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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

#791

Post by waveBidder »

rayiner wrote: post #778
waveBidder wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Precedent holds that Congress has the power to establish executive branch agencies and lay out their jurisdiction and functions. It also holds that, once so established, the president has the power to decide how they’re operated. There’s a constitutional distinction between this power to create/define (legislative) and the power to run (executive). The article doesn’t seem to be about abolishing the NIH and NSF. Inst…

USAid has been abolished

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#792

Post by svilen_dobrev »

intended wrote: post #634
brylie wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an expat in the EU, I have a surreal sense of being a bystander at an ongoing emergency scene. I don’t want to be yet another gawker as this situation is unfolding but am struggling to come up with actions that are within my power to take as a form of protest, resistance, or solidarity. What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?

I have a suggestion - at least one of several, which is to understand why we got here. The fact that this is escalating since cable TV, Murdoch, and the internet is not a coincidences. Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech. Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpos…

> such a market place

Seems there is a market place for truth . Truth has become ware and has price (which is not same as cost). All else follows..

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#793

Post by o_x »

rayiner wrote: post #778
waveBidder wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Precedent holds that Congress has the power to establish executive branch agencies and lay out their jurisdiction and functions. It also holds that, once so established, the president has the power to decide how they’re operated. There’s a constitutional distinction between this power to create/define (legislative) and the power to run (executive). The article doesn’t seem to be about abolishing the NIH and NSF. Inst…

So it's not shutting down, it's just telling it to operate by doing nothing?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#794

Post by causal »

batushka5 wrote: post #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.

I'd like to offer: both can be bad. Any large system is going to have a lot of inefficiencies, and something to dislike for everyone. But its overall function can still be important enough that taking a sledge hammer to the whole thing is still much more harmful than whatever motivated picking up the hammer.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#795

Post by dudefeliciano »

scarab92 wrote: post #716
tootie wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is flatly false. He is running the Project 2025 playbook which he expressly disavowed. It is also reasonable to assume he meant to propose a smaller budget, not supercede Congress.

> He is running the Project 2025 playbook which he expressly disavowed He's a conservative, and Project 2025 was from other conservatives. You would expect there to be some overlap in policy perspectives because of the ideological overlap. It doesn't necessarily mean he's taking orders from the heritage foundation.

Before he got inaugurated the narrative is that the democrats are crazy for thinking that he would enact such unhinged policies, he himself said he knows nothing about it. Now the narrative is "that was expected".

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#796

Post by frickinLasers »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #381
frickinLasers wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ironically, the very people most likely to move abroad (in it for the career, not for the principle) are biased to be the types bringing down our system of science. What the hell are you talking about? I chose to get into science for the benefit of the masses, rather than, for instance, helping some corporation abuse human psychology to sell more ads. If there is no money to do the science, I have no choice but to…

> I chose to get into science for the benefit of the masses why do you suppose most science benefits the masses? a stunning amount of science is negative. homme hellinga cheating and claiming a triosephosphate isomerase, for example. stripey nanoparticles, as another. Thousands of western blots that were cleverly edited by unscrupulous postdocs. everything by diderik stapel. anil potti. those are the ones that got ca…

The small fraction of people perpetrating fraud does not warrant leaving science for private corps to pursue. The end result from that is companies sitting on their IP and suing anyone who comes up with something similar--with the cost passed on to consumers, and the pace of technology development slowing.

You still haven't explained how this is biased toward people "in it for the career, not for the principle."

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#797

Post by usefulcat »

intended wrote: post #634
brylie wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an expat in the EU, I have a surreal sense of being a bystander at an ongoing emergency scene. I don’t want to be yet another gawker as this situation is unfolding but am struggling to come up with actions that are within my power to take as a form of protest, resistance, or solidarity. What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?

I have a suggestion - at least one of several, which is to understand why we got here. The fact that this is escalating since cable TV, Murdoch, and the internet is not a coincidences. Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech. Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpos…

> The problem is when someone combines the media with a political party.

I generally agree, but I also think this was a natural and probably unavoidable result of having many different sources of “news”.

Prior to the internet, pretty much all news in the US came from ~5 TV networks and 1 or 2 newspapers (per city). It wasn’t practical for any of those sources to align exclusively with either political party because then they would be alienating ~half of their potential customers.

Today, there are far, far more sources to choose from. People self select those sources that they agree with. In the “old days” the news was more middle of the road politically, but that’s largely gone now. This is a major source of polarization IMO.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#798

Post by insane_dreamer »

scarab92 wrote: post #775
insane_dreamer wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mor…

[flagged]

> Trump stated

what mental gymnastics are you having to do to believe Trump, who is a proven pathological liar -- I mean, come on, that's not even a question of debate

I believe 0% of what Trump says.

But even if that were true, it doesn't resolve the conflict of interest story. Gov money being cut from _fill in blank of gov agency_ means that there's more money available for what's important to Musk (corp tax cuts, for example; gov spending that benefits his company, his business interests in China, etc.)

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#799

Post by MichaelZuo »

rayiner wrote: post #783
Spooky23 wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inv…

I’m pretty sure the coup happened in the 1930s when the government created the modern system of unaccountable executive agencies and a Supreme Court, under duress, approved it.

Yeah it’s hard to reconcile a permanent layer of unelected officials, that can’t be sacked by either the President or Congress, with many parts of the constitution.

And I’ve never seen a clear explanation of how that change was constitutionally justifiable.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#800

Post by systemstops »

intended wrote: post #634
brylie wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an expat in the EU, I have a surreal sense of being a bystander at an ongoing emergency scene. I don’t want to be yet another gawker as this situation is unfolding but am struggling to come up with actions that are within my power to take as a form of protest, resistance, or solidarity. What are some practical actions that we can take to resist these sweeping changes?

I have a suggestion - at least one of several, which is to understand why we got here. The fact that this is escalating since cable TV, Murdoch, and the internet is not a coincidences. Democracies globally are facing a similar problem, which is an abuse of a core democractic principle: Free speech. Free speech is often valued in and of itself. However, free speech in itself is only a tool that serves a greater purpos…

Public trust in the media is at an all time low along with other institutions. People are turning to social media because the press is unreliable. Reform that institution and fix many of our problems.

Maybe AI agents will be able to help identity bad reporting in the press and hold them more accountable. A sort of epistemic anti-virus.

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