A Trump-era purge of military scientists at a legendary think tank
reuters.com
reuters.com
AFAICT, this is a team of distinguished scientists that is kept on the government payroll so that the US has the best scientific minds available for national security issues. Sounds great in theory, but when a clearly sympathetic article's chosen examples of the good work the group does include nuggets such as, "In the 1960s, the Jasons invented a type of sensor that could detect enemy guerrillas in Vietnam and communicate their location to U.S. bombers", I dunno, I'm kind of skeptical. I mean, maybe that sensor had a subsequent use case for the space program or something, who knows.
The cricket thing is just a hypothesis; the article itself says that, "No definitive cause of the illnesses has been determined".
I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm just kind of skeptical.
I'm mostly skeptical at the skepticism. Why wouldn't one want to retain world class researching talent to be queried at a moment's notice regarding anything that could possibly threaten the country?
Reminds me of Nixon trying to get rid of the Tea Tasting Board.
https://www.nytimes.com/1970/05/13/archives/nixon-drops-plan...
And you don't think the people in charge of keeping nukes safe saying they are needed to keep the nukes safe justifies their position?
JASON has a wikipedia page, google exists, etc. etc.
Preferably without sensationalized headlines like "Trump-era purge".
A headline is absolutely the least important part of an article, but in this case it's descriptive and appropriate so I'm not sure what the problem is. This is the Trump era of the US executive branch and he owns these decisions, whether you like them or not. This is not controversial.
On the contrary, its a one sentence summary of an article. If combined with humor, it sticks better. If its too long, it will stick less. If its too sensationalist readers will feel deceived afterwards (and they'll express it). To be fair, it is difficult to make a good headline. Not everyone's cut for it. A good journalist can, but journalism is a race to the bottom and it is hard to compete with masses who lower the standards (seemingly for free thanks to advertisements).
One thing is certain though; virtually every new president since George H.W. Bush, they've rolled out this very same article. "You're ruining my MITRE sinecure," basically. Obviously, it's not happened yet, and the actual substance of the events described is probably well short of the apocalypse which I must have read at least a dozen times in the last 25 years.
It's a tribute to the Jason dudes they have decent PR. They may even have done something useful once upon a time. The crap they do now is... doubtful. Mostly because almost all academics outside of something like chemistry seem to be engaged in doubtful work.
To be accurate, there WAS science, engineering, and expertise, but it had to neatly align with the Party Line.
I guess OGAS spiritually lives on the internet now with ad tracking and payment networks where a few companies have detailed views of economic activity.
This should be taken as a warning sign by all intellectuals and everyone with a love of knowledge. When the political animal becomes so arrogant, they're deluded into thinking they can dictate reality, instead of being subject to it, society has wandered into a very dangerous kind of epistemic breakdown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Look for this in particular, when politics has become "single party" and there is absolutely no room for dissent. Look out for mechanisms and practices of suppressing and intimidating dissent which do not have due process, or which are corruptions of due process mechanisms.
Look out for the situation where you or someone must "hold their tongue." If you must hold your tongue, you are being suppressed by people with unchecked power approaching the epistemic breakdown. If you feel others should "hold their tongue," especially if you despise them, then you are in danger of approaching the epistemic breakdown.
http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/15/the-wetware-crisis-the-t...
Holding one's tongue is a social tool that makes meaningful collaboration between dissimilar parties possible. Having the space to speak freely is undeniably a liberty worth defending. But it's important to remain conscious of the difference between being silenced by force and being gracious by custom.
It can be difficult to distinguish between the two when the stakes are high or tempers run hot, but that's when it matters most. The freedom to speak openly is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.
This is a good point. What I meant by Must hold your tongue is that all of "the space to speak freely" is being systematically denied to wholesale groups of people. (In particular, if one's response to speech being systematically denied to wholesale groups of people, is to turn around and systematically deny speech to wholesale groups of people, one is part of the problem.)
The freedom to speak openly is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.
True. As in many things, there is balance. A problem with accumulating too much power, is that it enables one to create such imbalances, while insulating one from the information the imbalance is happening.
Furthermore, phds were available to people besides wealthy kids or those looking to commit economic suicide.
There were problems with the USSR, but education definitely surpassed US education in the 80s. Furthermore, what Kennedy tried to do with his fitness program was commonplace in the USSR.
Here is the thing, you get this stellar education, then you are out in the real world, and, poof.
This is like when Gingrich killed OTA to make room for lobbyists and consultants to run roughshod. Guarantee this is going to lead to a fat contract for someone
Presented without comment.
That's not why Trump got rid of them, of course.
> The Party employs science and technology to curtail human freedom and privacy, and to control human behavior.
:)
> A June executive order signed by Trump requires all federal agencies to slash a third of their independent advisory committees by September 30, with the goal of ultimately reducing the total number of such committees to no more than 350 from about 1,000 now.
That indicates that Trump is directly responsible for these events. How is that politicizing?
> On March 28, Trump appointee Michael Griffin – the Pentagon’s chief technology officer – unexpectedly moved to terminate the group.
It's also done in accordance with an executive order signed by the President himself:
> A June executive order signed by Trump requires all federal agencies to slash a third of their independent advisory committees by September 30, with the goal of ultimately reducing the total number of such committees to no more than 350 from about 1,000 now.
There is nothing frivolous in mentioning the person responsible for a policy under discussion. While it may sometimes seem like there is too much Trump news, most journalists not directly covering the White House actually are fairly hesitant to invoke his name, because it invariably dooms any discussion. But in a case such as this, it would be journalistic malpractice not to show the line of causality.