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U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#471

Post by wins32767 »

khalic wrote: post #457
wins32767 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not implying I'm stating that if you depending on the tax base of the entire country to pay your bills you need to ensure that you cultivate the support of both parties.

This is a fictitious scenario invented to make the conservatives the victims… when they are the ones in power, killing the science. No amount of mental gymnastics trumps that fact

How about a reframe: When they are the ones in power, cutting funding to organizations that support their political opponents and goals they don't support.

I'll be the first to say this is a bad thing AND that they're going about it stupidly. But I'm also saying that this is an inevitable consequence of the failure to manage your stakeholders over a period of decades.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#472

Post by mullingitover »

WarmWash wrote: post #433
MisterTea wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conservatives have been basically purged from academia over the last 30 years, Any citations on this?

Sure https://www.aei.org/articles/partisan-professors/ I'd be shocked to find anyone surprised by this.

[dead]

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#473

Post by mothballed »

wholinator2 wrote: post #455
doctorpangloss wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's so much that talented people are being locked out, as much as it is that communities everywhere, not just industry, are requiring a level of people skills that academic people lack but nonetheless thrive without.

Academics do have a reputation that way, but only the 100% safe, tenured ones. The majority of academics are required to have a strong level of communication just to get their grants accepted. Imagine if, on top of working your normal job at maximum efficiency, you then had to make a presentation to the government every year about why you and everyone that depends upon you deserves to eat, while the government you ma…

[dead]

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#474

Post by amanaplanacanal »

wins32767 wrote: post #465
LadyCailin wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not convinced academia purged itself, at least not in any way that they should be ashamed of. Reality has a liberal bias, and my extremely conservative uncle at one point mentioned how he didn’t want his kids to go to college, because college turns kids atheist. Actually, learning things opens your mind, and so the standard conservative positions come off looking pretty stupid after critical examination, so conse…

Do you have any idea how smug this sounds to about half the people that need to pay for the scientific funding? I'm not a Republican, but even I'm turned off by this sort of attitude.

Wouldn't want to research anything that might make someone question their beliefs. What you are saying doesn't sound like any kind of science I'm familiar with.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#475

Post by throwawaypath »

Fascist are defunding critical studies that would rocket the US ahead in science. Studies such as:

Culture Change for Inclusion of Indigenous Voices in Biology

Strengthening Inclusion by Change in Building Equity, Diversity and Understanding (SICBEDU) in Integrative Biology

An Equitable, Justice-Focused Ecosystem for Pacific Northwest Secondary CS [Computer Science] Teaching

https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/NSF-Terminated-Award...

China won't stand a chance against us with studies like these!

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#476

Post by awesome_dude »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #424
epistasis wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surviving on consulting income for a wide variety of clients right now in this space, and let me tell you it's brutal and extremely difficult to get entry to this space for people that don't have a wide network and lots of industry experience. Academic experience typically doesn't count. In addition there's a severe "passion tax" for these sorts of jobs, the salary difference for a "Data Scientist, Computational…

I don't know if it's so much that talented people are being locked out, as much as it is that communities everywhere, not just industry, are requiring a level of people skills that academic people lack but nonetheless thrive without.

Academic's, FTR, have to have a huge amount of people skills. Their job isn't just to discover, it's to share.

You cannot share (effectively) if you cannot communicate in a way that others can understand.

Further the entire ecosystem that academics rely on to get what they need to do for their research (grants, and other funding, resources, and so on) necessitate them to convince people who control those, who do not necessarily understand the purpose of the work

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#477

Post by lovich »

WarmWash wrote: post #400
lopsotronic wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The retrogression perception is correct; but the specific timeframe is so incorrect that the back of my head blew out like a pinata. The goal is - and I am not picking on the reactionary wing alone, this impulse has broad support across our ideologies - de-industrialization . The complexity of post-Enlightenment civilization is being rejected, in favor of some hypothetical state. This puts the past timeframe as far b…

Trump is a populist doing populist things, including attacking the intellectuals. Conservatives have been basically purged from academia over the last 30 years, which frankly was a pretty dumb "victory" to celebrate, because now they voted in a dumb gorilla that is just smashing things as revenge.

Conservative views are very anti science, look at their consensus on climate change. Of course the universities were going to be mostly liberal.

Like at their core conservatives are against change, that’s the “conserve” part of their name and science is a process that constantly updates our understanding of reality.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#478

Post by throw-the-towel »

wins32767 wrote: post #449
wins32767 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's foolish. There is certainly an amount of money on funding research that is unreasonable! Determining where that line should rest is an inherently political question. Determining who should get funding for that is also a political question. The latter question was able to be papered over for many years because the scientific community generally contained roughly equal members of both parties. Since that isn't t…

Like this from the article: > When Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD), first got to the NIH 12 years ago, she wanted to increase research into the social determinants of health—structural racism in home-loan practices meant that nonwhite people got iced out of home ownership and generational wealth, which forced them to live in neighborhoo…

> If you're a Republican, why should you want to fund people who dump on your view of the world with your taxes?

A society where funding depends on a person's political position doesn't sound free.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#479

Post by [deleted] »

matwood wrote: post #453
evilos wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The institutions and trust that generations of Americans carefully built has been gleefully torched by cruel incompetents in the space of a handful years. The damage, physical and social, is incalculable. The unpunished crimes, endless. The reconstruction, if it happens at all, will take decades. It was all so unnecessary, so foolish.

The soft power the US has lost will take a generation or more to rebuild if it's ever rebuilt.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#480

Post by throw4847285 »

realityfactchex wrote: post #415
dwa3592 wrote: post #307

My wife operates an optical trap (a sophisticated microscope, she uses it for studying gene/dna physical properties) and she's pretty good at working with that instrument. The number of people good at working that microscope are in the ballpark of 2000 (+- 1000) in the world! She has cried a lot in the last one year for the mess science research has become. We are moving out of the country at the end of August.

> She has cried a lot in the last one year for the mess science research has become. At least it's a good thing that we're able to a) observe and b) talk about and c) acknowledge openly(ish) that academic, mainstream, practicing "science" (including as visible to microscopists and all that entails) is currently a "mess". This allows us to, eventually, address those issues (or die trying!). Science used to move at a p…

There are less than zero theres there. This comment is negative there. It's not even here. It's nowhere.
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