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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

#991

Post by FilosofumRex »

bawolff wrote: post #4

Seems 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.

Please, do take the US "talent" away. Most of real world progress and wealth creation comes from engineering style tinkering and copycatting, and not from pure academic style science research. But the latter gets all the hype, media coverage and the Noble prizes. This system of glorified scientific research is a vestige of anti-communist, anti-Soviet era, which is no longer useful, if it ever were.

The smart thing is to outsource pure science research where it's the cheapest, but commercialize it where it's most profitable - that's what China is doing and doing it very well too.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#992

Post by garte »

robocat wrote: post #337
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 a kind of lottery-mentality You're the one incorrectly using the concept of gambling replying talking to someone taking about risk versus reward (investing). It is hard for somebody who believes in gambling to win at investing. The US has both monetary and social incentives to create new businesses. I live in NZ where founders are discouraged by financial incentives and by social incentives.

That's an interesting distinction you're making.

Gambling and investing are very close together. You're only able to make rational decisions on perfect information which is not available.

So investing seems to be a sort of gambling to me, it's just part of a different societal institution.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#993

Post by ModernMech »

bubblethink wrote: post #511
avs733 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have written a version of this twice and deleted but just can't let this statement stand unopposed. This is, almost inherently at this point, a rant and my last contribution to this thread. This simply is not the case, I know it is something that you and many others believe is that case but you are being lied to by actual racists. I say that as a white man working in STEM academia. Academia had a long history and t…

>Diversity statements help us avoid getting sued by students and employees. Why does anyone need to write a diversity statement ? This is bonkers. When I applied for grad school many years ago as an international student, many applications asked for a diversity statement. My stupid ass didn't even know what that meant at the time. I forced myself to write some crock about how I studied Physics and Computer Science, a…

Call it an "impact statement" then, "diversity" was just the buzzword of the day. But the requirement to articulate how your research will impact the broader community is necessary.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#994

Post by charintstr »

muaytimbo wrote: post #877

It's past time these institutions were audited. I had an NSF fellowship and was on numerous NIH grants during my PhD work (Chemist). All of them, even in 2013, had DEI language that made it clear if you were a white/chinese/indian male you were not going to be funded. The institutions, already, were self sabotaging, doling out tons of taxpayer money, not to the best ideas, but to labs that had a few women of various…

This is an absolute trash take. I've been through the NIH grant process as a white male and there was absolutely 0 mention of diversity, DEI, or whatever other qualifying characteristic of my grant. It came totally down to the content of my proposal. You don't know what you're talking about

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#995

Post by ocschwar »

yodsanklai wrote: post #916
ocschwar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of my favorite novels are David Lodge's campus novels, and an element in them is the never-ending lure of American academia for British scholars. Now it's the EU's turn. Computer science is already becoming very, very French. See you guys in Grenoble.

France is extremely unattractive for research. Lecturers positions suck (high teaching load and you need to speak French). Full-time researcher positions are extremely hard to get, and they pay very little, especially junior position. 2500 euros per month, which isn't enough in Paris and just ok in a smaller city.

What kind of employment does INRIA offer?

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#996

Post by madhadron »

lxgr wrote: post #961
madhadron wrote: post #902

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I mean it is psychologically irrelevant to almost all scientists in the US and not something they consider in their career choices at all.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#997

Post by bubblethink »

ModernMech wrote: post #993
bubblethink wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Diversity statements help us avoid getting sued by students and employees. Why does anyone need to write a diversity statement ? This is bonkers. When I applied for grad school many years ago as an international student, many applications asked for a diversity statement. My stupid ass didn't even know what that meant at the time. I forced myself to write some crock about how I studied Physics and Computer Science, a…

Call it an "impact statement" then, "diversity" was just the buzzword of the day. But the requirement to articulate how your research will impact the broader community is necessary.

It's not. And this is where I think we fundamentally disagree. I do research to scratch an itch. GPU goes brrr. It may or may not help the community. I'm doing it to amuse myself. I hope that it also amuses others.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#998

Post by lightbendover »

meijer wrote: post #484
kristjansson wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even quoting the NIH/NSF budgets (or their line items) misses the point of the current actions. Yes, they're smaller fractions of the USG budget, but they not immaterial. This is not an attempt to 'save money' at the NSF and NIH (and USAID). A serious, rational effort to reduce their costs / increase their efficiency does not start with grep-ing manuscripts for 'underrepresented'. Part Five of TFA is on the money. Th…

Note: pg appears to be "generally sympathetic" to what Musk is doing here. https://xcancel.com/paulg/status/1886741943050211408

[dead]

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#999

Post by mjfl »

emmelaich wrote: post #970
mjfl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

they ruled that it was plausible enough to pursue the case

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#1000

Post by l0t0b0r0s »

yibg wrote: post #240
electriclove wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contend that there existed too much incompetence across what the government has been funding. I’m looking forward to a ‘change’ for more competence, efficiency, innovation, accountability, etc

I have no problem with that. I don't even disagree with government waste, we all see it. If what trump and musk did was: - Audit spending (at USAID or wherever else) - Come up with details of where there is waste, being transparent about it for the public to see and review - Use that to recommend change to congress / the president, again in full public view Then I'd have no issues. The problem is, what's actually hap…

>- Audit spending (at USAID or wherever else)

I dont need a line item list to know that USAID DEI Scholarships in Burma $45.00M is wasteful spending.

>Come up with details of where there is waste, being transparent about it for the public to see and review

The waste is right there in the name. Funding DEI Scholarships in Burma is not how the American people want their taxes spent.

>- Unilaterally making changes without public review or oversight. It's a "trust me bro" stance.

The public review was the presidential election. Making changes without oversight is what an executive order is.

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