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WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

scientificamerican.com

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

#661

Post by DangitBobby »

Auracle wrote: post #578
ascotan wrote: post #534

this proposal is an extension of the WH crackdown on what it sees as misuse of USG funds for things that are deemed not in the best interests of the USG. Among other things this proposal attempts to prevent: 1. prevention of DEI related grants 2. prevention of grants promoting anti-american ideologies 3. prevention of gain-of-function research (think covid-19) 4. prevention of ai-powered social media censorship resea…

Am I wrong for thinking “good” for a lot of those points? Many are either harmful (I still haven’t heard what we actually expect to gain from gain-of-function research that makes up for the potential cost) to absolute wastes of taxpayer dollars.

You can agree with the stated goals and still disagree with the policy mechanism to achieve them. Indeed, much of the current administration's strategy appears to be to sane-wash the destruction of our scientific institutions while trotting out it's "goals" to non-critical observers. Of course, the true goals are what the policy actually accomplishes, which is to hollow out the capacity for competent dissent.

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

#662

Post by DangitBobby »

rayiner wrote: post #285
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where do you see common grounds material self-interest shaping todays political landscape? People need a shared narrative of eg. a problem to solve, to come together. The right wing narrative today is deliberatetly targeted against any imaginary enemy, that does not subscribe to the narrative, which excludes/targets basically all left leaning people, all out groups. With this tribalistic setup in the centre, comm…

> And where do you see common grounds material self-interest shaping todays political landscape You’d think democrats would come up with a compelling one.

Not dismantling the country and devolving into autocracy is compelling to me, personally.

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

#663

Post by DangitBobby »

convolvatron wrote: post #430

how this this reconcile with the general conservative glee over the defeat of the Chevron defence? wasn't the rationale there that bureaucrats shouldn't be deciding on policy without consulting congress? Roberts even made a little speech about how whipsawing policy back and forth every 4 years wasn't helping anyone.

I've never known Republicans to be much concerned with the appearance of Hypocrisy.

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

#664

Post by DangitBobby »

warumdarum wrote: post #354

The relation between world changing science and investment seems to be brutally of, so any change to whatever we have is good change. Scieence needs to be deideologized and if that cant happen, at least there needs to a politically diverse ecosystem where the results (with predictionpower and duscoveries not cultural dominance) speak for themselves.

> so any change to whatever we have is good change

Things can definitely get worse.

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

#665

Post by hollerith »

Erem wrote: post #366
hollerith wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not commending it. He's using it to point out that the reaction, "Well, america had a good run i guess? Hope china can step up and fill the gap," is simplistic, hyperbolic and maybe a little hysterical.

Ah I read it as “the US was corrupt before, and that was OK because GDP was growing! So we are just returning to our roots now” Now understanding the good faith argument better, doesn’t it even further support the ascendancy of China? The argument is: despite rampant spoils system corruption, the US eclipsed Great Britain on the strength of a large population with low trade barriers alone (both internal and external)…

>it really does distract your point to sling insults like hysterical towards other commenters

Thanks for this.

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

#666

Post by IAmBroom »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #493
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was realized some time ago that having citizens decide to "donate to the research we care about" was not the most efficient way to get the most important research done. So we switched to a system where we pool our resources (taxes), and then use a somewhat complex process (described in TFA) to decide how to allocate them to possible research.

and those taxes are distributed by our government... which is political. simple as.

You're missing the key distinction here: not only are the seeds selected by a political body, but the active weeding of previously planted seeds is now inherently political.

Both are bad, but one allows some diversity; the other produces a monoculture.

A political monoculture that can be completely upended before even any useful crop is grown, given the nature of a working democracy versus the length of research projects.

And yes, I'm aware that those last two words are no longer guaranteed.

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

#667

Post by IAmBroom »

parineum wrote: post #437
OtherShrezzing wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the USG spends over $900 Billion every year. Europe spends about 1/10th of that Do you mean that the EU spends 1/10th that, rather than Europe ? Because France, Germany and the UK all spend €100-150bn each in grants depending on how you set your definition, and that’s atop the EU’s grant money. Just eyeballing the figures across different countries, it looks like the USG distributes approximately the same a…

You're comparing the sum of those European countries to the US. Scientists have two easy avenues if they are currently in the US, the US or their home country. Immigration to work in a foreign nation is not always easy and takes time.

Likewise, immigration to work in the US is "is not always easy and takes time." There's no difference; if you disallow immigration to other countries at all "because it's not easy", then there's no point in discussing where scientists won't go - you believe they won't ever move, no matter what.

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

#668

Post by xp84 »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #476
xp84 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really disagree with the closing quip about those guys’ (lack of) qualifications. But I think what upsets a lot of people (including me) is that if you’re Asian or white, and male, graduating with a 4.5 and doing literally everything right, the Democrats tell us it’s virtuous to have a quota system screen you out of the most competitive schools so that someone of an “underrepresented” race/gender expression,…

I’m not convinced my demographic is discriminated against so much as the playing field is levelled to some degree, because discrimination already occurred in our favour. The nice thing about regulated discrimination is that it can be an editable, transparent, public document that can be voted on and driven by data. This is better, even if imperfect, than the kind we have when we’re not honest about it. I’m not saying…

First, you cannot know if "discrimination" gave a positive boost to a kid from looking at their skin. Poor white and Asian kids can have all the same disadvantages (or more) than a randomly-selected Black kid. You can only make such a claim in the aggregate. The punishments applied by the quota systems that Democrats embrace, however, are applied individually to all members of the races deemed "too represented." That's what makes it so odious (and it's why those of us who used to proudly identify as "Strong Democrat" 15 years ago have always hated racist policies.)

The punitive institutionalized discrimination being extended against Asians merely because they on average do better at school than other ethnic groups really drives home how unfair this is. I'd go so far as to claim that no structural/institutional factors have boosted Asian kids. They do better (better than the white kids) probably because their parents value education the most, due to a shared cultural value. Our society's response to that shouldn't be to treat those kids as surplus unneeded human capital because of where their ancestors were born.

> Discrimination was everywhere... I was white, I was male... I certainly wasn’t the best for the job.

Well, if that truly did happen to you (you interviewed all those competing for the positions and knew who was best?) then yeah, that's quite racist. The solution to racism isn't "More racism, but flipped against whoever's done better recently." We already had the actual solution figured out many years ago, and it's judging people only by their merits.

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

#669

Post by freddealmeida »

Governemnt money should be approved by elected politicians or the President's electives. Until now the approach has led to abuse in many ways. Especially gatekeeping by professors on new ideas. Cold fusion comes to mind. Probably put behind by 40 years. I do not mind this new strategy by the President at all.

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

#670

Post by gwerbin »

adampunk wrote: post #379
gwerbin wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was kind of my point. They actively voted for a lot of bad stuff, but it was framed in a very different way. They voted for things like ending the tyranny of woke liberalism, and believe that end is so essential to achieve that it justifies essentially abandoning the rule of law. What they did not vote for is the long-term consequences of supporting that position.

What?! They most certainly did vote for those consequences! Why infantilize these voters? Nobody robbed them of the agency needed to see that an obvious criminal tyrant was worse than a woman, twice. They just didn't care. It's ugly and depressing to imagine them not caring about things that matter to them intimately, but here we all are.

It's not that Harris was "a woman". It's that she was -- or so the propaganda line went -- a treasonous saboteur who would continue the woke left-liberal-socialist agenda, which is a path to certain destruction, and along the way allow American governance to be co-opted by corrupt plutocrats and criminals, as well as politicizing and weaponizing the executive branch against political enemies to suppress opposition to the agenda.

That of course is all setup for consent: Trump doing all that stuff is just fighting fire with fire, the justified means to the end of not only making America great again but now saving it from certain doom.

People are both more clever than you think, and dumber than you think. Few non-experts would claim to understand skyscraper design. And yet somehow everyone with a social media account and 4th grade literacy skills claims to understand how to govern 300m people and the largest economy in the world.

I don't consider myself a Jeffersonian Republican, but I can see clearly that tens of millions people voted for short-term action to fight against this or that perceived boogeyman, and did so largely from an emotional perspective with little foresight into what the consequences might actually be, beyond "X candidate says he will fix Y bad thing and I think Y is very important". The fact that 3-time Trump voters feel disappointed and betrayed and yet somehow still claim that Harris "would have been worse" points to a serious lack of unemotional big-picture thinking when it comes to the future of the USA. Hell I see people going all the way back to Obama -- "yeah OK so Trump did [100 unimaginably horrible things that will eventually hurt me] but Obama once hit a US citizen with a drone strike so what's the big deal? get lost snowflake god bless my president"

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