Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
971–980 of 1001 posts
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#972Despite all the hyperbole in this thread I will try to speak plainly. It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc. I'm sure most people choose to close their eyes to such things and move on and focus on the actual important work but there must be unimaginable waste going o…
DEI is nominally good but its just racism. Not like reverse racism or indirect racism - just racism. There’s really no other way to slice intentionally discriminating based on race.
Whats probably most egregious is the idea that its good because its racist against the right people.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#973Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a scientist currently on an NSF grant. I am certainly poking around other countries to see what’s out there, and I’m not the only one. A lot of scientists (at least in my field, computational chemistry) have decent skills that are transferrable to other areas. So I expect quite a few to move on.
There’s not that many jobs going in academia in other countries, and you’ll be looking at a significant pay cut due to the strong US dollar. Most likely, people who leave academia will be leaving for industry instead. I do feel for those in the hard sciences, they have become collateral damage in what is mostly a battle between politicians and humanities departments.
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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#974Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a scientist currently on an NSF grant. I am certainly poking around other countries to see what’s out there, and I’m not the only one. A lot of scientists (at least in my field, computational chemistry) have decent skills that are transferrable to other areas. So I expect quite a few to move on.
There’s not that many jobs going in academia in other countries, and you’ll be looking at a significant pay cut due to the strong US dollar. Most likely, people who leave academia will be leaving for industry instead. I do feel for those in the hard sciences, they have become collateral damage in what is mostly a battle between politicians and humanities departments.
Are you saying that US is the only country in the world where there are many jobs in academia?
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#975just two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910829 the problems that led to these frauds are structural --no amount of patching the system will fix this. maybe we should consider the possibility that we are due for a refactor, which is often painful, but especially painful for people (or code) with an entrenched incentive to continue existing. i dont mean to defend what the administration is doing but I…
scientific fraud is absolutely a problem -- a universal problem, because it's inherently a human problem (it's inextricably tied to academic careers, so it's not really a money problem, it's a career problem--in other words, people aren't doing it to get rich, they're doing it to further their career or prestige; that doesn't make it any better, it just makes the context more complicated)
but what the admin is trying to do has nothing to do with "making science right". it has a very clearly stated goal of 1) rooting out anything remotely related to DEI; 2) rooting out anything related to previous investigations into Trump and the Jan6 attempted coup (see purges at FBI, DOJ); 3) cutting government spending (so there's money to pass a promised tax cut); 4) whatever Elon decides he wants to gut
None of these have anything to do with making science more honest and accurate. If that were the goal, you'd probably need to _increase_ funding because you'd need more reproducibility studies.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#976Seems like a good opportunity for other countries to recruit scientists. I think its underappreciated how much of America's modern success comes down to attracting scientists and intellectuals from war torn europe in the 30s-50s.
Not just that but capital is attracted there as well to the point there is a glut of it which is probably where at least some of the political problems arise. They literally have more money than sense while innovators elsewhere can't get funding.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#977Earlier 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.
Why this amorphous "the government" wording? The people elected Congress and Presidents, who did this over decades with popular support. Executive agencies are not unaccountable. They have specific charters and there is a huge volume of rules they have to follow. eg:( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act ). Congress writes their budgets every year and the heads of those agencies are reviewed at…
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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#978Earlier 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…
There's a lot of other benefits to the USA attracting high skill talent than just salary: * English language school system so your kids (if you have them) will speak a world language. * Racially and culturally diverse cultures, cuisines, and communities. * Exposure to goods from most of the world, even if marked up. * Availability of international franchises headquartered in other countries in major metros. * A stron…
Most of these perceived advantages are not unique to the US. I think there are only two things that still make the US more attractive nowadays: higher salaries and more jobs available to immigrants than in other places. If these two things disappear, the whole proposition starts to fall apart.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#979Earlier quoted context omitted.
The process is the problem. There is no oversight and accountability for Musk and his "DOGE". That's pure poison to Democracy and to a functioning society. Musk is neither competent nor efficient. He looks at line items and makes stuff up. He destroys a hundred useful things to destroy a bad one. Details don't matter to him. Its the same con man mentality that feeds off the works of his workforce. People who think he…
It's easy to dismiss eccentric people as conmen. But you have to consider, he has been at least partially instrumental in at least 2 impossible companies: electric cars and rockets. Regardless of what you think of his intellectual capacity, he has a proven track record of organizing people to produce exceptional outcomes ! An inevitable characteristic of his algorithm is chaos: delete as many constraints and parts as…
Electric cars are a con job though, impressive, but still a con.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#980Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic, under Biden, concluded that the virus most likely originated from the Wuhan lab https://x.com/covidselect/status/1863637371624862163?s=46
That is a subcommittee of the House of representatives- I'm not sure why you didn't mention the House, or mentioned Biden instead? It's a panel of politicians with an obvious political bias, and while some are MDs, none of have the technical background to have any type of informed opinion on virology or molecular biology related issues. The virus is not closely related to any known wild viruses that have or were bein…
> That is a subcommittee of the House of representatives- I'm not sure why you didn't mention the House, or mentioned Biden instead?
Fair point, you are right, it's irrelevant, I guess I was just trying to preemptively dispel an association to trump. The committee is bi-partisan, but it did have a republican majority at the time the report was released.
The senate report is of course not the only government report on covid origins. Most recently the CIA has commented that the virus is "more likely" to have leaked from a lab.[0]
> The virus is not closely related to any known wild viruses that have or were being studied by humans.
The closest known virus is RaTG13, collected by WIV in 2013[1]. WIV took down it's online database of bat viruses on 12 September 2019[4]. Potentially to conceal it's custody of a closer related virus.
> The technology and knowledge to create a working virus like SARS-CoV-2 from known distantly related viruses does not exist- it simply could not be done accidentally or intentionally.
Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance, applied for funding[2] to insert human proteolytic cleavage sites into SARS-like coronaviruses[3].
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd9qjjj4zy5o
[1]: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Declass...
[2]: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop...
[3]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363729325_DRASTIC_-...
[4]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349073738_An_invest...