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U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#371

Post by bcrosby95 »

xp84 wrote: post #342
drnick1 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just want to vent: climate change is not a controversial topic, it's an inconvenient topic for people making a lot of money. If you’d like to do your part against climate change, you can start by walking everywhere today, avoiding heating and cooling your home, and never flying a plane again. These are changes I’m not willing to make, so the issue isn’t just inconvenient for the wealthy—it’s inconvenient for ever…

Indeed. File under "bitter pills to swallow." It's so easy to sit in an air-conditioned house, with our 2-day delivered Amazon stuff, and just make pronouncements like degrowth, etc. Meanwhile about 99% of the humans who live in places that haven't fully industrialized are either working feverishly to industrialize like us, or are trying to find a way to move to an industrialized country because of how incredibly har…

> if we started making every societal decision to truly optimize for climate concerns to the exclusion of all other priorities.

Effectively no one is arguing for this. You're ranting about a ghost.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#373

Post by ambicapter »

drnick1 wrote: post #320
Schlagbohrer wrote: post #33

My friends from grad school who went on to become professors tell me that not only did their grant funding dry up, but they were unable to follow through on hiring many of the grad students they had planned to hire, since the students came from foreign countries and faced new visa restrictions. So the money for science is gone, the people to do to the science are gone, and the institutions continue to not support the…

> they were unable to follow through on hiring many of the grad students they had planned to hire Most of the "research" done by graduate students and even tenured faculty as a whole is laughable at best. For every lab that produces groundbreaking output, there are countless humanities graduate programs that do nothing but produce and spread left-wing propaganda.

"R&D is a cost center" what an insightful take.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#375

Post by Ancapistani »

t0mpr1c3 wrote: post #267
adornKey wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The IPCC has been in defensive mode for a few years now. They made claims that absolutely made no sense and haven't answered to obvious criticism for years now. Only now they are very slow in backpedalling. Why should anyone still trust them? You can read IPCC reports all day long - if they still contain obvious flaws - it's not going to impress... If you check related websites you find a lot of propaganda - and ve…

While I wouldn't argue that academia is "crazy, stupid, closed-minded, and ignorant", I would absolutely argue that they are ideologically homogenous. The whole community is rife with political signaling and affinity groups.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#376

Post by jyounker »

MemoryHoleHQ wrote: post #111
ModernMech wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The grants should go the best proposals, not to those with the proper genitalia, melanin content of the skin, and correct religion of those applying. I'm confused. At least at the NSF, about 60-70% of their awards go to white men. Are those the appalling discriminatory practices, or what do you mean?

[flagged]

> Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) enough, blind tests did exacerbate > this issue, so, far left ideologues started calling to an end to > blind auditions since they ended up making orchestras "less diverse" > instead of more

You should really shouldn't subtly misrepresent the argument. The article states that blind auditions made orchestras much more diverse in some categories, but did not make much of an impact in others.

As far as I can tell nobody except Anthony Tommasini is calling for blind auditions to go away. His position position is just weird and using it to represent the opinions of most of the left is more than a bit disingenuous.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#377

Post by [deleted] »

drnick1 wrote: post #320
Schlagbohrer wrote: post #33

My friends from grad school who went on to become professors tell me that not only did their grant funding dry up, but they were unable to follow through on hiring many of the grad students they had planned to hire, since the students came from foreign countries and faced new visa restrictions. So the money for science is gone, the people to do to the science are gone, and the institutions continue to not support the…

> they were unable to follow through on hiring many of the grad students they had planned to hire Most of the "research" done by graduate students and even tenured faculty as a whole is laughable at best. For every lab that produces groundbreaking output, there are countless humanities graduate programs that do nothing but produce and spread left-wing propaganda.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#378

Post by saintvlad »

Windchaser wrote: post #266
roysting wrote: post #169

The fact that people think the current state of chaos is a consequence of recent developments clearly tells us more about why it is in chaos than those types of people have the capacity to hear or understand. It also tells us that it’s very unlikely going to be resolved on this side of some catalytic event. If reason prevailed, we would not be in this state of chaos. People who think this is a consequence of merely t…

Yeah, while it's particularly bad lately, I'm remembering Richard Hofstadter's book, "Anti-intellectualism in American Life", which one the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction for tracing the religious, cultural, and economic roots of american anti-intellectualism. These problems are not new.

[flagged]

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#379

Post by wredcoll »

t0mpr1c3 wrote: post #272
mech998877 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The replication crisis in science is particularly bad within the social sciences, and also particularly bad within sociology. When experts within a field are unable to converge on a result, it's pretty decent evidence that the field has a major problem. And for sociology, the problem isn't that the math is too hard, it's that the practice of sociology is pretty much a political exercise masquerading as science.

> The replication crisis in science is particularly bad within the social sciences This is true. Your conclusion is false and prejudicial. The problem is better characterized as social science is being harder to do well than we tohught.

Well put. It's easy to attack people attempting to work on hard problems for not achieving perfect results. Which they don't. Because IT'S HARD.

Weirdly, these critics never have useful suggestions to improve anything, it's all just personal attacks at one remove.

I mean, frankly, we wouldn't need a lot of these studies if people in power were slightly more willing to just believe (usually minority) people who talk about the problems they have.

Black soldiers were denied home loans after ww2; white soldiers were not; many white families therefor benefitted from owning a home (appreciation of value and safety/stability) in ways that black families did not.

Do we need a study on that? I mean, it doesn't hurt anything, but we could also just read some reports and talk to some people and then realize "hey this is messed up"

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#380

Post by ambicapter »

garte wrote: post #245
mothballed wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So scientists are getting a reality check. Even scientists have customers, in their case the government. In the private sector a customer can change their mind, even often for a retarded reason, and suddenly decide to stop employing your services. Turns out that happens in government to. We're all employed at the convenience and service of our customers, if they change their mind, ultimately that's their decision tha…

It is often hard to put an economic value on research in general. That makes the whole "labor market" highly different from the rest of the world.

GP is saying everyone should bend the knee to the power of the dollar, not that they care about a nuanced understanding of the world.
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