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

We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 606 posts

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#81

Post by pesus »

godsinhisheaven wrote: post #59
tensor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of analysis isn't much better. First, many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]). Secondly, it's about more than funding. The US is also no longer safe for a great many of the scientists that would normally choose come to the US to work. And even for those that aren't too worried about ICE, scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal. The US has sudden…

[flagged]

Why do you feel scientists deserve to be punished for being against a political regime that is anti-science?

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#83

Post by layer8 »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #75
tensor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of analysis isn't much better. First, many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]). Secondly, it's about more than funding. The US is also no longer safe for a great many of the scientists that would normally choose come to the US to work. And even for those that aren't too worried about ICE, scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal. The US has sudden…

> many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]). This illustrates exactly my point. Canada is planning on spending up to CAD$1.7B over 12 years . That is equivalent to USD$100M per year, or 0.3% of the NIH 2026 budget. Maybe if Europe does something similar they can get to 2%! > The US is also no longer safe I agree that Trump's regime has made the US a less welcoming place for foreign scientists, an…

Horizon Europe is a €93.5 billion budget over seven years for scientific research. The EU allocated an additional €500 million from 2025-2027 to attract foreign researchers specifically.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#84

Post by ProjectArcturis »

darth_avocado wrote: post #33
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #20

This kind of Level 1 analysis misses what is really going on. "Brain drain" is not really a concern. There is a tremendous glut of talented biomedical researchers. We have been overproducing them for decades. Even before the cuts, it was incredibly hard to go from a PhD to a tenured professorship. 5-15% would achieve that, depending how you measured. The cuts have made things worse, but European/RoW funding is even s…

While I agree, US is still the top destination for research, I don’t agree with “Brain Drain is not a concern” nor do I agree with “We need fewer PhDs”. The real risk of drain is people leaving their fields of expertise to never return. Pretty much all AI startups at the moment are coming from and being built by PhDs. The pace of innovation slows down and it can have huge long term economic impact. Having fewer PHDs…

>The real risk of drain is people leaving their fields of expertise to never return.

That is happening right now, all the time! Especially in the biomed field! Many, many PhDs spend 5-8 years getting their degree and receiving minimal pay, then 4+ years being nomadic postdocs, also making terrible money, only to eventually arrive at the end of the road and realize they have to do something completely different.

It is unsustainable for every professor to train 10 PhDs in their career, because there aren't going to be 10 professorships (or even 3) for those PhDs to fill. Funding has to grow at the same exponential rate as the number of researchers. It did, from roughly 1950s to 1980s, as the university system expanded to accommodate the Boomer generation. It has slowed since, and the PhD to professorship pipeline got longer and leakier. It's doing a tremendous disservice to the bright, well-intentioned young people who join PhD programs.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#86

Post by cyanydeez »

inglor_cz wrote: post #40
beloch wrote: post #25

>"Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets, almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired." ---------------- Scientists go where science is funded. A large proportion of U.S. scientists are also immigrants, who will tend to go where immigrants are welcomed.

Not everything is about money. The killer app of the US used to be that the US was rich and welcoming to foreigners and politically quite free. China or Saudi Arabia can wave their money around, but at least some people will be repulsed by the obligation to keep their mouths shut and praise the Dear Leader. Their cultural insularity does not help either. You can live in China, but you will never be accepted as Chines…

America is hostile to science and technology. I'm not sure how anyone with a functional desire to improve humanity decides "Hey, those americans, they sure do deserve better vaccines."

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#87

Post by denkmoon »

bluGill wrote: post #65
dylan604 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US was quite unique Well, based on the current admin and supporters, only part of the US was unique

That has always been true, and for everywhere. However very few countries are anywhere near as accepting for foreigners as the US as a whole despite the many who are not. Canada is just as accepting from what I can tell - I don't know enough about Australia to know. Most other countries are far worse - though many will not admit it just how bad their country is.

Sadly Australia is very welcoming to foreigners until you get about 50km out of the major cities. Our xenophobe political party (One Nation) has had a significant rally in the last few years, to the point where by some measures it is the second largest party.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#88

Post by deepsun »

nathan_compton wrote: post #12
deepsun wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I feel like if you care about taxes on capital gains you are rich enough not to care about taxes on capital gains.

No, I'm not rich, I'm just an entrepreneur, so most of my income is from capital gains. And most (almost all) of my expenses is paying salaries and vendors.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#89

Post by 9rx »

xienze wrote: post #74
tensor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that depends on a lot of factors. E.g. will there be a turn around in the US, and if so how fast? Will Europe and other nations increase science funding to account for all the new talent that wants to come? Will that funding be permanent, not just a one time effort? Also, if the US restores their democracy and also decides to value science again, will the salaries for scientists abroad compete enough to preve…

> Also, if the US restores their democracy We don’t have elections anymore? When did this happen?

China also likes to claim it is a democracy because it holds elections.

It is fair to say that the USA is still a democracy, but not because of elections. Elections have little to do with democracy. In fact, if the majority of the population hold the view that elections equate to democracy, you don't have a democracy.

Post reply on HN