MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

rolph

not according to this article. the attempt is to defund research, gov can make money out of thin air to an extent, but not indefinately, and it has to be paid for in real terms. private interests have greater actual holdings than gov. "they" are not winning, they are chasing a major provider of high standard of living, right out the door.

jruohonen

From the liked NBER study: "Between 58 and 68 percent of citations to Chinese publications come from other Chinese publications, even for breakthrough work. This contrasts sharply with other regions, where cross-border citation rates are substantially higher." https://www.nber.org/digest?page=1&perPage=50

andretti1977

… “Ignorance is strength” might was well be an official MAGA motto…

MrGilbert

I cannot help but wonder how many decades it will take the U.S. to recover from the damage that the current administration is causing, both economically and in trust on a global scale. While in no way comparable, as a German, that topic feels familiar non the less - and to this day, it's a long and rocky road.

rootusrootus

As is so typical in politics, whether it is countries, parties, or legislation, irony dominates the naming. Democratic People's Republic of Korea, PATRIOT act, MAGA, the list goes on.

jmclnx

China is increasing funding, US is cutting funding so this will only help China.

gverrilla

Absolutely deleting progress.

wileydragonfly

NIH grant funding is still down about 35% and they’re lying about it. They’re not updating Reporter fully so the director has been able to obfuscate it. Graduate programs are reducing admissions and I imagine fewer potential scientists are interested in the PhD path given “current situation.” So I imagine it’s going to take several “good” years to undo what’s been done.

nis0s

I hate that it happened because of a political reason, and many topics affected were unnecessarily targeted, but it’s 1000% true that many labs were overfunded, and accumulated resources which were essentially spent on ego bullshit. There need to be more cuts and selective funding of research labs, in general. Sadly, funding R1 does not guarantee that you’re going to get anything meaningful from that research as a non-trivial number of PIs just used excessive funding to bloat up their numbers to appear politically important, like middle managers at FAANG. So, essentially creating an adult daycare with no regards to output or impact. This needs to stop, and spending needs to be allocated responsibly. Lab impact needs to be assessed on regular (2-yr seems reasonable) basis, and then funding needs to be diverted to new or better players.

readthenotes1

How is this affecting the replicability crisis?

jaybrendansmith

Again, I don't understand why this post is flagged. Don't hackers care about science? Isn't this newsworthy?

throwworhtthrow

The article charts a Nature survey that shows "percent trusting the scientific community" was sub-50% for both D's and R's from 1985-2015. That's more interesting and concerning to me than the relatively recent divergence in partisian opinion. I'd wager we return to that status quo within 10 years, but even that state seems dire.