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U.S. science is in chaos

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#961

Post by lbrito »

joe_mamba wrote: post #867
plaidthunder wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US citizen moves to Canada on a CUSMA visa: - 30-50% pay cut - points and lottery based immigration system that penalizes them for each year you age after 30 - frequent unfavorable rule changes - fear of being trapped forever on a temporary visa and eventually sent back to the USA, poorer than their peers who stayed stateside. Canadian citizen moves to us on equivalent CUSMA visa: - huge pay raise - retire back home…

>US citizen moves to Canada on a CUSMA visa: - 30-50% pay cut But what about "free healthcare". Don't americans want socialized healthcare over their despised privatized system? > - points and lottery based immigration system that penalizes them for each year you age after 30 Many countries with socialized healthcare do this. They only want young people and don't want older people who are a risk at becoming a burden…

Yes, Canada gets many immigrants from the most populous country in the world (1M Indians in 2024) - should that be surprising?

It also gets immigrants from the China (772k), UK (427k), Germany, France (100k each). Saying its all stick and all those people are desperate is an insane take.

Believe it or not, not every person in this planet wants to move to the US.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#962

Post by ikrenji »

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #730

Honestly its been a long time coming. Acting as if academia and ivy leauge level research isn't incredibly sick is dishonest. The PRESIDENT of stanford was fired over forged research. I have personally worked very closely with 2 incredibly credentialed researcher leaders who were very very smart fudge their work. The incentive structure for researchers is completely warped. The honest ones are there but from my exper…

burning it all down is not the way to go though

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#963

Post by cbility »

totetsu wrote: post #792
garciasn wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t speak to this particular sector; however, I have found academics to lag 5-7y behind the realities of the business world I operate in. Business moves incredibly fast; academia, not so much.

If it’s constantly 5-7 years behind isn’t it moving at the same speed just with an offset?

only if they are always going in the same direction

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#964

Post by littlekey »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #503
littlekey wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What kind of person isn't curious about the puzzle of their own existence A person who struggles to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, for one.

What a sleight of hand to suggest that science funding gathered from taxes is impacting the ability for poorer Americans to afford their food. No wonder politicization of science funding is so successful on the right: it’s so rhetorically intoxicating.

Yeah, that's the point I was making; not that those people shouldn't be interested in science funding, but that when you're in that position you're going to end up voting for whoever promises you lower taxes etc. (regardless of whether those promises end up being just hot air).

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#965

Post by Blackstrat »

wredcoll wrote: post #825
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those things a tiny rounding error. Interest and social services are the only thing the government actually spends money on.

I know it's fashionable to say stuff like this, but you know what's also a rounding error by that logic? THE SCIENTIFIC GRANTS WE'RE DISCUSSING. Like, sure, 600million for a ballroom is small compared to the annual interest payments but it could fund, dunno, at least a dozen scientists. Maybe even 2 dozen! Add in the 1.6 billion dollars trumo was trying to embezzle from the irs and we could get a couple dozen more st…

Perhaps it could. And perhaps you think erecting tents on the White House grounds for state events, like a third world country, is okay as well. The government funds a ridiculous amount of "science", some of which has no utility. That's not the government's role. These types of projects can be funded by the university or private industry or not at all. Being a "scientist" and wanting to research some idea DOES NOT entitle you to taxpayer funding. Again, as I and others here have noted, the money is in interest, defense, and transfer payments. Personally, I'd like to see reforms on all social programs. If one is capable of working, then they work. Until you live somewhere that has a thriving economy in government money and see the abuse, you have no idea what you're talking about. Should government money be used to buy booze? Potato chips? I assure you that it happens everyday. I've seen it first hand. So fix the social programs and then we'll talk about funding fringe science research. And let's quit funding the 120+ foreign biolabs doing DOF research. We've seen that script before.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#967

Post by ww520 »

frm88 wrote: post #871
ww520 wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up to 40% unemployment or very low employment.

What? 4.6% https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.NE.ZS?locat...

That's because they've reclassified unemployment status. Anyone working 1 hour out of N months is not considered unemployed.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#968

Post by ieatcandlewax »

customguy wrote: post #574
noosphr wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a previous project I ended up talking with a scientist who couldn't shut up about how she was 1/4th Indigenous and how many grants that could open for our collaboration. If I wanted racial purity in my collaborators it get a time machine to 1930s Germany. That someone was doing this in 2022 was extremely off-putting. That they were getting government support because of it makes the me not care much about the fact…

> If I wanted racial purity in my collaborators it get a time machine to 1930s Germany. If you knew more about it than some memes about racism, you'd know that the nihilism, this thin-skinned "at least we'll take them with us" sentiment you just expressed, was at the heart of it. But they had a lost war and the 1920s to be bitter about, the treaty of Versailles, not someone who "couldn't shut up" about something. The…

You're right nihilism is a never a productive reaction to have, but I find it a bit tone deaf to say it now after the past 10 years of ever increasing partisan capture of science agencies.

If being apathetic to a broken system makes you Nazi, what would be a better approach to the problem outlined by the person you were responding to? How would you keep political agents out of science institutions?

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#969

Post by anon84873628 »

jarjoura wrote: post #770
anon84873628 wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. Michael Wolff illustrates nicely how Trump is the literal embodiment of the "greed is good" 80's culture. Of course we also have Ronald Reagan to thank. And that administration spawned the career of John Roberts, which we can now see as a through line to the destruction of The Court.

It's a bit reductive to pin this on Ronald Reagan. The entire western world had been shifting towards neoliberalism as a direct response to the eastern world shifting towards communism since WW2. Trump also isn't the embodiment of anything other than the guy who didn't take it seriously and suddenly ended up with the job because the voters in the country decided it couldn't be any worse under him than whatever the cu…

Trump is the embodiment of a culture that was willing to make that vote. Of the populace that was tricked by The Apprentice and The Art of the Deal. Of the media more concerned with engagement than information. He spent his lifetime curating the image that made him uniquely positioned for his role, even if he didn't expect to get it.

Re: U.S. science is in chaos

#970

Post by ieatcandlewax »

godelski wrote: post #819
caseysoftware wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Academic experience typically doesn't count." Why not?

> Why not? Weird egos. I moved from academia to industry and constantly got told "In industry we just care that 'it works'". I thought that was a weird premise, given... you know... who doesn't? But the more time I spent in industry the more time I found that they in fact do not care if it actually works. What seems to matter more is the politics and about "working"[0] the right way using the right new buzzword[1] Tr…

>If anything, I've heard most of my coworkers (at multiple companies) say something along the lines of "we have to move so fast that there's no time to think.

Anecdotally, the tide on this is changing—all the low-hanging fruit has been picked and I see/hear many of my older colleagues regret not having gone the whole way with a PhD. This on top of AI being able to answer many of the engineering questions you might have learned the answers to in a masters/bachelors.

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