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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

#961

Post by lxgr »

madhadron wrote: post #902
ggm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to believe some will move for lifestyle reasons, but the problem is the post war IPO landscape (post 1980s really) across biotech and ICT has made one stark barrier: USA is a place where you can go from $100k to $100m vesting if you are lucky. That very few do achieve this isn't the point: you cannot do it, in almost any other economy. You have to be socially smart enough to see that a $100k salary and lifesty…

> USA is a place where you can go from $100k to $100m vesting if you are lucky. And this is irrelevant to (very conservatively) 99% of scientists in the NSF and NIH.

Never underestimate the lengths many people will go to for a cleverly framed lottery ticket.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#962

Post by lxgr »

kortilla wrote: post #283
amelius wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USA is a place where you can go from $100k to $100m vesting if you are lucky. That very few do achieve this isn't the point: you cannot do it, in almost any other economy. That's a kind of lottery-mentality that Europe doesn't want to attract anyway.

That’s not lottery mentality and thinking that it’s equivalent is why Europe isn’t innovating. If someone wins the lottery and gets rich, society isn’t better off. If someone starts a new company that made a cure for some disease and gets rich, society is much better off. You absolutely want to attract people that want to make huge breakthroughs with unlikely odds of success.

Why wouldn't you rather want to attract people with much higher odds of a reasonable quality of life regardless of whether they personally hit the jackpot?

In terms of expected value (which you'd hope that scientists and entrepreneurs understand at least at a surface level), that seems like the rational move.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#963

Post by shortrounddev2 »

macleginn wrote: post #802
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe that it is the responsibility of the NIH to decide what Americans eat?

Some governments are definitely in the business of advising people what they should eat and shielding them from harmful ads (cf. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10453145/ and https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291... ).

Yes but do you believe that that is what the NIH specifically does? Because that's what the FDA and USDA are supposed to do

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#964

Post by stevenbedrick »

anonistheback wrote: post #958
stevenbedrick wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for writing this- it aligns perfectly with what my own experience, as a white male in academia, has been with these issues. When I talk to people outside academia about “DEI”, it’s clear to me that whatever they think that term means, it has no relationship to anything I’ve ever seen in my career (involving faculty searches, recruitment of students and staff, education, involvement in clinical trial design…

I have personally hired less qualified candidates based on race and gender. I have made this choice from direct superior's comments as well as political requirements to climb the ladder of the organization I was in. The truth is that if you are on the "left" your blind to what many are thinking. In person I will never tell you the bias or problems I see. I've learned doing so would make it nearly impossible to work w…

I certainly can't (and wouldn't want to) dispute what your lived experience has been, and I am sorry that you've found yourself in those kinds of situations and interpersonal dynamics. That sucks and is not how things should be. All I can say is that, going on my own experience, that is very much not the norm, at least not as far as I have seen and been aware.

To your point about being blind to what many around me are thinking- by definition, I wouldn't know if I was, right? So I'm not going to try and argue one way or another about that. I will say, however, that I have worked with many colleagues with whom I disagreed about many different things, some of which fall under the general umbrella of what one might call "identity politics", and as a general rule have been able to have open and civilized conversations with them. One thing I have learned is to not make any assumptions about what somebody does or doesn't think about a given topic, as basically every time I've done that I have been surprised.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#965

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

causal wrote: post #960
dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #939

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Any large system is going to have a lot of inefficiencies Hence one needs the free market. The govt. typically lack the checks and balance that the free market automatically provides hence it _always_ results in bloat.

Right, understanding that the government itself creates the space for the free market to operate, so any tinkering with it ought to be done carefully. New companies will replace old ones that die- and this is good. Failed states can and do happen, and it would be hubris to think it couldn't happen here.

>Right, understanding that the government itself creates the space for the free market to operate,

In the US the gov has become too big so that it cannot support a free market. ( there are some estimates that say 60% of our income goes into taxes of various forms). More over govt are the reason for a no freemarket. For me Govt is synonymous with the mafia, a more polished, legalized version ( yes, we differ here, so we can leave it at that)

>so any tinkering with it ought to be done carefully.

Most of the govt can be removed and no one will notice except govt employees.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#966

Post by rayiner »

Spooky23 wrote: post #844
rayiner wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For nearly a hundred years, the people have voted for those reforms. That’s called governance and democracy. Reactionary people have always been upset about any change. This using an unaccountable fall guy to break the law at will, so that congress can avoid accountability is gross. Folks with your opinion like to wax on about constitutional principles, blah blah blah, as we stand by and watch the shitshow that is ha…

Ignoring the constitution isn't a "reform" it's lawlessness. There's no other developed country in the world where the government's actual structure is so divorced from its written constitution.

People voted for the administrative state in the 1930s, and they've been voting to cut back on it since 1980. Since then, the only President who won elections without promising to shrink government were Obama (in response to the disaster of Iraq and the Great Recession) and Biden (in response to COVID).

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#967

Post by achandlerwhite »

esalman wrote: post #925
macinjosh wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we the people voted for this. This is what democracy looks like.

Democracy is a broken, hackable system and it shows why. Theoretically in democracy you're supposed to be elected by the majority and then ensure the rights of the minority. When you're elected by the majority and then make the life of minorities as hard as possible, that's fascism- which is what real world practice of democracy has become.

Also he got less than 50% of the vote.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#968

Post by jccalhoun »

anonistheback wrote: post #958
stevenbedrick wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for writing this- it aligns perfectly with what my own experience, as a white male in academia, has been with these issues. When I talk to people outside academia about “DEI”, it’s clear to me that whatever they think that term means, it has no relationship to anything I’ve ever seen in my career (involving faculty searches, recruitment of students and staff, education, involvement in clinical trial design…

I have personally hired less qualified candidates based on race and gender. I have made this choice from direct superior's comments as well as political requirements to climb the ladder of the organization I was in. The truth is that if you are on the "left" your blind to what many are thinking. In person I will never tell you the bias or problems I see. I've learned doing so would make it nearly impossible to work w…

> less qualified

Who gets to decide what "qualified" means? and what counts and what doesn't count as a qualification?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#970

Post by emmelaich »

mjfl wrote: post #32
dan_can_code wrote: post #3

The cynic in me thinks that the US is going to roll over and take this fascist shake down. The optimist in me thinks that the people will rise up with a resounding NO and do something about it. Right now I'm not sure which I believe.

Reposting because my previous comment was unjustly flagged: The US just facilitated a genocide in the previous administration. This is not just me saying this - this is the consensus ruling of the International Court of Justice at the UN.

ICJ has not done so; it will take years to make a determination. (And it should fail IMHO).

And I don't think that the US was mentioned by the ICJ, even if it had confirmed genocide.

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