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WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

scientificamerican.com

651–660 of 676 posts

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are humans as simple as cars though? And why does sexuality get represented by the energy source n your analogy? Why doesn’t sexuality get represented by other characteristics? Perhaps because “there’s only two kinds - sedans and pickups” sounds a little silly?

It’s much more fundamental than that. A better example would be how many axles a road vehicle can have to be considered a road vehicle. You might reasonably conclude that the number starts at one and essentially goes to infinity and you’d be right. But somewhere, deep in academia, some critical theorists are going to get upset that you’ve excluded zero and excluded the all the real numbers. They are going to call thi…

> Out here in the real world it’s very obvious that vehicles can’t have half an axle or 4.29 axles.

Yeah, I'm thinking you don't have much exposure to real world trucking and lift axles at all.

It's not uncommon for heavy load truck trailers to have axles that are only dropped to the road to take up a heavy load and are retracted for lighter and no loads to extend the lifetime of tyres and bearings.

Operationally, over their road time, the number of axles in contact with tarmac becomes fractional.

If you're going to make sweeping claims about "the real world" it's best to be across all those pesky actual edge cases.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure that’s fine. They funded research that you think is wasteful and you would like to have tools to provide that feedback. The issue with this OMB change is that it is not that. The OMB change is a change that allows the administration to cancel any grant for any reason without answering to citizens about it. BTW your “believe it or not” is quite condescending. Do you talk to people in real life like that?

The president is elected, the bureaucrats that were making the decisions before were not, that's the difference. >BTW your “believe it or not” is quite condescending. Do you talk to people in real life like that? Yes, especially when they're the sort of people who support taking my tax money to fund idiotic and outright racist "research".

So you want every decision in government to be made by a politician instead of an expert? We should start with the military right? Get those bureaucrats generals out of the battlefield and put some elected officials in charge of our battle plans so our plans aren’t wasting tax dollars!

If that sounds absurd… you’re right! It is!

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#653
post #176

If you want to stay a scientist, you have to emigrate. The art of continually licking the right asses to keep funding going is not science.

Emigrate where? And why do you assume that the country you're gonna emigrate to will have the funds necessay to fund the research? US grants are the biggest and most generous in the world. I think the USG spends over $900 Billion every year. Europe spends about 1/10th of that. Other option is China but as a foreigner, you will never get a grant there unless you work for someone else.

Funny that your take away from protecting science was “where are you going, we have all the money so just dance with the devil and pray your research doesn’t conflict or debunk any political views”.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you conveniently omitted that your wife was also contributing? Is being "solid middle class" in Germany assumes to ever be able to buy your own apartment (preferably not a a 60m^2 shoe-box)?

Back then she was studying, so... no.

Why not just give the prices?

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean the salary difference is a few hundred k Yes, for FAANG during Covid and now AI. But your average SWE? That's more like 130k in the US [1] vs 61k in Germany [2]. In Germany, that's about 3500€ net (after taxes, retirement and health insurance - that is deducted from gross wages here) per month, of which you spend about 1500-1800 on cost of living (in Munich, the most expensive city in Germany by far), so abo…

Your US figures are using average pay for the whole country but cost of living for one of the most expensive parts of it.

Also add that the German figures don't have student loans, while the US has a monthly cost for them.

Now that may be fair, but anyone looking to move either has or doesn't have student loans and that won't change.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Useless russian-troll-style argument" Surprise! I'm just a middle-age American reading HN with his coffee trying to wrap my head around the topic. I don't think this remark helps anyone understand your argument. Doth protest too much. I'm wondering if you're focused on the "approved" science, and missing the idea this corruption is riding on the back of even a "small amount of waste", and an overall rejection of s…

R1 work generally doesn't have a replication crisis, and generally incrementalism is the bigger issue there, which is in turn tied to penny pinching The bigger issue is failure to significantly increase r&d funding, vs last decade+ shrinkages and Trump-era eating of the young, and focuses like you now propose suggest a continuation of such economy-inhibiting thinking. Also, note how your post was goalpost moving. Thi…

> “This in turn is classic trolling with asymmetric effort, so I don't see your response in good faith.”

I feel like I commented on someone’s marriage. Peace.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does science need to be through the government? Irrespective of the proposal, science research is just as open after this change as before so long as it's funded by private citizens who can control the channels through which they donate to this work. On the other hand, if we can't get private citizens to donate to science research, then they are not likely to vote for it either--polls don't register much of a con…

Private capital is good at funding research that is likely to provide a short-term return on investment. It's not so good at funding basic research, where most of the paradigm-shifting breakthroughs come from. These provide a huge return on investment, but it nets out to society at large on time scales of decades or centuries. Contrary to what you said, there is actually quite a bit of private philanthropic funding f…

This seems to be a good middle ground then. It allows for a way to prevent political projects getting grants under the guise of "scientific research", at least when they directly oppose the voters. I don't see any push to defund basic research, and if politicians start doing that there's at least a way for people to voice their disapproval through voting.

Aside from that, so much money was wasted on Alzheimer's research based on fraud.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you’re saying representation is pointless because people can enter fields they don’t see themselves represented in and I am saying i think representation is a (positive) side effect not the goal. What I actually think that I haven't said is that "representation" is a self defeating idea that encourages people to view themselves as different. > I agree. Limiting your pool is a bad idea. That’s literally why incl…

> The other half of what you said is logical though, that inclusion probably leads to a more diverse future but at the cost of the present. I didn’t say that. Idk what comment you read that said that, but it wasn’t mine. > The cost of the present is the part you're pretending doesn't exist. Even if there was a cost to the productivity of the present - a better present isn’t one where we’re the most “productive” or ef…

> The dots on the screen form a picture.

The point is that each hire is an individual decision.

If I were painting a picture I might use a lot of different colors but if you ask me to pick my favorite color 5000 times, I'll say the same color 5000 times.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a few exceptions like Switzerland, American levels of compensation for highly qualified people just can't be matched anywhere in the Western world. Gross compensation yes. But if you begin deducting stuff like the absurd American housing costs, private healthcare, saving up for deductibles, the need to own, insure, fuel and maintain a car to do everything because almost nothing is accessible by public transpor…

Middle class in Europe means unable to buy a family apartment in a Tier 1 city.

Not everyone of us wants to live in tier 1 cities, and not all countries have apartment buying culture.

Re: WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

#660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other half of what you said is logical though, that inclusion probably leads to a more diverse future but at the cost of the present. I didn’t say that. Idk what comment you read that said that, but it wasn’t mine. > The cost of the present is the part you're pretending doesn't exist. Even if there was a cost to the productivity of the present - a better present isn’t one where we’re the most “productive” or ef…

> The dots on the screen form a picture. The point is that each hire is an individual decision. If I were painting a picture I might use a lot of different colors but if you ask me to pick my favorite color 5000 times, I'll say the same color 5000 times.

exactly - if you loose sight of the big picture and only see the individual events, it’s easy to turn a personal bias into a systemic bias. The screen is a wash of blue, and the image is lost.
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