If you are politically connected, or stay in an narrow lane of approved work, you get your grant. But if you stray from the politically approved path, or appear disloyal to our First Citizen and the Party, then your grant will be canceled.
The remaining supporters of the incumbent party like to claim that they aren't actually doing anything worse than in the past, and if anything they are just cracking down on things that they see as subjectively bad, so it's fine. And there's an element of truth in that: so much of American policy for a long time has been subject to agency interpretation and judicial review, and there was always room for political maneuvering and corruption in the system. Where the truth becomes a lie is the omission that this is the systematic ramping up from something that happens occasionally in a mostly-functioning system, to something that happens constantly and is systematically designed to facilitate corruption and politicization.
Literally everything the current administration has claimed was going on in academia and research and government more generally is actually what they wanted to impose.
Emigrate where? And why do you assume that the country you're gonna emigrate to will have the funds necessay to fund the research? US grants are the biggest and most generous in the world. I think the USG spends over $900 Billion every year. Europe spends about 1/10th of that. Other option is China but as a foreigner, you will never get a grant there unless you work for someone else.
I know scientists who want to move back home but can't because where they are from doesn't have funding for the research they do. Even with the uncertain federal funding it's still more viable than many places around the world.
> I think the USG spends over $900 Billion every year. Europe spends about 1/10th of that
Do you mean that the EU spends 1/10th that, rather than Europe? Because France, Germany and the UK all spend €100-150bn each in grants depending on how you set your definition, and that’s atop the EU’s grant money.
Just eyeballing the figures across different countries, it looks like the USG distributes approximately the same amount in grants per capita as the EU & UK. Certainly not a 90% diff.
Generally, academia has always had a measure of bias to it. However the bias was never so blatant and never so against producing an environment where good research could feasibly be created. The vast majority of research is non political increments of existing non political increments where the main conflicts are personal beefs among flawed individual PIs and maybe being asked what fig leaf one offers to ensure that the funding doesn’t just go to a bunch of white wealthy straight men. Once you have funding you can be set for years to focus on your work, assuming you don’t do something dumb like make sexist or racist remarks, and even then your funding is generally secure you just might not get a new round 3 years later(probably will though because controversies die pretty fast).
I know a lot of hay and media exists about how academia is yadda yadda biased and anti intellectual. But of course a lot of that is cherry picked examples of controversial figures or individual missteps among individual institutions. This is a bit like taking a classroom with one rowdy asshole and then declaring the whole school must use physical violence as discipline from now on.
The chaos is affecting pretty much all areas of science, not just the controversial ones. I work in non-controversial, pretty run-of-the-mill chemistry research and the attacks on the NSF have certainly impacted our funding situation. Very long delays in proposal review, complete pivoting to AI, etc. I have co-workers panicking over the green card changes. And the overall morale is pretty grim everywhere.
Edit: don’t forget how he’s forcing NSF headquarters to move. All the NSF, not just the “bad” research.
Almost everyone has entertained the idea of leaving the US for more stability, which is required for research.
Well if they want to stop all improvements to their electric car industry that is letting them out compete European, Japanese and US manufacturers, solar panels have clearly not been important to them, and their rocket programs don’t need anyone working on transfer orbits and god forbid anyone describes the materials they test as “diverse”…
Well it could be worse because in the end it's still a democracy, for how long that's yet to be seen.
Look at Russia, they jumped off a cliff to protect a regime from democracy, and people are checked out - they take no accountability and still act confused of why Russia is being despised - all while accelerating economic and demographic decline with more than one million casualties in a special 3 day military operation.
I am sure China is loving what the US/Trump is doing. Already China is about to take the lead in medical research and I think it is ahead in renewable energy.
With this, I guess the US will end up as a third rate country much quicker.
Berlin "boutique" tech consultancy, we are seeing a noticable increase in Israeli and US engineers into our hiring pipeline. The braindrain from the autocratic countries is real.
I think most Americans, if polled, would prefer to be the global hub of scientific research, instead of an isolated silo of research that only follows a politically approved agenda.
I mean they might well prefer it, and a lot of other things, but the Republicans have done such an incredible job propagandizing everyone into "guvernment bad" thinking that they refuse to pay for it, because (mostly) Republicans have spent decades running on a platform of how the Government sucks and can't do anything, to get elected, and then set about making their Government suck and not be able to do anything. Then they go home and tell their dumbass constituents about how nothing in the Government works, and they're so propagandized against any reasonable sources of information they believe them, and vote for them, and rinse and repeat.
They've been doing this for like 70 years at this point and it's frankly a testament to how strong our institutions were that they're still kind of functioning, in the same way a 1999 Corolla you haven't gotten an oil change on since the Clinton admin is still kind of functioning.
And no I'm not going to do the song and dance for both sides. Yes, plenty of Democrats suck and I would love to see them ousted, but by and large the party consistently in power when the U.S. is in decline of it's own making is the Right. Something something facts don't care about your feelings.
Hasn’t the government always had final say on grants?
Also it really is sad to see “Hacker” News be “World News”. More Zig and less White House, please. Redditors have infiltrated. The rate of political posts have increased dramatically since 2016 election.
> Also it really is sad to see “Hacker” News be “World News”. More Zig and less White House, please.
I have been on this website for 17 years (ugh that's scary), and people have been posting variations of this remark the entire time. It's a tiresome sort of post the thousandth time.
Politics have always been a consistent part of this website: it's a big part of the world that hackers live in, and barring rule enforcement to the contrary, hackers will always find politics interesting and want to talk about it.
If you want a website with a more narrow focus, there's always lobste.rs.
More of the same at this point.
If you are politically connected, or stay in an narrow lane of approved work, you get your grant. But if you stray from the politically approved path, or appear disloyal to our First Citizen and the Party, then your grant will be canceled.
The remaining supporters of the incumbent party like to claim that they aren't actually doing anything worse than in the past, and if anything they are just cracking down on things that they see as subjectively bad, so it's fine. And there's an element of truth in that: so much of American policy for a long time has been subject to agency interpretation and judicial review, and there was always room for political maneuvering and corruption in the system. Where the truth becomes a lie is the omission that this is the systematic ramping up from something that happens occasionally in a mostly-functioning system, to something that happens constantly and is systematically designed to facilitate corruption and politicization.
Literally everything the current administration has claimed was going on in academia and research and government more generally is actually what they wanted to impose.
The Chairman will have the final say
If you want to stay a scientist, you have to emigrate. The art of continually licking the right asses to keep funding going is not science.
Emigrate where? And why do you assume that the country you're gonna emigrate to will have the funds necessay to fund the research? US grants are the biggest and most generous in the world. I think the USG spends over $900 Billion every year. Europe spends about 1/10th of that. Other option is China but as a foreigner, you will never get a grant there unless you work for someone else.
> Emigrate where? And why do you assume that the country you're gonna emigrate to will have the funds necessay to fund the research?
If the choice is between $0 in the US and >$0 someplace else, you emigrate to >$0 if you want to continue your research.
I know scientists who want to move back home but can't because where they are from doesn't have funding for the research they do. Even with the uncertain federal funding it's still more viable than many places around the world.
Well, for most "someplace else", the choice is =$0 too.
You don't think the rest of the world is doing funded research?
I wonder where you suggest researchers go that is both granting funding and not attaching similar or more stringent strings to the money?
> I think the USG spends over $900 Billion every year. Europe spends about 1/10th of that
Do you mean that the EU spends 1/10th that, rather than Europe? Because France, Germany and the UK all spend €100-150bn each in grants depending on how you set your definition, and that’s atop the EU’s grant money.
Just eyeballing the figures across different countries, it looks like the USG distributes approximately the same amount in grants per capita as the EU & UK. Certainly not a 90% diff.
1/10th?
US: $848B (2024)
EU: $508B (2024)
---
UK: $102B (2023)
Switzerland: $22B (2023)
Norway: $8.2B (2024)
OECD "Gross domestic spending on R&D"
Does the US spend that much anymore? How much are you willing to compromise the integrity of your research to get your slice of what’s left?
the US used to spend. Now borligarchs decide.
I think his main point was that the art of continually licking the right asses to keep funding going is not science.
Hasn’t academia always been that way?
Generally, academia has always had a measure of bias to it. However the bias was never so blatant and never so against producing an environment where good research could feasibly be created. The vast majority of research is non political increments of existing non political increments where the main conflicts are personal beefs among flawed individual PIs and maybe being asked what fig leaf one offers to ensure that the funding doesn’t just go to a bunch of white wealthy straight men. Once you have funding you can be set for years to focus on your work, assuming you don’t do something dumb like make sexist or racist remarks, and even then your funding is generally secure you just might not get a new round 3 years later(probably will though because controversies die pretty fast).
I know a lot of hay and media exists about how academia is yadda yadda biased and anti intellectual. But of course a lot of that is cherry picked examples of controversial figures or individual missteps among individual institutions. This is a bit like taking a classroom with one rowdy asshole and then declaring the whole school must use physical violence as discipline from now on.
Yes but in ways whose solutions admit some level of creativity or ingenuity
I don't think China needs the kind of scientists disproportionately affected by the bad orange man's vendetta.
The chaos is affecting pretty much all areas of science, not just the controversial ones. I work in non-controversial, pretty run-of-the-mill chemistry research and the attacks on the NSF have certainly impacted our funding situation. Very long delays in proposal review, complete pivoting to AI, etc. I have co-workers panicking over the green card changes. And the overall morale is pretty grim everywhere.
Edit: don’t forget how he’s forcing NSF headquarters to move. All the NSF, not just the “bad” research.
Almost everyone has entertained the idea of leaving the US for more stability, which is required for research.
Well if they want to stop all improvements to their electric car industry that is letting them out compete European, Japanese and US manufacturers, solar panels have clearly not been important to them, and their rocket programs don’t need anyone working on transfer orbits and god forbid anyone describes the materials they test as “diverse”…
You mean Vaccine researchers? Or renewable energy researchers?
oh, don't be coy.
https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/NSF-Terminated-Award...
I wouldn't even need to cherry pick.
It’s sad to watch my country commit suicide. Not only will my compatriots be poorer for it, but the rest of the world will be too.
Well it could be worse because in the end it's still a democracy, for how long that's yet to be seen.
Look at Russia, they jumped off a cliff to protect a regime from democracy, and people are checked out - they take no accountability and still act confused of why Russia is being despised - all while accelerating economic and demographic decline with more than one million casualties in a special 3 day military operation.
You can't make this up.
> “The document would also ban…block spending on things like publishing papers and attending conferences.”
This is not just picking which ideas the government supports. This sounds like it’s taking all the “fun” out of having grant funding.
Sure, that’s a flip remark, but doesn’t this have a similar sense of arguments against other government funded programs?
~SNAP food assistance is raising food prices~ [1] or ~SNAP food assistance is my tax dollars going towards anyone who says they’re hungry.~ [2]
And don’t forget to mention the replication crisis.
~Public funded grants let scientists go to parties and publish junk science.~
The cynical would argue it’s proof the scientific community is filled with charlatans milking a system that can’t police itself.
[1]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYNZT43R705/
[2]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY2k2MNxf97/
At a US conference last year, people thronged a session that talked about studying in Korea.
The amount of capability that America is burning is impressive. Since its not part of everyone else's life, it looks like it has no impact.
The same way that a drug discovery today has no impact on your life now, but is life saving 10 years down the line.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48331511
if the Dems don't also take back the Senate, this country is done
it will take longer than this decade, maybe even next, to restore the brain loss and faith in secure jobs for research
basically this country will just become a highway of non-stop warehouses, alternating ICE prisons vs "AI" datacenters
science, medicine, all research and development just gone to other countries
People have been saying the country has been done for decades. Wrong over and over again. Doomers are over represented online.
I am sure China is loving what the US/Trump is doing. Already China is about to take the lead in medical research and I think it is ahead in renewable energy.
With this, I guess the US will end up as a third rate country much quicker.
A friend in a prestigious European university said that applications were up in basically all fields
Berlin "boutique" tech consultancy, we are seeing a noticable increase in Israeli and US engineers into our hiring pipeline. The braindrain from the autocratic countries is real.
Win win for Europe and the USA, both get what they want.
I think most Americans, if polled, would prefer to be the global hub of scientific research, instead of an isolated silo of research that only follows a politically approved agenda.
They were polled, on election day. Most Americans want this, or didn't care enough to stop it. Potato, potahto.
I mean they might well prefer it, and a lot of other things, but the Republicans have done such an incredible job propagandizing everyone into "guvernment bad" thinking that they refuse to pay for it, because (mostly) Republicans have spent decades running on a platform of how the Government sucks and can't do anything, to get elected, and then set about making their Government suck and not be able to do anything. Then they go home and tell their dumbass constituents about how nothing in the Government works, and they're so propagandized against any reasonable sources of information they believe them, and vote for them, and rinse and repeat.
They've been doing this for like 70 years at this point and it's frankly a testament to how strong our institutions were that they're still kind of functioning, in the same way a 1999 Corolla you haven't gotten an oil change on since the Clinton admin is still kind of functioning.
And no I'm not going to do the song and dance for both sides. Yes, plenty of Democrats suck and I would love to see them ousted, but by and large the party consistently in power when the U.S. is in decline of it's own making is the Right. Something something facts don't care about your feelings.
if you wait by the river long enough the bodies of your enemies will float by
Remember when the director of NIH, an unlicensed MD, lied to congress two months ago and swore the award letters were coming? I do.
Hasn’t the government always had final say on grants?
Also it really is sad to see “Hacker” News be “World News”. More Zig and less White House, please. Redditors have infiltrated. The rate of political posts have increased dramatically since 2016 election.
> Also it really is sad to see “Hacker” News be “World News”. More Zig and less White House, please.
I have been on this website for 17 years (ugh that's scary), and people have been posting variations of this remark the entire time. It's a tiresome sort of post the thousandth time.
Politics have always been a consistent part of this website: it's a big part of the world that hackers live in, and barring rule enforcement to the contrary, hackers will always find politics interesting and want to talk about it.
If you want a website with a more narrow focus, there's always lobste.rs.
Could oversight like this lead to politics overriding science?
Sure, of course.
But to even ask the question presumes that politics isn’t already overriding science within the academy, just from a different direction.
The old way is a magnet pulling everything toward the industrial military consumer complex.
This new direction turns the magnet around and pushes away everything else.