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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

#701

Post by tlogan »

jl6 wrote: post #453

It seems like some new doctors have arrived and diagnosed the patient with terminal cancer. Being new, they have no experience of surgery so are hacking out the tumor with a blunt instrument, excising good tissue and bad. Some hope the surgeons will improve their skill over time. Some say the patient won’t survive. Some say the patient wouldn’t have survived if they did nothing. Some say the patient never had cancer…

Not really.

It’s more like this: Imagine a china shop where you don’t like some of the items or how they’re priced. So, you send an elephant into the shop. The result? The elephant doesn’t just break the pieces you dislike—it smashes everything.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#702

Post by microtonal »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #652
MandieD wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in Germany or know some Germans, talk as much as you can about how this is what Musk wants to do via the AfD to us here. The election is a little over two weeks away. Right now, the CDU/CSU ("normal" conservatives) look to be getting the largest number of votes, but nowhere near enough to govern on their own. They've been a little too flirty with the AfD (currently in second place), and the worst thing that…

Germany can be saved only by a major political reset. The mainstream parties are so flawed that it may be easier to replace them, than to fix. Greens just went through a stupid political scandal in Berlin where the leftist radical wing tried to frame a realo candidate for sexual harassment. SPD goes to this election with the worst chancellor in history. CDU lost its mind and voted together with AFD. FDP is serving a…

Germany can be saved only by a major political reset. The mainstream parties are so flawed that it may be easier to replace them, than to fix.

Be careful what you wish for. If AfD would grab the power (unlikely at this point), it'll weaken Germany nationally and internationally like the US is being weakened now.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#704

Post by odyssey7 »

intended wrote: post #679
odyssey7 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it means the next administration would have to hire new people to offer grants to researchers. This would bring new perspectives into the process. There is never any shortage of researchers to fund. And that the ranks of researchers, which are often stagnant due to a shortage of jobs for PhD holders, would experience turnover in the interim, creating openings for fresh voices when the funding resumes. Ideally…

why.. where will the money come from? And next administration? This is 14 DAYS since election. March isnt even here yet. There are 4 tax filings before the next election. Please take a look at things like demonitization, or many "harsh" medicine programs in other countries. The fallout is going to be decades. The government is going to pivot to bread and circuses. The sides are going to get more entrenched, and then…

The Alzheimer’s debacle was already a generation. Perhaps a timely retirement or two would have cut that short.

When I have the privilege of working with new college graduates, they get me out of my old modes of thinking. And they are quite talented. We will still have college graduates in four years.

Granted, if you believe there is a significant risk that the United States falls into irreversible autocracy within the next four years, the analysis does change. However, I just don’t buy it. There are two branches of government that check the executive branch. Trump has been elected as a lame duck with no possibility for a second term.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#705

Post by rayiner »

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…

A “coup” implies an overthrow of the legal structure of power. Who is being overthrown?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#706

Post by queuebert »

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 might move somewhere that gave me a person grant. The U.S. works primarily on project grants, where you are funded to do a thing, but that thing doesn't always work, and most of the time it's a bit contrived in order to appeal to the funding agency. (This is probably so the bureaucrats can exert power over what is studied.) The system would work much better if individual scientists got guaranteed salaries to study whatever seemed appropriate, and if you needed money for equipment you can request it. This would lead to more crazy ideas being explored and less derivative, p-hacked slop carried out by graduate student slave labor.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#708

Post by fransje26 »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #652
MandieD wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in Germany or know some Germans, talk as much as you can about how this is what Musk wants to do via the AfD to us here. The election is a little over two weeks away. Right now, the CDU/CSU ("normal" conservatives) look to be getting the largest number of votes, but nowhere near enough to govern on their own. They've been a little too flirty with the AfD (currently in second place), and the worst thing that…

Germany can be saved only by a major political reset. The mainstream parties are so flawed that it may be easier to replace them, than to fix. Greens just went through a stupid political scandal in Berlin where the leftist radical wing tried to frame a realo candidate for sexual harassment. SPD goes to this election with the worst chancellor in history. CDU lost its mind and voted together with AFD. FDP is serving a…

> Germany can be saved only by a major political reset. The mainstream parties are so flawed that it may be easier to replace them, than to fix.

Ironically enough, this very much sounds like the "let's re-write and everything will be better" fallacy encountered in software engineering.

That aside, what you are wishing for is a war and/or revolution where the pillars of society have been shattered to pieces, the old incumbents removed/killed/retired, and where a new political landscape is built upon the ruins and ashes of what has been.

Be careful what you wish for..

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#709

Post by nixpulvis »

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…

Yes, let's blame scientists for obesity. Not the fact that most of our society has been built around fatty foods and cars to get everywhere.

Where are these scientists arguing for that?!

Hell, science has been wrong on a number of health issues. But diet and exercise has been a staple of good health science for as long as I can remember.

Your blaming the wrong institutions.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#710

Post by Propelloni »

agnishom wrote: post #625
Propelloni wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a coup, because Trump is still in his lawful 2nd and final term. Until then let's call it Gleichschaltung [1], because that's what it is: bringing all aspects of society under totalitarian control. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung

Him assuming the office of the president is legal. But him trying to replace the law which has gone through due process using executive orders is unlawful. It is not a coup because he became president by force. It is a coup because he is consolidating power. (The president is not supposed to be all powerful.)

The Wikipedia-article explains why "consolidating power" as part of the government is Gleichschaltung and not a coup. A coup is the sudden, violent, and unlawful seizure of power from a government [1] which is not the case here.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/coup

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