Live data from Hacker News

What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

science.org

761–770 of 1001 posts

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#761

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…

The other big elephant in the room is that the self-appointed wanna-be ruler, Musk, owns companies which have received very large amounts of both government (taxpayer) grants and contracts.

Back in 2015, the LA Times reported Musk's companies had received nearly $5 billion in grants. That's taxpayer money. Plus there's the SpaceX contracts--not saying those are unwarranted, certainly SpaceX deserves the contracts more than Boeing--but my point is that it's a huge conflict of interest.

A person receiving very large amounts of money from the government is now deciding which parts of the government should be cut in order to "save taxpayers money".

If this sounds like something that would only happen in a place like Russia, or the DRC, it's because it's something that would only happen in those places.

In other democratic countries you go to jail for this sort of thing (i.e., Nicholas Sarkozy in France--not saying the situation is exactly the same, but there's an actual judicial system in place that doesn't exonerate someone just because they're president, like our SCOTUS did).

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#762
post #631

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…

Here is a good explainer from a legal expert as to why some of the stuff is flagrantly illegal: https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/121-spending-coercion-and-com...

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also highly discriminatory and ideological. Decades of discrimination will lead people to want to come back and tear it down, you reap what you sow.

Could you explain more about the "highly discriminatory and ideological" behavior you've seen? Is it across the board, in the sciences? For example, is a neurosurgery lab at UC Davis working on glioma research either discriminatory and ideologically driven?

A lot of universities have found that female professors have significantly less lab space than male professors. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2023/02/09/uc-san-diego... https://news.mit.edu/2014/research-reveals-gender-gap-nation...

In neuroscience there have been studies showing that the methods developed may not be effective for all races or sexes https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-022-01046-0

Historically studies have had an overrepresentation of white men as subjects. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1761670/

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even quoting the NIH/NSF budgets (or their line items) misses the point of the current actions. Yes, they're smaller fractions of the USG budget, but they not immaterial. This is not an attempt to 'save money' at the NSF and NIH (and USAID). A serious, rational effort to reduce their costs / increase their efficiency does not start with grep-ing manuscripts for 'underrepresented'. Part Five of TFA is on the money. Th…

[flagged]

Is that what they are saying?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#765

Despite all the hyperbole in this thread I will try to speak plainly. It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc. I'm sure most people choose to close their eyes to such things and move on and focus on the actual important work but there must be unimaginable waste going o…

[flagged]

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#766

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…

https://www.thedailybeast.com/yes-its-a-coup-and-yes-its-tar... (https://archive.is/jSt78)

> Most of us will change the channel or scroll to the next social media clip. Most in the media will “both sides” the end of our democracy into a melisma of euphemisms and equivocations. Most of our political leaders will focus on the pitch for their next fund-raiser email. And if this oblivious, indolent cowardice continues as I fear it will, we will look back on these days of chaos, destruction, hatred and lunacy as only prelude. Unchecked, we are on the path not just to autocracy, but to the worst form of malevolent dictatorship.

> My reaction is not hysteria. It’s not exaggeration. It’s not premature. Where we are is a place we have never been in this country and the threat we face is by no means one that we can survive—because something precious and fragile is at dire risk of being lost.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#767

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…

Assuming all these things are true, RFKjr is not qualified. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.#Anti-vac...

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#768
As an european I envy so much this great purge - here entire castes build on feeding from grant money, perpetuating DEI, green transition, gender studies etc. Overnight nothing-scientist/ NGO profesionals carreers are over, like in those "AI stole my job" videos. Sadly EU still holds strong perpetuating this grant bottom feeding, poisoning academia and discrediting NGOs.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There are several laws and constitutional restrictions that prevent the president from doing whatever the fuck he wants. Under what coherent legal theory is Biden not allowed to cancel student debt obligations to the federal government, but Trump is allowed to cancel government grants explicitly required by law?

The coherent legal theory is:

1) The student loans are specifically for provided by a detailed statutory scheme.

2) The grants are being made out under general delegations of authority and budgeting power, and are not “explicitly required by law.”

To my knowledge, Congress has not specifically appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars e.g. to Catholic refugee resettlement charities. Those grants are being made under discretionary agency action. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Post reply on HN