28 ms·

What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

• jorblumesea 2y ago
  US loss, Europe's win. Same thing with the trade wars and other Trumpian policies. Short term gains to look strong but long term just degrades US soft power and decades of ally building.
  • MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
    US screws up and Europe gains some points is a best case scenario. I don't mean to sound like a patriot, but the US is a big deal and it's currently administered by unsound forces.
  • physicsguy 2y ago
    Europe doesn’t have the budget.
• iancmceachern 2y ago
  Not good
  • ncr100 2y ago
    Yep. Destruction of systems (orgs, ...) that take care of us. Meanwhile, TikTok (et al) tells us to talk about ourselves ... the current focus of attention of the Fifth most popular social network of the citizens of the United States. [1] [2] Q: how could we have avoided this pathetic crawl into encouraging stupidity? (Feeling sad, thinking, 'Look at our Works, and cry.') [1] https://later.com/blog/tiktok-trends/ https://later.com/blog/tiktok-trends/ [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-net...
• dan_can_code 2y ago
  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.
  • mjfl 2y ago
    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.
    • emmelaich 2y ago
      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.
      • mjfl 2y ago
        they ruled that it was plausible enough to pursue the case
    • freshpots 2y ago
      Barring all of the hyperbole of your comment, I find it astounding how you're unaware of this with such a "thumb on the pulse" of world news: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/feb/04/benjamin-netanyahu-donald-trump-israel-gaza-middle-east-ceasefire-latest-live-news https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/feb/04/benjamin-... Trump said Palestinians have “no alternative” but to “permanently” leave Gaza due to the devastation left by Israel’s war on Hamas. He described Gaza as a “pure demolition site” and claimed Palestinians would “love to leave Gaza”. “I don’t know how they could want to stay,” he said. Trump’s comments marked the first time he has publicly floated the permanent relocation of Palestinians from Gaza. The US president’s remarks in effect endorsed ethnic cleansing of the territory over the opposition of Palestinians and the neighbouring countries. Trump is literally for completely ridding Gaza of the Palestinians so Israel can colonize it. An ACTUAL genocide.
      • tehjoker 2y ago
        > Trump is literally for completely ridding Gaza of the Palestinians so Israel can colonize it. An ACTUAL genocide. This was the goal of the Biden administration. The difference now is that without Israel demolishing Gaza every day, the resistance has demonstrated they cannot be dislodged. Trump has no credibility. They simply cannot do it and both the U.S. and Israeli officials that enabled this are war criminals that should be prosecuted immediately.
• bawolff 2y ago
  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.
  • robbiewxyz 2y ago
    I hold the idea that brain drain, i.e. emigration of skilled people, is one of only a small handful of real methods to hold fascism to account. With that, as things start to get real bad it seems leaving is something of a moral duty for anyone who cares, has skills that hold real weight, and can still afford to do so. Obviously where this "real bad" point is is hard to say, and there's important tradeoffs to consider. I also could be talked out of this position but from what I see it seems about accurate.
    • nyc_data_geek1 2y ago
      There were skilled people in the French and Dutch resistances, as well.
    • nonrandomstring 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
        At this point it's a question of whether the fundie extremists take out the broligarchs first, or vice versa. You can't run a modern economy by being anti-science and anti-education. Believing otherwise is a self-harming absurdity. There will absolutely be a brain drain, and the EU is already thinking about how to take advantage of it.
    • lanstin 2y ago
      And really who would choose to stay in 1938 Germany if you could leave. Even if you are some rich upper class Herr Doktor Professor, life for the next 20 years in Germany wasn't that great compared to England or the US. Why risk having your children killed paratrooping into Greenland. The world is still quite beautiful and quite full of kind people.
• Facemelters 2y ago
  The idea is to destroy every part of the American federal government so that techno fiefdoms can be ruled by oligarchs. It's pretty obvious. Not sure if we can stop it! In this particular case, the goal is to privatize science entirely.
  • mrtesthah 2y ago
    https://www.vcinfodocs.com/venture-capital-extremism https://www.vcinfodocs.com/venture-capital-extremism
    • Hikikomori 2y ago
      I'm convinced that these people and in particular Jarvin read Snow Crash and want to make it reality. Video with similar content, shows them actually talking about their ideas and plans: https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no
• thatfrenchguy 2y ago
  So many brilliant researchers in the US are funded by NSF grants. Even beyond public research, just the private sector benefits just from the training (and associated freedom from not having to chase money and TA) that NSF fellows get is immense. Injecting dumb politics and refusing grants just because people put the words "biases" in their application is a great way to appeal to Republicans's undereducated voters (see https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/4BD2D522-2092-4246-91A5-58EEF99750BC https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/4BD2D522-2092... for an example of their idiotic rhetoric) but also a crazy gamble on the US's ability to be a superpower in two decades. Just look at what happened in France when right-wing governments started defunding research: a slow but massive brain drain of the best minds. What does the current administration think will happen to our economy when they start burning future brains when they're at the seed stage?
  • nyc_data_geek1 2y ago
    It's very clear once you realize the people perpetrating this don't care one whit for the "economy" writ large, only their personal wealth and that of their cronies. The dumber, meaner and more desperate the population is, the easier the time they think they'll have ruling over them, as unto kings in this new gilded age. Of course, they forget what came after the gilded age. It's raining stockbrokers - err, oligarchs!
    • dekhn 2y ago
      that's bad strategic thinking (obviously) because it places at a huge disadvantage to our main competitors.
      • nyc_data_geek1 2y ago
        What makes you think they care?
        • dekhn 2y ago
          It's hard to be a feudal lord with bows and arrows when the civilization next door has cannons and covets your resources. I thought they'd care because if they are working so hard to sieze control, you'd think they'd want to hold on to it.
• boc 2y ago
  Watching the tech community waltz into DC and pretend that they know how all the levers of government work is pathetic. Are there inefficiencies? Sure. Are there places to improve? Of course. But pretending that they can understand the intricacies of literally decades of institutional knowledge and deep connections across the globe in the course of a single weekend is asinine. We need to do better. The US government isn't Twitter. Breaking things simply because you have the power is the opposite of leadership, it's nihilism.
  • lukev 2y ago
    And (as a complete side note) it has all worked out very poorly for Twitter, as a revenue-generating platform. No reason to think it will be better when applied to the federal government.
    • Damogran6 2y ago
      Twitter wasn't purchased for it to make money, it was purchased to get Musk in the Whitehouse.
      • anonylizard 2y ago
        In that respect it is astonishingly successful by every measure. Musk got his global political shift and becoming co-president of the US for a causal $40 billion.
        • cyberlurker 2y ago
          But was the complete annihilation of all safety measures on twitter and chasing away most advertisers necessary to accomplish that? Couldn’t he have bought twitter, truly kept it an open place to discuss topics with less misinformation, kept his advertisers, and still shit post and donate his way into the White House? He undoubtedly slashed spending, but didn’t he also tank revenue? The question I have is was any of that really necessary for him to get to where he is right now?
  • 2y ago
• tmshapland 2y ago
  Thank you for posting this.
• ysofunny 2y ago
  maybe everything will turn into a startup whenever any team comes up with anything worthwhile then they get the money nevermind the fact they need the money to do anything at all, oops
• Damogran6 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • pizzafeelsright 2y ago
    What books did "they" burn? I'm asking about the actual books.
    • dekhn 2y ago
      it's not a good time to act like an obtuse edge lord
    • angoragoats 2y ago
      Are you asking about the Nazis in Germany? The first major book burning was in Berlin at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research) where they burned thousands of books containing information about, among other things, LGBT people. Or are you asking about the current situation? They’re trying to burn all of it —- any research papers funded by the NSF or NIH.
      • pizzafeelsright 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • lanstin 2y ago
          > I'm okay with the CDC being torn down. They lied and lost all trust. Unfortunately, advanced technological based civilization is not "ok" with destroying the collective and knowledge based activities of scientific research. One can't advance far if you stop science when it makes mistakes - the advantage of science is it finds and fixes the mistakes. This, and the federal funding of research, is why the collective knowledge of humanity is doubling ever decade or so.
          • greenavocado 2y ago
            The only collective and knowledge based activities of scientific research that the people have access to is sci-hub, who have done more to advance scientific understanding for humanity than most government institutions have in decades
• huqedato 2y ago
  Part Seven: Enter DOGE. Part Eight: Hostile takeover by Musk & co.
• searine 2y ago
  Do you hear that sucking sound? It's biggest brain drain you've ever seen. It already been happening, I know several great scientists who've already left, this BS just kicked it into high gear.
  • throwfgtpwd234 2y ago
    Some ham-fisted troglodytes didn't know what they're doing or the side-effects of their actions (like people dying or intellectual property leaving), but they want credit and approval for "owning the libs" and "efficiency" by smashing things they don't understand and calling it "progress".
  • batushka5 2y ago
    This sounds like Hollywood celebs leaving to Canada - no one did. So where will so called top scientists go? Real scientists will continue their work after weeding out. But the DEI, climate, gender studies and other bottom feeders will need to pack for Europe. Or learn a trade.
    • searine 2y ago
      >So where will so called top scientists go? Back to their home countries. I can think of about a half dozen world leading scientists I work with every day who would pack up their labs if funding dried up. They already did it once to move to the US because that is where the most funding was for these diseases. If you make the US inhospitable to these talented people, they will not think twice about finding a country that doesn't consider them "bottom feeders". Also. Believe it or not, there are other fields than DEI/Climate/Gender studies, and when you remove the incentive to work in the US, the leaders in these other fields will leave.
• zombiwoof 2y ago
  Are we burning Beatles records yet. My how we’ve fallen. Trump could says he’s bigger than Jesus and sell a bible with the quote
• icnexbe7 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • isaacremuant 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • pyinstallwoes 2y ago
    Get outta here with rationale.
  • SkipperCat 2y ago
    You have no evidence to back any of this up. You're just trying to flood the zone with bullshit in order to smoke screen the destruction of our liberal society. And I mean liberal in the classic sense of holding the truth paramount in science, law and society.
• dmagee 2y ago
  There seems to be a lot of negativity from the HN crowd about this. But, the reality is that your fellow Americans voted for this. If you don'y like it, you're going to have to convince people that it's a bad idea. Getting worked up about Trump or Musk or SV bros isn't getting us anywhere.
  • TylerE 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • jakeinspace 2y ago
    First, Trump voters didn't exactly vote for this, at least not many. Identify politics and owning the libs, sure, but I'd say that a minority of his voters wanted to totally dismantle the administrative state - or if they thought that sounded good, they may not have been aware the repercussions of that on their lives. Second, we all have a right to bitch about what seems like a new America being formed. If things go as badly as many of us seem to think, well it doesn't really matter if we convince trump voters they were wrong, because democracy will be have evaporated anyway. Our society has been almost molded for this moment: Americans are more isolated and alienated from each other than ever. The internet today is a fundamentally difficult place to organize any sort of coherent protest when the places people post are algorithmically controlled, manipulated by bots, and moderated. We are broken as a society. What a waste was all that 20th century plundering and bloodshed and brilliance and effort. I would imagine that even for someone looking at the teetering American Empire with satisfaction, there is a bit of emptiness in just how stupid and pathetic this all is.
    • goatlover 2y ago
      Well voters have two-four years to vote this out of office if they don't like the results. History says the Republicans will likely fail to keep power, and it will be the Democrats turn again to set the ship right, or whatever.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
• throwawaymaths 2y ago
  just two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910829 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'm warning that everyone crying doom and gloom and threatening to move abroad, etc. might be eating crow. ironically, the very people most likely to move abroad (in it for the career, not for the principle) are biased to be the types bringing down our system of science. bad science is the science equivalent of a zirp.
  • Trasmatta 2y ago
    > no amount of patching the system will fix this. > maybe we should consider the possibility that we are due for a refactor People in tech need to stop with those analogies. A government is not a codebase. You can not apply the principles of "refactoring" and "patching" in the same way. It just doesn't work like that. But the problem is we have a bunch of people (some malicious, some clueless) trying to do exactly that.
    • anonylizard 2y ago
      Government is exactly a codebase. Government bureaucracies is essentially constricting human judgement to more robotic code-like behavior, that's the only way to build large systems. You say government is not like code, then what exactly is it? Can you describe it in an effective way? Or are you just going to raise your hand up and say there's nothing we can do about it, nothing we can do about the $2 trillion/year titanic deficit? Historical governments often needed little beyond an army and a tax collection system. And tax collection system was primarily data gathering and analysis, since if you knew how much property someone owned, you can easily tax them for an appropiate amount. The tech way of thinking has proven extremely successful in many industries already. That's why tech companies (and tech adjacent ones, like say quant trading, or even index fund trading) have been so economically dominant, and utterly kicked out the traditional MBAs from their pedestals. Stop being a self hating programmer who despises the mentality of tech.
• fasteddie31003 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • throwawaymaths 2y ago
    yeah. just two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910829
  • SkipperCat 2y ago
    Yes, but this is not the way to go about enacting change. This is just carnage to prepare for tax cuts.
    • justanotheratom 2y ago
      "Turns out that when you taint good programs like disease monitoring by putting them in a bag with all the color revolution funding and censorship and shaking it really hard, people want to burn the shit bag instead of picking out the good bits." - https://x.com/MrKapitalist/status/1886670873618473325 https://x.com/MrKapitalist/status/1886670873618473325 Check this $459 million opaque grant to [Redacted] in Nepal: https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_LOGNPL001COM_9543/ https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_LOGNPL001COM_9543...
      • allturtles 2y ago
        Yes, many people are impulsive and foolish, we shouldn't encourage that. Nor should we cheer on the attempt to create an all-powerful executive that can do whatever it wants with no checks from existing legislation, the courts, or Congress. Trump's goal seems to be an elective dictatorship, and we'll see how long the elective part lasts.
        • justanotheratom 2y ago
          why do you assume there are no checks?
• yibg 2y ago
  Part of me thinks this is just incompetence. People put in charge to "change" things without knowing what the thing is or does and just randomly mashing buttons.
  • electriclove 2y ago
    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
    • einrealist 2y ago
      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 is a genius are gullible.
      • justanotheratom 2y ago
        Can you give specific examples to back up your comments about Musk? I am quite gullible otherwise.
        • throwawaymaroon 2y ago
          [dead]
        • einrealist 2y ago
          - He claimed the US funded bio-weapons when they found payments for gain of function research. - Calling payments to non-profit organizations fraudulent on a whim. - The sweeping condemnation of what USAID was doing. - His call for a blanket drop of regulations. Either he knows better or he is totally lost in his sauce. Hard to say what's worse for where he is right now. I believe, he does not care. He only cares about his conception of the world and how AI and Mars are more important than those tiny tiny human problems. Society has to serve him and his god complex. He was told to find his subsidies and tax cuts by himself. That's what he is doing.
• username223 2y ago
  As Sir Ian Jacob said, the Allies won World War II because "our German scientists were better than their German scientists." Brain drain is a real problem for fascist countries.
  • goatlover 2y ago
    So who is fighting the US in WW3?
    • guerrilla 2y ago
      I guess the only option is everyone.
  • lanstin 2y ago
    So should we move to Thailand or Canada or ???
    • antigeox 2y ago
      [flagged]
    • username223 2y ago
      Canada, the EU, Australia, ... Places with solid research institutions and less-dysfunctional governments.
      • scarab92 2y ago
        CA, AU, and some EU countries are about to elect conservative governments
        • aqueueaqueue 2y ago
          Your best option is sometimes your least worse. There is conservative... then there is Trump.
        • 2y ago
• cbare 2y ago
  The US has the strongest university and research system in the world. Wrecking that will be one of the worst acts of self-harm ever.
  • electriclove 2y ago
    It has been wrecked. This is an attempt at fixing it.
    • sanderjd 2y ago
      It hasn't and it isn't.
    • throwfgtpwd234 2y ago
      Wrecked how? Fixed how? Can you describe either or are you just saying words?
      • magicink81 2y ago
        US scientific research funding is largely driven by nepotism and favoritism. Insiders know but don't talk too much about it. They have a few options: a) just quietly stay in the system trying their best to do good work b) join the gravy train through social climbing c) quietly leave and move on with their careers.
        • wileydragonfly 2y ago
          lol no
        • nerevarthelame 2y ago
          If that's true, and you've offered no evidence to support that it is, canceling funding for anything tangentially associated with "DEI" doesn't seem like it actually solves any of those problems.
          • selimthegrim 2y ago
• Gabriel54 2y ago
  Despite 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 on in addition to unethical race based preferences.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • tomlockwood 2y ago
    Do you have any verifiable numbers to back up the impact?
    • dnissley 2y ago
      "A 2021 American Enterprise Institute survey of academic job postings found that 19% required DEI statements, and elite institutions were more likely to require them." https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/fire-statement-use-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-criteria-faculty-hiring-and https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/fire-statement-use-di... "Speech First, a group advocating for First Amendment rights on US campuses, released an investigation on Thursday that found 165 of 248 selected institutions — from American University to Williams College — mandate DEI-related classes to meet general education requirements." https://nypost.com/2024/04/11/us-news/two-thirds-of-us-colleges-universities-require-dei-classes-to-graduate-report/ https://nypost.com/2024/04/11/us-news/two-thirds-of-us-colle...
      • relaxing 2y ago
        “DEI exists” isn’t an argument.
        • kortilla 2y ago
          That is quite literally what this thread is about.
• bad_haircut72 2y ago
  I support scientific research of course but to play devils advocate, how can the USA afford this? They run a deficit and have an enormous debt. I dont understand how this can continously be ignored. Of course nobody wants cuts but how can it go on? Same with the foreign aid, isnt that something a country running a surplus should be worried about?
  • colingauvin 2y ago
    How can they afford not to? Subtract public research funding from the economy. Go ahead - see what's left. I'll shortcut it real quick - we're all dead from lung cancer and leaded gasoline, so there's no one to do the calculation.
    • bad_haircut72 2y ago
      ?? healthy people stay alive, sick people will die. Of course this is terrible but "we will all die without publically funded research" doesnt hold water. Again Im not in favour of the cuts I just cant understand how the USA continues to borrow/print money and it doesnt all come crashing down. I dont think even Trump is anti-medicine, just pro fiscal responsibility.
      • colingauvin 2y ago
        I can't tell if you're intentionally misunderstanding, or not. So I'll spell it out: public non-biased research is a public good. Oil companies weren't going to publish research saying leaded gas was bad. Tobacco companies weren't going to publish research saying cigarettes were bad. Have fun being healthy when you inhale leaded gasoline every day. Forget about things like, you know, the internet. Or any medicine. BTW, private companies are not paying for basic biological research. Good luck making a drug when no one knows what target to drug. VC firms will park their money in the bank instead. The value from biotechs is already marginal - investment basically vanished when interest rates went above 4.
        • bad_haircut72 2y ago
• zjp 2y ago
  If they don't start reviewing grants again soon I'll be able to say I was fired by Donald Trump.
  • wileydragonfly 2y ago
    Reviewing? They’ve paused payments and award letters.
• markus_zhang 2y ago
  I'm interested to see what they find out. It is rare to have such insights into these.
• wileydragonfly 2y ago
  I’m in leadership at a place everyone here has heard of. We are in absolute panic behind the scenes.
  • pizlonator 2y ago
    Hang in there. Hope for the best. Don’t give up.
    • khazhoux 2y ago
      Yup. 2 weeks down, 190 to go!
      • riffraff 2y ago
        1% done
        • addandsubtract 2y ago
          Progress will stop at 99%.
  • throwfgtpwd234 2y ago
    Remember that that is the goal. Acknowledge the data and deal with it as another obstacle. Also, I'm wondering if multiple universities could band together to file a TRO and/or a class-action lawsuit against the government for something like estoppel.
  • nonethewiser 2y ago
    Why do you think your workplace will be affected?
  • twic 2y ago
    FWIW this comment would work on almost any HN post.
• softwaredoug 2y ago
  The big thing is this isn't really about any real monetary savings. What we get out of these budgets is a bargain: > The biggest single share of the NIH budget goes to the NCI ($7.8 billion in 2024), and the second-most to the NIAID ($6.5 billion) with the National Institute of Aging coming in third at $4.4 billion. (See the tables on numbered pages 11 and 46 of that link at the beginning of the paragraph for the details). > And to put those into perspective, the largest single oulay for the Federal government is Social Security benefits ($1.4 trillion by themselves), with interest on the national debt coming in second at $949 billion, Medicare comes in third at $870 billion, and the Department of Defense fourth at $826 billion and Medicaid next at $618 billion.
  • drivebyhooting 2y ago
    Social security and Medicare are inexpugnable liabilities.
    • jaredklewis 2y ago
      Social security yes, but it seems to me that reducing the cost of Medicare and Medicaid should be very much possible. We need to provide healthcare but it should be possible to make that less expensive
      • arrosenberg 2y ago
        Medicare would become cheaper tomorrow if the government would negotiate drug prices down. Trump isn't going to do that.
        • jay_kyburz 2y ago
          Or manufacture drugs themselves, and distribute "at cost".
        • credit_guy 2y ago
          Something like this? [1] https://www.cms.gov/inflation-reduction-act-and-medicare/medicare-drug-price-negotiation https://www.cms.gov/inflation-reduction-act-and-medicare/med...
• stainablesteel 2y ago
  What i've learned in the last week is that if an unelected bureaucrat thinks it will hurt the Trump administration to follow their order through a manner of malicious compliance, then they will. But if they don't, then they'll ignore the order and pretend they're defending the constitution. a serious audit of the endless money printing of the federal government is well overdue
  • softwaredoug 2y ago
    You don't need some genius brain auditing to know that 99% of the money goes to social security, defense spending, medicare, medicaid, and interest on debt. The stuff DOGE is playing with is such a tiny percentage it won't move the needle.
    • bux93 2y ago
      But imagine all that grant money going to, say, grants for SpaceX and EV-subsidies for Tesla..
• refurb 2y ago
  Ok, so all payments are paused while funding is reviewed? Allowance for emergency payments to keep the lights on? This is taxpayers money and these agencies report to the President under the executive power. A shocker that government agencies might need account for spending. And I’m sorry “its not a lot of money” doesn’t fly when all the “its not a lot of money” is $8 trillion dollars. The federal deficit will never get smaller if nobody looks at the “its not a lot of money” line items.
  • tills13 2y ago
    This stuff is a rounding error against SS, Medicare, and the military.
    • refurb 2y ago
      It’s all a rounding error until it isn’t. Doesn’t make tossing $50B out the window “ok”. It’s like the people making a $100k who don’t know where all the money goes. It’s all just a rounding error, but rounding errors add up fast.
  • a_puppy 2y ago
    Federal money is allocated by Congress, and the President is required to spend the money as allocated by Congress. The President does not have authority to cut spending. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_fu... > Ok, so all payments are paused while funding is reviewed? ... This is taxpayers money ... A shocker that government agencies might need account for spending. Reviewed for what? Reviewed for whether the spending was authorized by Congress? If Musk finds that money is being spent in ways that are not authorized by Congress, and cuts that spending, great. Reviewed for whether the money is being used efficiently to accomplish the goals set by Congress? Again, if Musk finds ways to stretch the same amount of money to accomplish more, that's great. For example, if Musk makes USAID more efficient so it delivers more aid for the same amount of money, that would be wonderful. Or "reviewed" for whether Trump/Musk agree with them? It's illegal for the President to unilaterally cut programs just because he doesn't like them.
• tomlockwood 2y ago
  Isn't the elephant in the room here the massive overspending on the US military which Trump and Elon and Satya and Bezos and Altman don't seem to care about?
  • forgotoldacc 2y ago
    His voters would be very upset if a single dollar was cut from the military budget. It's the same crowd and mindset that was all in on the Iraq War. The second amendment is the only amendment and anything seen as weakening the country in terms of actual strength would result in windows being smashed again. But cutting money from weak nerds? Destroying education? That's fine. Nobody needs it.
• SquibblesRedux 2y ago
  The financial position of the US is precarious, at best. I seriously doubt there is any painless way to correct course, as Congress seems to have lost the ability to compromise. Looking into the future, the US will go the way of the former Soviet Union if it does not take corrective action. Is the current situation the only way, the best way, or even a good way to address the country's economic position? That is a matter of perspective. As is always the case, people will take sides. The unreasonable people (on any side) will refuse to compromise and spew inflammatory rhetoric, most often in defense of their own self interests and at the expense of others' interests. I believe that the most sensible approach is for all parties to adhere to a metered diligence, always being mindful that the country is a collective of disparate interests. The whole point of a democracy is that through all the ups and downs, things work themselves out eventually. Sometimes there are setbacks and other times there is progress. Things may seem chaotic, but this too shall pass.
  • tstactplsignore 2y ago
    How do you reconcile these deeply basic facts with your point of view? 1. The US economy was the best in the world in 2024. 2. The NIH, USAID, and NSF budgets make up just a percentage point or two of US spending. 3. These programs consistently generate ROI >>1. In light of these painfully obvious facts, isn't it clear that the priorities of this administration have nothing to do with government finances? And that even trying to frame the discussion that way is blatantly irresponsible?
    • SquibblesRedux 2y ago
      Although there are minor fluctuations in the US debt load, the mean is clearly going up without bounds. Interest creates an exponentially worsening problem with increasing competition for resources. Competition for resources breeds conflict. Congress' lack of will to compromise leads to winner-take-all scenarios with wild swings in policy. Language such as "deeply basic facts" and "blatantly irresponsible" is part of the problem. I am as guilty as the next person for experiencing heightened emotions and using adverbs carrying negative connotations that lack denotational substance. However, my experience has been that the storms are best weathered by calm, consistent, and persistent actions or behaviors.
• sashank_1509 2y ago
  I got to hand it to Elon Musk, I was in the “nothing ever happens” camp and he completely, absolutely proved me wrong. The Great men theory of history posits that a lot of History happens due to the action of a few great men. Great has a baggage of positive connotation, I prefer calling it the “Important People of History” theory (to also be gender neutral). It posits that if Hitler didn’t exist, Germany wouldn’t go down the path it did, if Gandhi didn’t exist, India wouldn’t go down the path it did. It is an alternative to the more modern view, that tries to find sociological, economic and environmental reasons for Historic Change. I leaned towards the Great Men View but was not fully convinced by it. Looking at Elon Musk, leads me to believe that this theory is true. If Elon did not exist/ tie himself to Trump, I don’t think Trump could have done even 10% of the dismantling of the Administrative State that Elon has done. Elon has a certain will to power, flagrantly breaks all norms but advertises it on Twitter for his Twitter supporters, an insane sense of urgency to move fast, an ability to attract talented 20 yr olds to join him for “low pay”, and “100 hr weeks” that gets stuff done. The Trump ecosystem was mostly professional grifter (and crypto scammers), polemicists who only talked the talk, and a small set of true believers who never had a private sector job in their life. If it was just them, I might have been right in the “Nothing Ever Happens” camp. Elon and his ecosystem has given them fangs. They still probably can direct Elon, to a limit, at some things like H1b immigration they will probably concede to Elon but in return they will actually remake the government in their image. Elon is turning out to be one of the “Important People in History”.
  • antigeox 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
    >I was in the “nothing ever happens” camp and he completely, absolutely proved me wrong. Me too.
• deleted 2y ago
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• ddword 2y ago
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• jl6 2y ago
  It seems like some new doctors have arrived and diagnosed the patient with terminal cancer. Being new, they have no experience of surgery so are hacking out the tumor with a blunt instrument, excising good tissue and bad. Some hope the surgeons will improve their skill over time. Some say the patient won’t survive. Some say the patient wouldn’t have survived if they did nothing. Some say the patient never had cancer in the first place.
  • olelele 2y ago
    If you spice up the language and name the doctor Benway you basically wrote a summary of a Burroughs short story :)
  • tlogan 2y ago
    Not really. It’s more like this: Imagine a china shop where you don’t like some of the items or how they’re priced. So, you send an elephant into the shop. The result? The elephant doesn’t just break the pieces you dislike—it smashes everything.
• oglop 2y ago
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  • nlitened 2y ago
    How about we let senile old men sign executive orders they are unable to read in full or recall half an hour later? At least we will not know who’s making those executive orders, so we will not have some easy target to complain about. Also probably better not cut government spending at all (lest we cut something important), until federal debt servicing exceeds all other spendings combined, and dollar spirals into hyperinflation.
• dr_dshiv 2y ago
  How will high-intelligence AI change things in the next 5 years of science?
• stefanoco 2y ago
  This is trending on HN at the same time of another related citation, which makes a lot of sense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42943973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42943973
• jmward01 2y ago
  This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those responsible accountable.
  • realusername 2y ago
    Yes let's call a spade a spade, it's a coup. Trump is passing as much stuff as quickly as he can to bypass the separation of powers while they catch up.
    • Gareth321 2y ago
      I don't think you can call a democratically elected president doing what he promised to do a coup.
      • realusername 2y ago
        So first he lied about Project 2025 and then, "whatever the president does is democratic" is just an obvious sophism, no democracy works like that. Democraties work with checks and balances, which are being broken right now. On a final note, historically a lot of coup came from elected presidents
        • Gareth321 2y ago
          I don't think he lied about Project 2025. It is a collection of more than 700 policy proposals. Some completely normal, milquetoast Republican policies. Some more extreme. No matter what Trump implemented, it would have covered some of those policies, leading to accusations that he's "doing Project 2025". I don't think he would ever have read 900 pages, so I don't think he read it, and I don't think he lied. I didn't claim everything he does is democratic. I claimed that what he is doing is as promised to voters. Don't take my word for it. He is now at the highest approval rating he has ever had in office (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/dona...). People obviously feel he is delivering what he promised. I don't think any checks and balances are being broken. Trump and the Republicans won the popular vote (which is kind of insane in an of itself), the Electoral College, the House, and the Senate. They have an unprecedented mandate to carry out unprecedented change by voters who were obviously VERY unhappy with the Democrat Party. > On a final note, historically a lot of coup came from elected presidents I can't fathom what you're trying to argue with this. That we should stop elections because the people might elect an authoritarian?
• khana 2y ago
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• deleted 2y ago
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• ReptileMan 2y ago
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  • aunetx 2y ago
    So free speech is not a constitutionnal right if I follow your argument? You sound quite scary right now... (and I am not even concerned, not american)
    • ReptileMan 2y ago
      Things become a bit more murky when you free speech while on somebody's payroll and representing them. Commercial speech has somewhat less protections than regular speech. And anyway the first amendment is about the congress. It doesn't limit the capacity of the executive branch to do ideological purges as the McArthysm period showed. Although it did got limited by the courts - from the reading of case law it had to do more with the fifth amendment and not first.
      • mrbombastic 2y ago
        Not sure I have ever seen anyone actually defend McCarthyism…wow.
        • myvoiceismypass 2y ago
          The McCarthy era seems to be the time period when some people think America was "Great" and that we should return to it. I mean look how easy it is to label any policy as socialist/communist/marxist these days!
  • mjburgess 2y ago
    This neglects that prior administrations were often the origin of these demands, wanting to see how research impacted broader society. They were also, often enough, an ideological cover for the intelligence community to find US-friendly assets in foreign nations. Identity politics is an explicit soft power strategy of very many of the last administrations whose defence/intelligence budget funded some of this research. The situation is vastly more complex than you imagine, and has far less to do with "woke administrators gone rouge". The unstated target of much of this is the intelligence (, and defence to a lesser degree) community, which runs USAID, and plays a very significant role in research funding, and the like. The right has never been targeted in the way the left was, until Trump -- and many in his upper circle are now taking revenge.
• deleted 2y ago
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• spicy-punk-fog 2y ago
  Well, here you are, dear Americans, you all have got a chance now to show the rest of the world that you, of all nations, know how to deal right with the chutzpah in your government that has just dropped the mask of democracy, by leveraging the constitution, the law, the right for protest, peaceful or not, and whatever else that is available to a citizen in such cases. Because you're not akin to those apathetic passive supporters of their criminals-in-power like Russians and Israelis, are you?
• nycdatasci 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • Gareth321 2y ago
    That might work. I really hope Hacker News doesn't become like Reddit.
  • arresin 2y ago
    I think the ones that follow modern orthodox are the loudest because it’s, in their mind, the most supported. But with the election there might a very large, maybe larger silent majority who we hear from a lot less. I just flag these posts because I know the top N comments are going to be just outrage with no substance. Which is mindless and boring.
  • deleted 2y ago
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• hoseja 2y ago
  Vengeance is in order.
  • Gareth321 2y ago
    I believe that is what we are witnessing, yes.
• odyssey7 2y ago
  This hurts, but it also presents an opportunity for rebuilding. An outcome could be a greater diversity of voices influencing research, rather than the NSF and NIH continuing to serve as monoliths. The NIH is the dominant force in medical research. Remember how theories for Alzheimer’s having an infectious etiology were sidelined for decades? And, to this day, for autoimmune conditions?
  • intended 2y ago
    Do people recognize what rebuilding entails?
    • odyssey7 2y ago
      I think it means the next administration would have to hire new people to offer grants to researchers. This would bring new perspectives into the process. There is never any shortage of researchers to fund. And that the ranks of researchers, which are often stagnant due to a shortage of jobs for PhD holders, would experience turnover in the interim, creating openings for fresh voices when the funding resumes. Ideally, imo, the grant process could be distributed across more organizations rather than being as centralized as it has been. The next administration might be free to do so if the existing orgs are no longer thriving at that time.
      • intended 2y ago
        why.. where will the money come from? And next administration? This is 14 DAYS since election. March isnt even here yet. There are 4 tax filings before the next election. Please take a look at things like demonitization, or many "harsh" medicine programs in other countries. The fallout is going to be decades. The government is going to pivot to bread and circuses. The sides are going to get more entrenched, and then theres going to be riots and violence. This will pass, and new crap will come in. This is banana republic territory, not America territory.
        • odyssey7 2y ago
• syl_sau 2y ago
  Some people here seem to be upset. I don't get it. More than 40% of US adults are obese. The rates of chronic diseases are through the roof. There's obviously a systemic problem in these institutions who are tasked with the well-being of the country. We know of many fraud in social sciences (ever heard of priming research?), medical science (eg. alzheimer researchs) and nutritional science (eg. saturated fats). In fact I'd argue it has become systemically untrustworthy. Robert Kennedy Jr vowed for: (a) dedicating 20% of science funding to replication studies, (b) systemic publication of peer reviews alongside papers, (c) publication of null results. Which seems like a very good improvement over what we have now. The field is in dire need of a reform. Am I missing something? PS: I am not from the USA.
  • shortrounddev2 2y ago
    Do you believe that it is the responsibility of the NIH to decide what Americans eat?
    • macleginn 2y ago
      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/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10453145/ and https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-023-02726-9 https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...).
      • shortrounddev2 2y ago
        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
  • nixpulvis 2y ago
    Yes, let's blame scientists for obesity. Not the fact that most of our society has been built around fatty foods and cars to get everywhere. Where are these scientists arguing for that?! Hell, science has been wrong on a number of health issues. But diet and exercise has been a staple of good health science for as long as I can remember. Your blaming the wrong institutions.
• Invictus0 2y ago
  Catch your breath before you start writing. There is no reason to read past "although I keep removing curse words", it totally undermines the credibility of the piece.
• Meneth 2y ago
  Side note: the article's author is Derek Lowe, who also wrote this memetic piece on Chlorine Trifluoride: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo...
• batushka5 2y ago
  As an european I envy so much this great purge - here entire castes build on feeding from grant money, perpetuating DEI, green transition, gender studies etc. Overnight nothing-scientist/ NGO profesionals carreers are over, like in those "AI stole my job" videos. Sadly EU still holds strong perpetuating this grant bottom feeding, poisoning academia and discrediting NGOs.
  • causal 2y ago
    I'd like to offer: both can be bad. Any large system is going to have a lot of inefficiencies, and something to dislike for everyone. But its overall function can still be important enough that taking a sledge hammer to the whole thing is still much more harmful than whatever motivated picking up the hammer.
    • dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
      >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.
      • causal 2y ago
        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.
        • dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
          >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.
• hello_computer 2y ago
  anything that gives pharma shill derek lowe a bad day is a good thing
• systemstops 2y ago
  "There has been a government-wide purge going on of references to any sorts of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) criteria, and indeed, various elected and unelected officials have for some time now been using "DEI" as a scapegoat term and apparently a shorter way of casting suspicion on anything that is not being run by some white guy. As a white guy myself, I find this phenomenally offensive, and I can't even imagine how I'd be feeling about it as a direct target of this garbage" This is the kind of comment that caused all the public backlash against DEI. Completely out of touch. If you talk this way, don't expect the public to believe your claims about defunding.
  • _elf 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • systemstops 2y ago
      The majority of the public is fed up with DEI programs. Cherry picking a single appointment because the guy is unqualified but White doesn't really mean anything compared to the programs that caused thousands of people lost job and educational opportunities.
    • myheartisinohio 2y ago
      He has plenty of "lived experience" :-3
• sam345 2y ago
  This is such a politically charged article and full of political hate. Is this really worthy of HN. Are political editorials now ok for HN? In addition to his obvious political hatred of the current president, the author goes out of his purview to repeat third hand rumors and allegations of illegality at other agencies he has no experience with. Just a few quotes from the article: "...This is amply laid out in the Project 2025 documents, and let me say right here that I was volcanically pissed off at the way that topic was handled during ..the campaign.", and .. That’s a gigantic can of worms that I don’t have the energy to open at the moment, but past that, there is a broader hatred of education and expertise of all kinds. I hate to bring that one up, because it makes me sound like a crank, but there really is a strain of Trumpism that is nothing more than a desire for revenge against snooty over-educated elites who try to tell people what they should do based on their so-called "research." So if by pummelling the NIH and NSF you can simultaneously punch some huge bureaucracies in the face, revenge yourself against your imagined pandemic enemies, and cause distress at a bunch of big universities where they mostly hate you anyway, well. . .what's not to like? ... I strongly urge everyone to make their voices heard with their Senators and Representatives about these issues: the Republican ones need to hear that not everyone agrees with this stuff, and the Democratic ones need to hear that their constituents are not in a handshaking bipartisan mood." We wouldn't be here if government funding was not overrun by leftist politics. How many grants have been rewritten the past few years to put a facade of DEI or to grab funding from funds specifically targeted for DEI or other leftist goals?
• kittikitti 2y ago
  A warning about the "starve the beast" philosophy: the beast will be very hungry when it breaks free.
  • chrisco255 2y ago
    Not if it's dead.
• herodotus 2y ago
  Another win for China. While the US guts its research capacity, China already dominates scientific research (according to Perplexity, 29% of the most highly cited peer reviewed articles are authored by Chinese scientists). Of course all those people who voted for this regime don't believe that there is any benefit to funding science. After all, what did science ever do for them? (OK, except for the science of pick-up trucks - I'll give you that. Oh yes, and the transistor: I think I may have one in my phone. But otherwise: name one thing, bro). Maybe those hats should replace the "A" with a "C".
  • esalman 2y ago
    The slump began from first DJT presidency. US lost the 5G race to China. If deepseek etc. are any indication, they are losing the AI race too. Looking and the prevalence of cheap Chinese EVs all over the world, US is losing on that front too. Meanwhile MAGA are patting themselves in the back because they are "tired of winning".
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • booleandilemma 2y ago
    Do you not think DEI is harming US research capacity? What do you honestly think China thinks of our DEI initiatives? They're laughing at us in Chinese.
• deleted 2y ago
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• _l2po 2y ago
  > "Elon Musk has said recently that his goal is to have no regulations at all" Is there a source for this? I ask because this concern me.
  • ceejayoz 2y ago
    https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-eliminate-regulations https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-eliminate-regulation... It's not a fair paraphrase of what he said. > "Regulations, basically, should be default gone," the head of the White House's Department of Government Efficiency said on the call, as spotted by HuffPost. "Not default there, default gone." "If it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in," he suggested. It's to some extent advocating for the "first, do no harm" default of not treating doctors are supposed to have. Musk's definition of "missed the mark" likely varies wildly from mine, though.
  • subpar 2y ago
    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-regulations-default-gone_n_67a12742e4b09a02376043c7 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-regulations-default...
  • __dkh 2y ago
    It was on a Twitter space, it seems - picked up by a few outlets at the time but, I think, lost in the general insanity of the last 2 weeks One source: https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-eliminate-regulations https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-eliminate-regulation...
• muaytimbo 2y ago
  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 colors other than white working in them. It pushed me and almost all of the other chemists (who were generally white/chinese/indian males) in my class to leave the field either after our PhD or post-doc.
  • jmcqk6 2y ago
    Wow so not a single white/chinese/indian male has been funded since 2013? For over a decade? That's an incredible claim. Literally.
    • Facemelters 2y ago
      you know what they're talking about, don't play dumb
      • avmich 2y ago
        I don't know. Can you elaborate?
        • muaytimbo 2y ago
          I will elaborate, for the intentionally obtuse and for people who have not lived in the world of academia. When writing NIH grants you typically have a section describing prior foundational work in the field or in the lab itself that the grant proposes to fund. In our lab, at the time I was there, the majority of our publications were from 2 white and a chinese male. When writing grant proposals to continue this work (to be continued by the same 3 chemists) the gender/racial characteristics of other members of the lab who were female and of other racial backgrounds were described in great detail, even though they had not contributed to the prior work and were not going to continue the project in the future. Our backgrounds were left unmentioned. This was the way to secure funding was what the PI in our lab told me when I inquired about the glaring discrepancy. It is my opinion that backgrounds should be irrelevant and funding should be granted on the strength of the proposal. That's not the case today. EDIT: I left academia in 2013, maybe things have changed.
• watersb 2y ago
  Research labs wholly owned and operated by large corporations were prevalent sources of innovation throughout the 20th century in the United States. Obvious, probably for Hacker News crowd: • Bell Labs • Xerox PARC • IBM Watson, Almaden Research • Dow Chemical I'm missing the big ones from petroleum and agricultural businesses. Aerospace. I'm willing to believe that a political retreat from 21st century choices looks towards legendary captains of industry, rather than sprawling government bureaucracy, as a source of American greatness. My attempt to frame this week's gleeful destruction of government institutions as a revitalization of the fountainhead. But I don't know. It's easier to just call it the same old spiteful hatred of science that is as American as apple pie.
  • animal_spirits 2y ago
    From my basic understanding of Bell labs, the government granted AT&T a monopoly in communications with the condition that they spend a portion of their revenue on public research. The other labs I don’t know much about, but my guess is it was either similar situations or high corporate tax rates incentivizing spending profits on research to decrease their tax burden.