Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 1001 posts

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#691

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

gws16 wrote: post #676
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn’t it what the head of executive branch supposed to mean? In a nation governed by a constitution and laws, absofuckinglutely not. The chief executive is supposed to operate within the bounds of the constitution and the laws created under it.

NIH and NSF ultimately report to the executive branch and if their reach can be expanded under executive fiat in a democratic administration, I don't see why they can't be limited under a republican one?

Congress controls the budget.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#692

Post by Arkhadia »

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.

Sure. I can’t tell you how much I love my tax dollars fluffing the pockets of god knows what while also having to deal with insane inflation due to no accountability in government. More than have the country welcomes the purge

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#693

Post by jbeam »

odyssey7 wrote: post #665

This hurts, but it also presents an opportunity for rebuilding. An outcome could be a greater diversity of voices influencing research, rather than the NSF and NIH continuing to serve as monoliths. The NIH is the dominant force in medical research. Remember how theories for Alzheimer’s having an infectious etiology were sidelined for decades? And, to this day, for autoimmune conditions?

[flagged]

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#694

Post by dauhak »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #434
dauhak wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very pro some systematic auditing/cleaning of out sclerotic waste, but I don't see how anyone can look at the way this is being handled and not be incredibly worried I think it's the second-order stuff here. Even assuming Musk were to do a fantastic job at just clearing out inefficiency in a smart way (which seems unlikely given the actions he's taken/leaks around cutting funding based on key-word matching etc.),…

> make changes with 0 transparency/accountability seems like it does just stupid amounts of harm to the integrity of the system pray tell who was accountable for the grant issuance in the first place? was congress approving every disbursal? could the citizenry vote up/down on every RO1 or SBIR that went past the NIH desk?

Hey man, if you wanna make a point just make a point - no need to try the whole snarky rhetorical thing

Ofc not every decision is fully democratic, but the people making them are beholden to rules and systems which are - or at the least, have a clear chain of command back to individuals who Congress has direct authority over. No one ever said you needed 100% democratic oversight on every action, as long as those actions are obeying the system that was democratically established

The problem is doing it in an extra-legal way, where the Executive Office is giving a crony power his branch doesn't/shouldn't be able to bestow, where people telling this crony no when he tries things he shouldn't be able to do all seem to get put on leave etc

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#695

Post by syl_sau »

Some people here seem to be upset. I don't get it.

More than 40% of US adults are obese. The rates of chronic diseases are through the roof. There's obviously a systemic problem in these institutions who are tasked with the well-being of the country. We know of many fraud in social sciences (ever heard of priming research?), medical science (eg. alzheimer researchs) and nutritional science (eg. saturated fats). In fact I'd argue it has become systemically untrustworthy. Robert Kennedy Jr vowed for: (a) dedicating 20% of science funding to replication studies, (b) systemic publication of peer reviews alongside papers, (c) publication of null results. Which seems like a very good improvement over what we have now. The field is in dire need of a reform.

Am I missing something?

PS: I am not from the USA.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#697

Post by shortrounddev2 »

syl_sau wrote: post #695

Some people here seem to be upset. I don't get it. More than 40% of US adults are obese. The rates of chronic diseases are through the roof. There's obviously a systemic problem in these institutions who are tasked with the well-being of the country. We know of many fraud in social sciences (ever heard of priming research?), medical science (eg. alzheimer researchs) and nutritional science (eg. saturated fats). In fa…

Do you believe that it is the responsibility of the NIH to decide what Americans eat?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#698

Post by tootie »

nlitened wrote: post #562
jmward01 wrote: post #490

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 resp…

> deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king Isn’t it what the head of executive branch supposed to mean? Trump does exactly how he promised he would do if you elected him, and you guys elected him overwhelmingly to do exactly that.

Not since the Magna Carta. Issue is that he is bypassing Congress on issues that are explicitly their purview per Article 1 of the Constitution.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#699

Post by _joel »

microtonal wrote: post #688
3D30497420 wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hope the US gets bad enough that people in the EU notice and decide they don't want to go down the same route? Honestly though, I'm in the same situation and I don't know. I did just start paid subscriptions to several media outlets that have been doing good reporting on the situation (Guardian, Verge). I unsubscribed to the Washington Post after they pulled their Harris endorsement (which was appalling), but their c…

Hope the US gets bad enough that people in the EU notice and decide they don't want to go down the same route? Yeah, same. Since the Brexit a lot of populist parties in the EU don't want to leave the EU anymore (only reform it). Let's hope that this is another warning that the destructive populist path doesn't lead anywhere good. (And I hope that the UK will join the EU again, they are close friends.) I did just star…

> (And I hope that the UK will join the EU again, they are close friends.)

As a Brit, so do I. However, despite all of the evidence showing it will be massively beneficial, we won't. Not fully, imho, for a good while. Best I'm hoping for is closer ties in a customs union, but that requires compromise I don't think will happen.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#700

Post by queuebert »

3D30497420 wrote: post #588
nlitened wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king Isn’t it what the head of executive branch supposed to mean? Trump does exactly how he promised he would do if you elected him, and you guys elected him overwhelmingly to do exactly that.

> you guys elected him overwhelmingly to do exactly that Most certainly not overwhelmingly: Trump: 49.80% Harris: 48.32% This is one of the more frustrating aspects of the United States. Not even 1.5% more and the result is "near total evisceration of the federal government" compared to "largely the same". The result is even worse with the Senate. 55.9m votes for Democratic Senators, 54.4m for Republican Senators, an…

Don't forget roughly a third didn't vote at all.
Post reply on HN