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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

#481

Post by mnky9800n »

scarab92 wrote: post #170
sseagull wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a scientist currently on an NSF grant. I am certainly poking around other countries to see what’s out there, and I’m not the only one. A lot of scientists (at least in my field, computational chemistry) have decent skills that are transferrable to other areas. So I expect quite a few to move on.

There’s not that many jobs going in academia in other countries, and you’ll be looking at a significant pay cut due to the strong US dollar. Most likely, people who leave academia will be leaving for industry instead. I do feel for those in the hard sciences, they have become collateral damage in what is mostly a battle between politicians and humanities departments.

I dunno man my salary is six figures and I’m an academic scientist living in the Netherlands. My life is much higher quality than the equivalent could buy me in anywhere worth living in the USA. Like I agree the salaries can be low but you simply don’t need to make 300k usd to have a nice life here. I have a flat in the middle of the city of Utrecht where I cycle to work and pop off to the pub after and the gym is two minutes walk and I have a 400m ice skating track twenty minutes bike away. And on the work side I have free compute on an 3000 cpu cluster with also an gpu cluster of h100s and lots of resources for travelling for conferences and other stuff like that. And a lot of my startup friends here are here specifically because they went to San Francisco and got investment offers around 1 millionish and then tried to hire around and all the engineers were expecting 250k+ and then came to Europe and found people just as good who work for 80-100k. That’s a completely different runway for them and they actually have time to develop a product because they don’t have to pay so much and their people are still happy with their lives. Like I do agree there aren’t that many jobs like mine and Europe needs to get their heads out of their asses and poach as many America based scientists and engineers right now as they can. But I think American based people have this idea of Europe that prevents them from seeing their options here. I do think Europe needs more resources and less bureaucracy surrounding big science projects but I’ll make that point when I have my own big science project haha.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#482

Post by a_puppy »

refurb wrote: post #432
a_puppy wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federal money is allocated by Congress, and the President is required to spend the money as allocated by Congress. The President does not have authority to cut spending. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_fu... > Ok, so all payments are paused while funding is reviewed? ... This is taxpayers money ... A shocker that government agencies might need account for spending. Reviewed for what? Reviewe…

The idea that the President, the head of the Executive branch, has zero power over Executive branch spending down to the agency level, because Congress said X must be spent and dammit they must spend it, makes no sense. By that logic and taken to an extreme, Congress could pass a budget law (overriding the executive’s veto) to set executive spending for specific agencies to only be spent on computers, say the FBI, an…

Congress quite literally has the power to pass laws. According to the Constitution, the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"; the President's oath of office requires that he execute the laws set by Congress. So for example, if Congress were to pass a silly law saying "the FBI shall spend exactly $X on computers, down to the cent", then the President would be required to make sure the FBI spent exactly $X on computers, down to the cent. The President has many powers, but "deciding not to execute the laws passed by Congress" is not one of them.

Quoting from the page you linked:

> Impoundments usually proceeded on the view that an appropriation sets a ceiling on spending for a particular purpose but typically did not mandate that all such sums be spent. According to this view, if that purpose could be accomplished by spending less than the appropriation’s total amount, there would be no impediment in law to realizing savings. Impoundments were also justified on the ground that a statute, other than the appropriation itself, authorized the withholding.

In other words, if Congress appropriates $X for the FBI to buy computers, then Congress didn't necessarily mean "the FBI shall spend exactly $X on computers, down to the cent". It could be interpreted to mean "the FBI may spend up to $X on computers". But Congress has clarified this ambiguity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_and_Impou...

> the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 specifies that the president may request that Congress rescind appropriated funds. If both the Senate and the House of Representatives have not approved a rescission proposal (by passing legislation) within forty-five days of continuous session, any funds being withheld must be made available for obligation.

In other words, if Congress appropriates $X for the FBI to buy computers, but the President thinks $X is excessive, then the President may ask Congress for permission to spend less than $X. If Congress doesn't grant the permission within 45 days, then the President must go ahead and spend the full $X. Again, Congress literally has the power to set the laws, and the President is required by his oath of office to execute those laws.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court already ruled on this exact question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_v._City_of_New_York

> President Richard Nixon was of the view that the administration was not obligated to disburse all funds allocated by Congress to states seeking federal monetary assistance under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 and ordered the impoundment of substantial amounts of environmental protection funds for a program he vetoed, and which had been overridden by Congress.

That case seems directly analogous to what Musk is currently trying to do. Nixon lost that case in the Supreme Court.

Even if the Supreme Court did rule that the President had impoundment powers, it would probably be on the condition that "[the purpose of the law] could be accomplished by spending less than the appropriation’s total amount" (quoting from the page you linked). For example, the President would still be required to buy sufficient computers for the FBI, even if he spent less than $X on them. The President still wouldn't be able to just unilaterally decide "no, the FBI doesn't need computers, this is a waste of money".

So, I think it's already quite clear that Trump/Musk do not have the constitutional authority to just start cutting government programs. Do you agree? If not, which part do you want further clarity on?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#483

Post by TeMPOraL »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #446
77pt77 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The USA passport is far from a strong passport. Plenty of better alternatives elsewhere. Also, that implies getting citizenship, a 5 year ordeal. This depends on the metrics chosen to evaluate. My german passport offers significantly more visa free travel options, but the German government is notorious for not really giving a shit about citizens getting stuck in crisis abroad. For example when the Sudan civil war b…

> Americans were evacuated in a pretty crazy and expensive military operation

Which is a great marketing stunt that most countries (Germany included) couldn't afford, but otherwise, how often does it actually happen? I doubt they're spooling up Black Hawks to evacuate tourists every time there's a crisis somewhere.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#484

Post by meijer »

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…

Note: pg appears to be "generally sympathetic" to what Musk is doing here.

https://xcancel.com/paulg/status/1886741943050211408

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#485

Post by gameman144 »

hall0ween wrote: post #382
stainablesteel wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also highly discriminatory and ideological. Decades of discrimination will lead people to want to come back and tear it down, you reap what you sow.

Could you explain more about the "highly discriminatory and ideological" behavior you've seen? Is it across the board, in the sciences? For example, is a neurosurgery lab at UC Davis working on glioma research either discriminatory and ideologically driven?

I can speak to one instance of this (which was before COVID and the events surrounding George Floyd, so apply context as needed), but I took a class on networking implementations in low-budget and rural regions.

As part of the curriculum, there were distinct lessons (in this hard-science course) on feminist design, avoiding white-savior rollouts, and cultural relativism -- with much room to expound on their importance, and little room to critique.

I happened to agree with lots of the mindsets of these lessons a priori, but I was definitely acutely aware the whole course that there was an ideological bent, even in STEM.

The networking stack obviously had no viewpoint, but the course teaching it certainly did.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#486

Post by biofox »

whycome wrote: post #380
bawolff wrote: post #4

Seems like a good opportunity for other countries to recruit scientists. I think its underappreciated how much of America's modern success comes down to attracting scientists and intellectuals from war torn europe in the 30s-50s.

I don't think Operation Paperclip was about "attracting".

Hundreds of high-ranking scientists left Germany in the 1930s. The exodus had nothing to do with Operation Paperclip.

https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/online/5299/The-scientific...

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#487

Post by refurb »

RajT88 wrote: post #118
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.

I live in the US; born here, lived here all my life. The former is 100% how it will go. The only question is: how bad will it get? A poster down thread mentions a million dead immigrants. I personally think it will just be in the low 6 figures. Maybe high 5 figures.

If only HN had a reminder option.

The doom and gloom in these comments is truly funny. I remember the exact same when Trump won the first time.

It’s like HN has no memory.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#488

Post by Symbiote »

Spivak wrote: post #385
77pt77 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't know what to tell you, if you think the cuisine available in the US isn't great it's because you aren't looking. The "tossed salad" nature of the country comes out in full force to create a food scene that holds its own against anywhere in the world. Even if you restrict yourself to classic American cuisine the food is still world class. One of my absolute favorite things to do any time a friend from overseas…

Wording a criticism as a semi-compliment is typically British.

Not realizing this is typically American.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#489

Post by jampekka »

matwood wrote: post #439
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. It’s not lottery mentality, it’s risk taking. And it’s something that the EU should be fostering. The US encourages risk taking where failing isn’t even seen as a bad thing.

Ending up homeless for failing is probably not the risk taking encouragement Europeans want.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31524645

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#490

Post by jmward01 »

This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those responsible accountable.
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