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

theguardian.com

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

#91

Post by hsuduebc2 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #58
dheera wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everything is about money. It is when researchers can't make enough money to eat and live, which is an actual reality in the US right now. Researchers at top institutions often make less than Uber drivers. There are other countries where you can live on less and the government isn't dipping their hands into your pockets every 5 seconds.

Some people will switch careers, but I do doubt that in an economy with very low unemployment amongst qualified people, any actual scientist will literally starve and become homeless.

Well yea, but I suppose that exceptional molecular biologist can use his potential somewhere else better than as a lower manager in a corporate.

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

#93

Post by mikestorrent »

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…

Well, perhaps it is time for large, ethnically-homogenous countries that are on the ascent to adopt diversity policies of the sort that the US was approaching before the "vibe shift"

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

#94

Post by ProjectArcturis »

layer8 wrote: post #83
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Horizon Europe funds everything — physics, engineering, social sciences, climate, agriculture, digital technology, space, and health. And its budget is still less than 1/3rd of the US NIH budget focused solely on health.

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

#95

Post by te_chris »

Nationalists are all the same and all hate the country as it is vs how they imagine it to be - see the uk brexiters ignoring science and the creative industries.

Most of all they hate intelligent people as they see their schemes for what they are.

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

#96

Post by eleventyseven »

cyanydeez wrote: post #86
inglor_cz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

> I'm not sure how anyone with a functional desire to improve humanity decides "Hey, those americans, they sure do deserve better vaccines."

Because people understand that people don't get to choose their government or culture and that everyone deserves better healthcare. Every child who is at risk from the rise of anti-vax 100% deserves better vaccines and ought to bear 0% responsibility for what the adults do.

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

#97

Post by deepsun »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #38
KK7NIL wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh yeah, and just wait until you see you have to pay the US taxes on your income too. No, you don't. You still have to file but you get "Federal Tax Credits" for income tax paid abroad and seeing how a EU country's income tax will almost certainly be higher than the US', you'll end up paying nothing. There's also tax treaties to avoid double taxation in other ways.

I’ve seen plenty of videos covering it from expats stating they still do in fact pay taxes back to the US. Maybe the info is outdated or things have changed recently, but a cursory google makes it seems like that “No, you don’t,” isn’t true. It looks like the Federal Tax Credit only covers up to $130,000 per year of income. Then you pay on whatever you make over that (assuming you don’t have other credits).

Not a tax advice, but AFAIK, if you had to pay $1000 to US IRS, and already paid $800 to another country, then you owe US $200.

The country must have a tax treaty with US, so they exchange the info about your taxes in background. But many countries in EU has higher tax rates than US, then you owe $0.

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

#98

Post by deepsun »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #17
deepsun wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Oh yeah, and just wait until you see you have to pay the US taxes on your income too. Tax system for US citizens living abroad is insanely bad.

Only the difference.

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

#99

Post by chipotle_coyote »

SetTheorist wrote: post #78
godsinhisheaven wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

77,302,580 people voted for Trump in 2024. That is not "half the country". Nor does he or ever did have the support of "(over) half the country". His maximum approval level in 2025 was at the beginning of his term at 47% "approve" and is currently around 36%, according to the Gallup poll.

Trump didn't even win 50% of the people who voted. He got the most votes (a plurality), but ~1.5% of the votes went to third party candidates, slightly more than the gap between Harris and Trump voters. One of the many reasons this "we have a huge mandate to reshape the country in the image of Project 2025" line is so infuriating; you have to go back to 1968 to find an election with a smaller non-negative popular vote margin of victory.

(Also, "non-negative" is carrying a lot of weight, since both Trump in his first term and George W. Bush in his first lost the popular vote. The idea that a wide majority of the country is conservative, let alone MAGA, is risible.)

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

#100

Post by janalsncm »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #42
janalsncm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the fact that there isn’t enough funding for the PhDs that exist imply we should produce fewer of them? At least from what the article mentions, figuring out new and better ways to fight diseases seems like one of the most important problems a human could be working on. In my mind the solution is to provide funding and fix the funding process, not produce fewer scientists. Also, those scientists already exis…

In most of the world, most humans have to move within the realm of available resources. One could easily say that if a manager of US sees too many PhDs, it is natural to conclude that since there is not enough resources to go around, adding more resource consumers is silly. We can argue all over whether it is a good policy, or whether the allocation makes sense, or whether the resources are really not there, but, how…

The need for things exists independent of the standalone economic viability of those things. That is the entire point of public funding of various resources, including scientific funding. The “available” resources is a political decision.

Further, reduction in funds for public resources or increase in misery for scientists are not in and of themselves evidence that those resources were over-funded or too cushy. For the research discussed in the article it is quite clearly a political decision, not directly grounded in a need for less medical research.

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