Posted by mhalle 3 hours ago
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.
These just make it more fixed it into rules as opposed to doing it with plausible deniability like before.
A law which will be used from the opposite side just as well, as soon as the power switches hands again.
Yes, grants were given and revoked for political purposes in the past.
But what percentage of grant proposals were reviewed by an appointed political officer whose sole job was to screen out wrongthink? It did happen, but it was ad hoc and amateur. Today’s administration is formalizing Soviet-style political reviews of science.
It’s scary, and it’s a mistake to hold up occasional (but serious!) mistakes from the past to justify systematic evil today.
[1] - https://www.nsf.gov/funding/information/dcl-broader-impacts/...
I say this as a professor at a top computer science department. I have _never_ felt limited in my ability to collaborate with the best folks in my area. Ever. I do! And it's great! And I also believe strongly it's important to make sure we are growing those next generations of amazing people, because the thing that makes research awesome is working with them.
Especially not when said administration has a track record of cancelling things because they Ctrl-Fed outgroups they considered to be the enemy and discovered a completely irrelevant Latin prefix in someone's abstract.
People get upset as though this policy is dictating that a minority from the corner of the earth with no meaningful experience is going to be mandated into the role of heart surgeon or airplane pilot as well. That’s not how this works. However, those roles themselves stand to benefit from the diversified cultivation at the bottom of the stack, eventually.
Even very intelligent people seem to think inclusive policies mean that incompetent people will be promoted in private industry or government, but frankly, I never witnessed that to any abnormal degree until the people decrying it the most ended up in power. A game show host as president. A Fox News anchor as secretary of war. I can only keep a straight face because I’m so jaded by it.
Are those mutually exclusive? I know that's a common argument, but it doesn't track to me. Finding the diamonds in the rough in underrepresented groups is part of finding the best of the best to collaborate with.
The best of the best involves people from underrepresented groups. These policies exist to counteract the cronyism and “doesn’t look like me”-ism inherent to the way people make choices. We know people don’t hire and collaborate with the best of the best, because when looking for the best they see it easiest in people with similar backgrounds and perspectives as themselves.
It’s a shame the culture war cooked your brain on this one.
If there are no martian biologists because of systemic discrimination, why would the best if the best biologists include a martian.
The argument defeats itself. I don't understand why people keep repeating this lie instead of the truth.
The only way this makes sense is if you think the only way someone can be inspired by someone else is if they look the same.
A lot of research won't be profitable for years to come or is even unlikely to be profitable at all, so you funding sources are limited. The government, having no profit motive, can encourage this kind of research by funding it. Typically the hope is that it'll lead to increased productivity or innovation down the line.
You don't have to be a statistician to see that not all groups of the populace are represented equally among scholars. If you want all viewpoints covered from you populace, wouldn't that mean you want to try and push for inclusion there? That doesn't mean everything has to be inclusive but you sure can incentivize it
This is the core of the issue. We don’t actually want all viewpoints represented because that wouldn’t by itself produce any value.
You want someone to come up with the fundamental theorems of Calculus, linking the area of a curve with its anti-derivative, because that’s incredibly useful. Generically grabbing everyone’s view isn’t a competitive strategy. You need to be selective on things that are intrinsically useful and promote that.
The study you mention can be founded with pen and paper. No expensive trials or heavy equipment or team needed.
Do you even know how grants work?
You’re speaking about scoring designed to ensure that all Americans (any sex, poverty level, ability, creed) benefit from the use of tax payer money. This was a metric that was well understood AND EXPLICITLY EXPLAINED.
There was NO relationship between that and canceling grants.
Edit: less incendiary. I am just very upset with how confident people are saying things that are absolutely wrong for internet points.
This is the real test. If these changes are so bad, will someone campaign bare on overturning these? Will the “other side” change it?
If they don’t, you know that they also agreed with it - this handwringing now is just for show.
The reactionary Supreme Court has changed the character of the executive. That court will live for many years. The executive branch exists to represent the will of the chief executive. We’ve normalized criminal behavior with the abuse of pardons and crushed the institution of DOJ.
These guys opened a very stupid Pandora’s box. The long game is brutal. When we need to start dismantling the military, that’s going to impact some places pretty severely, for example. The science and tech edge will be gone in a decade.
All tactics, no strategy is the way of things currently - on the right especially, but on the left to some extent too. It’s maddening.
Fuck 'em, pack the court.
B) do you really want to get to a place where the arbiters get politically reset and degraded every time the pendulum swings? This is the equivalent of a courtroom where a defendant or plaintiff can threaten to fire the judge or add their cousin as a co-judge.
No, the left should use the things right broke to abuse the right—just like the right is breaking everything to abuse the left. Otherwise the right will never learn why breaking things is a bad idea, and they’ll just keep on breaking everything like they have been for my entire life and before.
Previously, it was a more libertarian and constitutional argument: progressive causes since the new deal have assumed powers not granted.
More recently this has completely flipped to a populist culture war argument that the left, in excesses seen in the DEI hayday before COVID, has lost its mind and began attacking and punishing people.
My point isn't to argue "no you" but to instead invalidate your point about lessons and outcomes. The centers of these two tribes exist in separate realities and experiences. Escalating is unlikely to have the effect of bringing those perspectives together.
As well, any new rulings or laws that are designed to expire right before an election are almost always the mechanisms used for those abuses claimed as being perpetrated by others. And the number of things designed this way seem to be stacking up relatively quickly.
The reasoning is quite straightforward, “I want to make sure you can’t do the things I was just doing to you.” Otherwise there wouldn’t be a reason for policies that are good for everyone to expire at the end of a presidential term.
Election fraud, “The Swamp”, all of it. It was a roadmap.
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.
If the choice is between $0 in the US and >$0 someplace else, you emigrate to >$0 if you want to continue your research.
Way off, it's way closer, even if we're just talking EU. EU (the body) alone is about 200 billion/year. EU member states are like 1-1.5 trillion/year.
US: $848B (2024)
EU: $508B (2024)
---
UK: $102B (2023)
Switzerland: $22B (2023)
Norway: $8.2B (2024)
OECD "Gross domestic spending on R&D"
We fund science, research and we have accelerated programs for researchers affected by these kinds of things.
If you're interested, email me (see profile). I have been helping Americans emigrate to Europe (for free) for several years.
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.
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.
https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/NSF-Terminated-Award...
I wouldn't even need to cherry pick.
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.
In the US you might get your funds cancelled, in Russia you'll get your life cancelled instead - and not in the metaphorical sense.
Also as incompetent as the current US government is, the incompetence of the Russian government is on a whole different level (the "3 days to Kyiv" are taking longer than the whole "Great Patriotic War").
> Russia is a de-jure democracy
As is North Korea, it must be even more democratic than the rest of the world because it calls itself "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" ;)
> I'm not sure what difference there is between them.
Good hyperbole
If you weren't aware of these differences, I'd encourage you to radically change your media diet; there are unfortunately many outlets which find it advantageous to exaggerate how bad the US is and deemphasize how bad dictatorships are. (Some are paid Russian propaganda, I've seen a shocking number of people send me RT links as though they're a legitimate news source.)
Education, cultural sensitivity, etc. are health issues.
Musk: “So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention.”
“As of early February, the U.S. was not providing funding to support testing and port screenings in Uganda because of Trump's freeze on almost all U.S. foreign assistance.”
“Within USAID's Global Health Bureau there was a team of people that specialized in high risk outbreaks, like Ebola. "Virtually all of those people have been pushed out of the agency, and they have not been brought back. Only a very small handful — like low single digits — remain from what had been something like a 30 person team," says Jeremy Konyndyk, who oversaw USAID's response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak.”
“As for the role of the CDC, Spencer says what its officials can do is limited by Trump's order that the CDC not communicate with WHO.”
Science and Educational purposes are valid 501(c)(3) purposes. A donation to a 501(c)(3) that funds open-source scientific software, public STEM education, basic research, science grants, or public-interest tech research can be deductible.
Up to 60% of Adjusted Gross Income can be tax-deductible as charitable contributions to a qualified 501(c)(3) with itemization, depending on the contribution type.
This would create a non-partisan defined/dedicated non-profit funding layer with serious governance that will benefit all sides. Might be possible to go global.
This would need serious structure: independent board, conflict-of-interest rules, grant review, public reporting, no private benefit, and probably fiscal sponsorship first.
Maybe this deserves a separate Ask HN to avoid derailing this thread: would people here actually support or help design a 501(c)(3)-style vehicle for public-benefit science and technology funding?
But these very endowments have been special cased as additionally taxable, despite that status, under the 2025 OBBBA, resulting in research budget cuts [0].
Would independent endowments as you describe them be more immune?
[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/college-endowment-tax...
Why a hypothetical? Plenty of options available to donate to or to contribute otherwise. Not help built it, help grow and maintain it.
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.
Further, this seems to increase what you call bad "fun": increases abuse of tax funding being corruptly given to projects advocated by political appointees despite rejection by scientific peer review.
So they’ll be sued. The theories will be tested and we’ll see exactly where the line is (eventually). And probably somewhere uncomfortable, given SCOTUS.
There are legitimate ways agency political appointees can set funding priorities. Like this year we’ll focus on Alzheimer’s. But of course, we should take the least charitable reading of this - that it’ll likely be used for shenanigans. Punish enemies. Award cronies. Go after junk science, etc.
So now the administration is attempting to follow those rules to create these new procedures, which they believe will then be lawful.
If they are successful, challenges would have to be made judicially based on non-procedural grounds, or through Congress.
They can follow APA to come up with all kinds of illegal rules. And the actual rules are so broad they could be used from anything sane to something that might be just political revenge.
The actual language:
> “As part of the merit review process, Federal agencies must perform pre-issuance reviews to ensure that Federal award proposals selected for funding are consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest.”
The amount of capability that America is burning is impressive. I suspect that people outside of academia are not as alarmed, since its not part of daily life.
However it matters the same way that a drug discovery today is life saving 10 years down the line, after its gone through all the processes to go to market.