effects, but it’s still your decision to be in the right place for the current time. Europe’s economy is badly lagging the US economy, and it’s because culturally they hold these types of inco…

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#360

Post by tills13 »

Gabriel54 wrote: post #331
chasing wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unethical race-based preferences is what those policies have been trying to fix. Not sure you’re aware of this, but academia used to be basically off-limits to anyone not white and male.

> Unethical race-based preferences is what those policies have been trying to fix. I understand that that is the stated intention. I also believe they are racist and discriminatory. > Not sure you’re aware of this, but academia used to be basically off-limits to anyone not white and male. I also understand this. And now it is not. What is the point here?

My guy you aren't getting it. You were lied to. You bought it. You are just plain wrong and openly propagating a lie as fact and you seem to be doubling down.
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