We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

Post by b65e8bee43c2ed0 » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:05 PM UTC

tensor wrote: post #27

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #20

This kind of Level 1 analysis misses what is really going on. "Brain drain" is not really a concern. There is a tremendous glut of talented biomedical researchers. We have been overproducing them for decades. Even before the cuts, it was incredibly hard to go from a PhD to a tenured professorship. 5-15% would achieve that, depending how you measured. The cuts have made things worse, but European/RoW funding is even s…

This kind of analysis isn't much better. First, many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]). Secondly, it's about more than funding. The US is also no longer safe for a great many of the scientists that would normally choose come to the US to work. And even for those that aren't too worried about ICE, scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal. The US has sudden…

Post by raffael_de » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:08 PM UTC

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:08 PM UTC

beloch wrote: post #25

>"Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets, almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired." ---------------- Scientists go where science is funded. A large proportion of U.S. scientists are also immigrants, who will tend to go where immigrants are welcomed.

Post by vkou » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:13 PM UTC

b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #41

tensor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of analysis isn't much better. First, many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]). Secondly, it's about more than funding. The US is also no longer safe for a great many of the scientists that would normally choose come to the US to work. And even for those that aren't too worried about ICE, scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal. The US has sudden…

>scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal two election results in the past ten years have apparently failed to teach y'all wholesome folx that many people around you are secretly unwholesome.

Post by KK7NIL » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:14 PM UTC

rubyn00bie wrote: post #38

KK7NIL wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh yeah, and just wait until you see you have to pay the US taxes on your income too. No, you don't. You still have to file but you get "Federal Tax Credits" for income tax paid abroad and seeing how a EU country's income tax will almost certainly be higher than the US', you'll end up paying nothing. There's also tax treaties to avoid double taxation in other ways.

I’ve seen plenty of videos covering it from expats stating they still do in fact pay taxes back to the US. Maybe the info is outdated or things have changed recently, but a cursory google makes it seems like that “No, you don’t,” isn’t true. It looks like the Federal Tax Credit only covers up to $130,000 per year of income. Then you pay on whatever you make over that (assuming you don’t have other credits).