Hacker News Reader

Comment by thatfrenchguy | Hacker News Reader

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... 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?

View on HN

No matter what happens in the next few years, the damage is done. It is now known that the next administration could kill your apolitical career with the stroke of the pen if your ideas vaguely support the wrong team.

If you have talent, why deal with the (frequently) middling pay and the existential risk that could follow every election?

So you don't think being forced to include a statement on diversity in every single grant request reviewed by the NIH was "injecting dumb politics" but you do think that being forced to NOT include a statement on diversity in every single grant request is?

There’s a very big difference there between “including a statement in diversity” and “your funding gets pulled because you previously included a statement about diversity”. The new administration is essentially pulling funding from everyone who got grants previously based on those criteria.

Who do you think benefits medium term from our best researchers getting less funding? The toll on our economy will only be visible in 15-20 years, and it will be massive.

Destroying the economy IS the goal it seems like.

These money shark guys that have got a hold of our government and economy since 2007 seem to have a long term plan that is specifically designed to destroy the US economy. Its counter intuitive, since their wealth is directly linked, but they have some kind of plan.

> forced to NOT include

== "not being allowed to include"

i.e. a restriction on free speech with more worrying implications than "injecting dumb politics"

Diversity statements were used to facilitate race-based grant approvals. They should never have been legal.

This is false. The grants were not approved based on race. The grants were approved based on merit toward the goals of the field of science to which they were submitted. Showing how your work had broader impacts toward a more diverse, equitable and inclusive society was one part of a list of many criteria, recently updated here:

https://new.nsf.gov/funding/merit-review#our-merit-review-cr...

I think a link to archive.org might be better here, the criteria changed and so must have the website as well no?

Never were legal.

Compelled speech is far, far, far worse than constricting speech by every conceivable dimension.

Even in day to day interaction, forcing someone to be silent, is far more of a gentler 'social action' than forcing someone to speak.

I don't think I agree. What's your reasoning?

Really? You see a narrow contextual restriction for irrelevant information in a grant/hiring packet to be worse than compelled speech?

I think people are more concerned about the economic fallout and the illegality of what is being done.

Including statements on diversity, and defunding projects because they have diversity are two very different things.

And yeah, as a white male who sees few women, and even fewer people from minorities other than Chinese and Indian, in the hard sciences (especially computer related), I definitely support efforts to try to include them more. It results in more diverse views of a problem, which often leads to better science.

You call it "injecting dumb politics," but I call it "explaining why I shouldn't believe you'll just hire your buddies." It's an attempt to prevent the grift everyone claims is in research, but it's been politicized by bad-faith non-participants.

Let's not sugarcoat it. DEI is the new N-word. Only people who are covert racists would be bothered by a mere statement about inclusion.

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!

that's bad strategic thinking (obviously) because it places at a huge disadvantage to our main competitors.

What makes you think they care?

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.

To a large degree their wealth is transnational and will move on to the next trough after emptying this one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com