What's happening inside the NIH and NSF • Hacker News Board

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#731

Post by leereeves » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:10 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #729

leereeves wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Routinely reaching past the defined limits of the executive branch could be described as a coup. Depending on the event/circumstances, it's congress being overthrown, or the constitution, etc. Assuming a definition of coup like "violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group" there's a reasonable case to be made.

It seems unlikely that either the current Congress or the current Supreme Court (the arbiters of what is Constitutional) will object.

> Assuming a definition of coup like "violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group"

Violent? I haven't heard about violence. What are you referring to?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#732

Post by tootie » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:13 PM UTC

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…

RFK believes in things that are provably false and you seemingly believe things without evidence either. Our institutions cause obesity? Who keeps refusing protect the environment? Who refused to directly address the COVID crisis when it was starting and pedalled fake cures. Effective policy is hard to get right but the Trump admin are immeasurably worse than the alternatives.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#733

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:14 PM UTC

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…

JFK wrote a book called “Profiles in Courage” - no courageous people are around.

The “coup” happened a long time ago. The US has demonstrated that there’s no rule of law at the federal level for some time now. Once the Chief Justice leaned back and tolerated the open sale of the court, that was basically it.

We don’t have the same system of governance anymore… we’re like Italy 1936 or Argentina in 1948 now. We’ll invade Greenland instead of Ethiopia, and skip the funny hats.

The question is do we continue on this trajectory or is there a real coup with tanks on DC streets at some point.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#734

Post by Meneth » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

Side note: the article's author is Derek Lowe, who also wrote this memetic piece on Chlorine Trifluoride: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo...

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#735

Post by throwawaymaths » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

dauhak wrote: post #694

throwawaymaths wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 acti…

the executive has broad leeway to spend as it sees fit. i 100% guarantee you that disbursal of funds to grant recipients involves calling on extralegal outside-the-government "experts" making advisory recommendations without direct consultation of congress or the voter.

point is, live by the sword, die by the sword. it's hypocritical to whine about cutting funding by the exact same mechanism that is used to give it out because you dont like the political party of the cutter.

and you can't say "keep politics out of science". because when you're pulling from the public purse, it is inherently political.

there are ways to fund science that are apolitical. HHMI, ACS, ADA, AHA, etc.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#736

Post by thatfrenchguy » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

alaxhn wrote: post #69

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #6

So many brilliant researchers in the US are funded by NSF grants. Even beyond public research, just the private sector benefits just from the training (and associated freedom from not having to chase money and TA) that NSF fellows get is immense. Injecting dumb politics and refusing grants just because people put the words "biases" in their application is a great way to appeal to Republicans's undereducated voters (s…

So you don't think being forced to include a statement on diversity in every single grant request reviewed by the NIH was "injecting dumb politics" but you do think that being forced to NOT include a statement on diversity in every single grant request is?

There’s a very big difference there between “including a statement in diversity” and “your funding gets pulled because you previously included a statement about diversity”. The new administration is essentially pulling funding from everyone who got grants previously based on those criteria.

Who do you think benefits medium term from our best researchers getting less funding? The toll on our economy will only be visible in 15-20 years, and it will be massive.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#737

Post by macinjosh » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:17 PM UTC

dudefeliciano wrote: post #525

xp84 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, Trump is doing things he openly announced he would do for at least a year. So all of this is either a result of robust public support for his policies, or, (my preferred explanation) an even more robust public repudiation of the only alternative that was put forward by the other party, a candidate famous for dropping out before Iowa in 2020 but somehow was coronated the nominee without any voter…

> Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as when Trump lost in 2020 and declared it a 'rigged election.' Call it whatever you want, the fact of the matter is that you have an unelected private person, who happens to be the richest person on earth, taking control of federal agencies. I don't think anyone should consider this silly, as nobody thought it was silly when MAGA tried to actually stage a literal coup by force 4 y…

The only elected members of the executive branch are the President and VP. The president is employing Musk. Your claims of him being unelected is irrelevant.

Valerie Jarret was UNELECTED. OMG OMG /s

See how dumb it sounds?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#738

Post by brendoelfrendo » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

Propelloni wrote: post #710

agnishom wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No one is going to start calling this Gleichshaltung, so stop trying to make it happen. Words can be flexible. The current situation approximates a coup, and so people will call it a coup. Honestly, splitting hairs over definitions while our government is being stripped for parts? This is part of the problem!

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#739

Post by waveBidder » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:19 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #705

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?

the Congress. the president doesn't have the authority to unilaterally shut down entire departments

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#740

Post by basementcat » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 2:20 PM UTC

zpeti wrote: post #631

JW_00000 wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing about democracy is, every person is going to sometimes wildly disagree with what the elected officials do. Declaring it a 'coup' is as silly as [...] The reason people are calling this a coup is not (only) because they disagree with what Trump/Musk are doing, but because their actions are illegal. A president is still expected to follow the rule of law and respect separation of powers. If there are no mor…

Who says they are illegal? Can you cite some sources please? Like actual legal experts, not the guardian. As far as I know, the chevron deference ruling makes it easily arguable that these agencies don't necessarily have any legal standing anyway. The 8 month buyout was completely legal, Clinton did the same. I actually find it highly unlikely any of this is illegal, it's just completely unbearable to anyone who is p…

> The 8 month buyout was completely legal, Clinton did the same.

The 1995 buyout offer was passed by Congress and signed by Clinton.

https://clintonwhitehouse6.archives.gov/1995/04/1995-04-04-p...

https://uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/103/226.pdf